Vs Shonan Bellmare (away) 24/9/23 J League match 28

Shonan Bellmare 0 - 2 Kawasaki Frontale

When you’re lacking enthusiasm for doing something it sometimes helps to shake up the formula a little bit to get you through. With that in mind, let’s start this blog post about five minutes after the final whistle of this game. This was probably the best part of the game for me as we’d won and I also would be able to go home soon. The most noteworthy part of that five-minutes-after-the-game moment though was the Shonan players finally making it to their end of the stadium after their lap of… , I don’t know what to call it actually, to find that the massed ranks of their fans behind the goal were giving them a good old booing. I think this says a lot about us in 2023 and in recent years too. Even when we were at our best, we still had a real tendency to not do well against Shonan. I know we beat them in the Levain game at their place this year, but apart from that flukey late comeback, things have trended towards the bleak. So now, when Shonan see a game coming up against Frontale, particularly in this, our worst season for years, I guess they would be quite excited to be playing us. But for once, we managed to win, much to the disgust of the Shonan fans who’d come expecting an easy three points to aid them in their fight for survival. They didn’t get them and this seemed to upset their fans quite a lot. Instead we got an ultimately pointless, (given how our league campaign has gone this year), and also perhaps pyrrhic victory. The three points saw us  cement our position at the foot of the top half of the table, firmly in the bit of the league where nothing is happening or will happen. Don’t get me wrong, I’d much rather be there than in Shonan’s position. And we’ve got the Emperor’s Cup and the ACL where the games still actually mean something. But now we’ll potentially go into the next ACL game without two of our defenders as both Sasaki (some kind of back of the thigh muscle pull perhaps) and Kurumaya (looks like his knee is knackered, looked very worrying) got potentially serious injuries. I’m much more worried about Kurumaya as Sasaki at least could walk down the tunnel after being stretchered off. 

Once again, we're back to having hardly any defenders. I guess Takai is fit but much like Miyashiro and Tono seems to have really fallen down the pecking order recently. (I wonder though if the reason for some of these absences is perhaps illness (COVID) related. Readers outside of Japan might not know that it's sweeping through the country again. Actually perhaps readers in Japan might also not know this as it seems that it is now the great unmentionable. But I know plenty of people who’ve had it recently. And plenty of others who have been ‘ill’ with symptoms that sound very similar but apparently don’t merit the mention of the C word. (Not that C word, I’m trying to keep these posts out of the gutter…). I have heard anecdotal evidence that some recent FC Tokyo strange selections might have been related to this kind of thing. I guess basically I’m saying that I don’t want to question selections too much as I guess there are plenty of things we fans don’t know). And I suppose Yamamura should be counted as a defender as Oniki won’t play him anywhere else. I think Tanabe got injured again in the Cerezo game, but maybe I’m misremembering that. Yamane has been playing pretty much every game so that will clearly have to continue and Nobori who was being rested for this game but had to come on much earlier than he might have expected, will also now I guess continue without any hopes of being rested. I think both of them have felt the pace a bit this year. Nobori in particular has recently looked a bit dodgy and when he came on in this match looked like he’d had a massive takeaway pizza to himself shortly before kick off imagining that he wouldn’t be required until at the earliest the last ten minutes. But I don’t want to start criticising people’s performances again as it’s not really helpful is it? 

There is a certain irony of us once again getting injuries in defence in a game that we had another go at trying to play with three at the back. To begin with that three was Sasaki, Kurumaya and Ominami. The injury to Sasaki that changed, after the usual period where it looked like no-one had been told what was happening apart from the sub who came on, to Kurumaya, Ominami and Yamane. And then after Kurumaya got injured we went with Noborizato, Ominami and Yamane. with Segawa as left wing back and Tachibanada on the right. With the numerous injuries and emergency repositioning of players, it’s no surprise that we weren't that good in the second half. But we did manage to hang on. And I want to give full credit to Oniki for once again trying three at the back, and then actually persevering with it when it would have been easier to revert to the old way of play. I think perhaps that the new injuries might make it difficult to continue with this formation in the next few weeks though. And I fully expect us to go back to the tried, tested (and proven to be almost completely ineffective in recent times) 4-3-3 for the ACL, and maybe even for the next league game. I thought after we got pasted in Cerezo with the 3-5-2 that were would never see Oniki try anything different ever again. But he did it! And we won! So full credit to him. I did say that against Cerezo I thought we looked kind of promising and that every goal we conceded had a significant element of misfortune to it. The misfortune in this game came in the form of injuries and probably prevented us from making any significant progress in getting closer to playing a bit better. The second half of this game was pretty turgid stuff. But at the same time, we did look quite solid and can’t remember many occasions where we looked like conceding, which is something I haven’t said for a very long time! 

As usual, it was just the whole scoring goals thing that remained eternally out of reach. Thankfully though we’d done enough to get a good lead by half time. I didn’t realise how nice the opening goal was till I saw a replay. It’s good to see that Damiao and Yamada seem to be building up a bit of a relationship, as they seemed like they’d never met when they played together against Cerezo. The second goal seemed like the kind of decision that we haven’t really been getting recently so it was nice for once to have a long VAR delay end up going in our favour. Again, looking at highlights after getting home, I think it’s a fair enough penalty decision, but I’m sure plenty will disagree. Particularly Shonan fans who gave Segawa a big boo when his name was read out (in contrast to Yamane who still gets applause). Perhaps they can deal with a player leaving then to have a tilt at a title, but not so much one that leaves for a glorious absolutely-mid-table finish rather than sticking around for the relegation fight. It was also nice that VAR again came to our rescue after Damiao made a mess of his first attempt at the penalty which was saved by former Frontale loanee Mawatari (the goal keeper Hiroki of course, not Kazuaki!) who left us never having taken part in any game in any way. In a way, credit to Damiao for the slight stutter that made Mawatari commit early and leave his line before the ball was kicked, but debit (?!) to Damiao for a pretty horrible penalty. The second one didn’t look much better but had the significant plus point that it went in. I really feel that I have to mention the five minutes or so in the middle of the first half where we could have been excused for thinking that we’d fallen into some kind of time loop. Wakizaka takes a corner, it hits the first defender and goes out for a corner. Wakizaka takes a corner, it hits the first defender and goes out for a corner. Wakizaka takes a corner, it hits the first defender and goes out for a corner. I think I’ve worked out the signals he uses. Left arm raised, he’s aiming for the first defender’s head. Right arm, he’s going for the first defender’s head. Both arms, well, he’s going to play it to the first defender’s head. I wish we’d mix things up a bit by giving Seko a go. It might give Wakizaka a boost. I would be very surprised if we score from a corner before the end of the season if we keep going the same way. But we know he can take set pieces well, so perhaps his recent drop off with corners is connected to the general lack of quality all over the pitch from everyone. I guess I should also write some words about Gomis. After starting the previous two games and seemingly falling into the Frontale trap of whoever plays up front does absolutely nothing, he dropped to the bench in this game. When he came on he seemed to be finding it tough again. I hope it’s that he’s still trying to settle in and get used to how we play. I also hope that it doesn’t take him much longer to get going, as erm… don’t know how to say this diplomatically… erm… none of us are getting any younger. I feel a bit mean though focusing on anyone too much. We haven’t been playing well as a team so it seems unfair to highlight certain things that aren’t quite working and not instead just say that pretty much nothing is working. But back one more time to mention that I’m happy that Oniki tried something new-ish and stuck to it. I critcise him a lot, so should give him praise when he merits it. With Cerezo away in mind, it’s much better to see us trying something and losing than just sticking with the same losing style and losing. And in this game, WE DIDN’T EVEN LOSE!!

I guess I haven’t said anything much about Shonan or the Ref. I think neither stood out, which is great if you’re a ref and not so great if you’re a football team. Normally I moan a lot about Kimura, but I don’t have anything to moan about on this occasion, I think. Probably helps that we won, eh? Fair play to Shonan for getting plenty of fans to travel to Tokyo (through Kawasaki) for a home game. There were 54,000 people in the stadium, which is pretty good, even when you consider that 10,000 tickets had been given away for free.  You wouldn’t have known that though as there was a lot of green on show. We took quite a lot of fans too and the atmosphere was good in our end. I still think the National Stadium match experience leaves a lot to be desired though.

And jeez, I suppose those flame throwers, which I thought was just FC Tokyo doing FC Tokyo kind of things, must be part of the stadium hire package as they were back again. I know people say that sitting in front of a log fire on a winter’s night is a great experience, staring into the dancing flames in quiet contemplation. Well, that wasn't quite the experience those flame throwers at the National Stadium provided. But each to their own I guess. Believe me, if we did that kind of tacky shit at our games, I would be equally critical. Much better to have an impressionist get driven round the running track at walking pace, doing an impression of someone singing YMCA, while pretty much everyone in the stadium loses their shit over doing the arm movements for the chorus, right?

Sorry as usual this blog post is a bit vague and pointless. We weren’t very good, but at least we tried something and there is some promise of fun in the future perhaps. AND WE WON! The injuries ruined the game for us, but… WE WON! We did only manage two shots on target but… WE WON! Oh and a big highlight for me was seeing (I think) U18 players Tsuchiya and Hamasaki behind the goal at the game. I think it was them anyway. Next up, Niigata at home in the league. I hope our experimentation continues, but I guess we might have a lack of centre backs if the injuries are as bad as they looked. So maybe we’ll be back to 4-3-3. We’ve struggled twice against Niigata already this year, so perhaps I’m not that confident. After that, the following Tuesday we have Ulsan at home for our second ACL game. Hmmmm. Probably could say a similar thing about us and Ulsan, we struggle against them and haven't done well recently, so I’m not that confident. Oh well, fingers crossed I suppose.

Team

GK 1. JUNG Sung-Ryong

DF 3. OMINAMI Takuma

DF 7. KURUMAYA Shintaro

DF 5. SASAKI Asahi

MF 13. YAMANE Miki
MF 8. TACHIBANADA Kento

MF 16. SEKO Tatsuki 

MF 14. WAKIZAKA Yasuto

MF 30. SEGAWA Yusuke

FW 20. YAMADA Shin

FW 9. LEANDRO DAMIAO

 

Subs

GK 99. KAMIFUKUMOTO Naoto

DF 2. NOBORIZATO Kyohei (on for SASAKI 20')

MF 6. JOAO SCHMIDT (on for SEKO 67')

FW 11. KOBAYASHI Yu

FW 18. Bafetimbi GOMIS (on for LEANDRO DAMIAO 72')

FW 23. MARCINHO (on for KURUMAYA 72')

FW 41. IENAGA Akihiro (on for YAMADA 67')

 

Goals

 

YAMADA (Frontale) 11' 0-1

LEANDRO DAMIAO (Frontale) PEN 39' 0-2

 

My Frontale Man Of The Match

Some rays of light in what has been quite a dark season mean that I should probably do this for once. And although we didn't do much in this game going forward (particularly in the second half), I'm going to give it to...

LEANDRO DAMIAO - great work for Yamada's goal and did really well to play the win-the-ball-and-pass-it-on role that we can use if we're playing two up front. With Gomis arriving to further threaten his spot it was really nice to see him looking so happy in both this and the last few games and being so positive. Let's not mention the first penalty though...

Highlights

Vs Johor DT (away) 19/9/23 ACL Group stage match 1

Johor DT 0 - 1 Kawasaki Frontale

With just three days between games which included a flight to Malaysia, naturally Oniki went with the same team that just about squeaked past FC Tokyo. And perhaps unsurprisingly, seeing that this was another game against a team in red and blue, thankfully with a single goal from Marcinho for a Frontale team who look increasingly unlikely to score as the season continues, it was another pretty disappointing performance. But let’s not be too pessimistic as we have a tendency to mess up everything that is related to this competition, so it was nice for us to actually manage to win. This is particularly true as the majority of the second half seemed to be played at walking pace and was mainly a contest of which team could get more opposition players booked as the ref slowly lost control. I don’t know what this game says about the quality of Johor this year, but we’ve got three points against them which can only be a good thing. Ulsan won their game against Pathum 3-1, so I guess they will be the favourites in the group and our toughest opposition. Our next match in the competition will be the home game against them. I wonder if Oniki will start with the same eleven for that game, and for the two games we have in between (winking emoji goes here). Anyway, we’ve done the job so we can be happy about that. And perhaps it actually feels even better when we’ve done the job whilst playing so mediocrely. A few final points which are perhaps interesting but probably aren’t really. The pitch looked awful so it’s kind of fitting we played awfully on it. VAR in the ACL seems to be as painstakingly slow as it is in the J League. And has Oniki got lots of different sets of coloured magnets so that he can match his magnet board to the opposition’s kit, or was that merely a coincidence in this game? Oh, and YFM lost 4-2 at home. Hehehehehehe! That’ll probably happen to us in the next match day though…

Next up Shonan away, but at the National Stadium, on Sunday. Surely he won’t play the same team, will he? Surely he won’t…. surely….

 

Team

GK 1. JUNG Sung-Ryong

DF 13. YAMANE Miki

DF 7. KURUMAYA Shintaro (Yellow card 75')

DF 3. OMINAMI Takuma

DF 2. NOBORIZATO Kyohei

MF 8. TACHIBANADA Kento (Yellow card 81')

MF 16. SEKO Tatsuki

MF 14. WAKIZAKA Yasuto

FW 41. IENAGA Akihiro

FW 18. Bafetimbi GOMIS

FW 23. MARCINHO

 

Subs

GK 22. HAYASAKA Yuki
GK 99. KAMIFUKUMOTO Naoto

MF 6. JOAO SCHMIDT (Yellow card 90+6') (on for IENAGA 84')

FW 9. LEANDRO DAMIAO (on for GOMIS 68')

FW 11. KOBAYASHI Yu
DF 5. SASAKI Asahi (on for NOBORIZATO 74')
FW 17. TONO Daiya

FW 20. YAMADA Shin
DF 29. TAKAI Kota
FW 30. SEGAWA Yusuke (on for MARCINHO 68')

DF 31. YAMAMURA Kazuya (on for SEKO 83')

FW 33. MIYASHIRO Taisei

 

Goals

MARCINHO (Frontale) 45' 0-1

Highlights

Vs FC Tokyo (home) 15/9/23 J League match 27

Kawasaki Frontale 1 - 0 FC Tokyo 

At the end of this year, when we potentially could be looking at another wholly unsuccessful season, some fans might look back and be relieved that we at least managed to beat our local rivals YFM and FC Tokyo in a couple of games. Of course any delight in this is more than slightly undermined by the fact that both of those teams beat us easily in the return fixtures. But, you know, it’s nice to have something to cling on to.  As I’m saying this will be an unsuccessful season, some might be questioning why I’m being quite so pessimistic about our chances in both the Emperor’s Cup and ACL, particularly given that our new 38 year old striker is now finally in the frame for some pitch time. More on his impact in this game and some initial thoughts about him later on. The day after this game, the players headed off to the airport to go to Johor for our game on Tuesday. It’s a pretty fast turn around when you consider the traveling involved, so I wonder if we’ll see a similar team to the one we saw in this game or Oniki will change things up. Hehehehehe, had you going for a while there, didn’t I? Of course we’ll see a similar team! This is Oniki Frontale! At least we’ll have a bit of positivity to hang on to going into our opening ACL game. Well, positivity if we look only at the result of this game. Perhaps not so positive if we think about how the game went. This match was a pretty dull affair, with us having a lot of shots but not looking like coming very close to scoring, even in the absolute goal on a plate occasions, aside from the one time we crucially did. Also, don’t get too carried away about any positives you might want to take from this match. Some FC Tokyo fans are pretty despondent about the way that their new manager’s results have dipped after an initial bright start. They are a team who, like us, are very much mired in mid table, seemingly quite justifiably on this showing. However, their fans seem to be more upset about their position than some of ours are. Who cares about results, style of football or excitement anyway, when you have a new singing to get excited about! I really want to make a joke about our new signing being Oniki’s ‘Gomis out of jail free’ card, or ‘get out of Gomis free’ card, but I’m pretty dissatisfied about both of those turns of phrase. Clearly not dissatisfied enough to not include them though… By the way, if you’re ever confused about one of these increasingly oblique references I make in these posts, please ask for an explanation. I’d be happy to give one. I think my favourite and perhaps most oblique ever was the Pituca / CJ from Eggheads comparison. Still makes me, and I should stress that is ONLY me, giggle when I think about it. I’m surprised Pituca didn’t get investigated after saying he pushed a man into a canal and shocked that CJ isn’t criticised more for booting a water bottle into the studio audience at the Eggheads filming. Anyway, let’s have a bit of game chat under the old bullet points as that is what this post is supposed to be about.

 

Us -

Gomis started! Something exciting! Something that was probably slightly let down by the fact that plenty of other players who haven’t been doing very well also started. But no, this was going to be a brave new world of plenty of chances, loads of goals and would represent us starting an unlikely and late charge for the J1 title. Gomis would steal the headlines and other teams would be a little sick in their mouth, worried about the prospect of the great Kawasaki sleeping giant stirring, ready to take the league by the scruff of its neck and start smashing things. Oh… actually the introduction of Gomis showed that Frontale Rabbit was right all along, and it doesn’t matter who plays up front for us, we’ll forever struggle to score goals. I think I’ve been saying for a long time that the reason for our travails in the last few years is not the players, but is instead the system and the tactics. Apparently we had 19 shots in this game, but aside from the goal and a couple of very bad misses, I can’t really remember much. We’ve got a star striker up front!! But still the only way we can make any kind of chance is by giving the ball to Marcinho to dribble and run at the opposition defence. Thankfully he managed to score on this occasion, (think this was the first goal by a foreign player for us this year). On the other side of the pitch it was all lovely ponderous triangles. Anything that went through the middle was met with a wall of bodies and was blocked before the ball even made it into the box. This has happened in every single game this year as far as I can remember. We are woefully predictable and everyone has spotted it. Whoever plays up front will be crowded out and will struggle to do anything. So it’s a bit of a surprise that we’re (probably) spending so much money on someone who if we continue to play the same way, will basically be being used as a decoy. As I’m trying to be a bit more positive about everything, (yes, I know someone people will find me saying that after the preceding few hundred words deeply ironic), I don’t want to dwell on individual players deficiencies too much, but I will say that Ienaga really looks like he can’t be bothered at the start of most games and it takes him a really long while to get into the game. Usually this comes about due to us conceding, scoring, or a red card for us or the opposition and then Ienaga becomes possessed with the kind of exciting energy that we were so used to him having in the past. But he never seems to have it from the start of games anymore. He was pretty anonymous for the first 60 minutes of this game. I hope he can get his mojo back as it doesn’t seem like he’s lost his talent, but has instead just lost a bit enthusiasm. It seems like Oniki is always going to play him though. Plenty of others had mediocre games, but the whole atmosphere of the match was pretty lacklustre, so I guess it’s not a surprise that no-one particularly came out smelling of roses. We weren’t exactly bad in this game, we were just boring. Thankfully our opponents were equally boring and a little worse than us. One last point is that, as expected, after our shellacking by Cerezo, all hopes of any experimentation from Oniki are gone. We’re back to the same formation and the same leaden style again. Expect a lot more dullness before this year is over. Even though in the league, all we have left is basically trying to avoid our worst finish for a few years, we’re apparently still going to stick with the dullness that got us into the position where it looks like were going to have our worst finish for years. Oh and just change one isolated to the point of ineffectuality striker for another. Still, at least we stopped our six game winless run in the league. Thank you FC Tokyo!
 

Them -

First of all, I should say that FC Tokyo seemed to come with a game plan suited to winning a game against us a few years ago. That was a time when we were a team of delicate flowers who moved the ball around in a lovely and dangerous manner but wilted when we came up against a team who roughed us up a bit and were prepared to sit and wait for counter attacking chances. Although we still can’t play against teams who defend in numbers, the same is also true against teams who play a myriad of other ways. The way a team plays against us will affect how many goals they score, but probably won’t have that much of an effect on how many we score, as no matter how packed the defence is, we’ll still dither our way to losing possession or overplay it before finally blasting a shot into the legs of a defender at point blank range. Tokyo’s aggressive approach got them six yellow cards in this game, and I thought they could have had more. To focus on (bitch about) some players individually, Higashi is that most dislikable type of footballer, who is very keen to dish out the fouls but falls to the floor at the slightest suggestion of someone even approaching him. Nakagawa is still a wanker, (on the pitch, maybe he’s nice guy, etc. etc. but come on Frontale fans who still clap him, he may have come from our youth team, but he’s played for both YFM and FC Tokyo and always celebrates anything they do like he holds Frontale personally responsible for his lack of height and horrific hairdo). Was very happy to see him get booked. He seems to increasingly resemble, (from my vantage point), a male stripper, who couldn’t make it to the higher levels of the business due to his size. (Interpret that how you want, but I meant height as that’s the extent of my knowledge). He’s got an increasingly weird blonde bombshell haircut which every year becomes more of a mullet. But there’s also definitely a whiff of 1990’s League 2 player for a Greater Manchester area football team, who is more exotic to the locals than anyone else who’s ever set foot in their town. As he ages, his height decreases, his weight increases, the old clothes don’t fit like they used to, but he’s still persevering with them. Nakagawa has always been a diver, but 2023 Nakagawa would end up falling off the sofa and rolling around on the floor just reaching for his credit card trying to place an order for the latest hair care product mentioned on TikTok. I was quite happy to see Slowik in goal. His distribution is still awful. Can’t say anything much else about his keeping as most of our shots on target were just dollied up for him. Their fans were silent before the match and only broke that silence to boo Ienaga, Gomis and Oniki in the team announcement. I’m sure they have their reasons. Their silence was so noticeable that I thought they must have been either making some kind of silent protest or paying their respects for the anniversary of something terrible happening. Their rendition of their plenty of other team’s classic anthem You’ll Never Walk Alone was a lot quieter as it didn’t have the singing being boosted by their own PA as it does at their home matches. It’s a bit of a cliche to say their fans are terrible, but before the game they were. During the game though, they were making a bit of noise, which was more noticeable as recently we seem even more reluctant than normal to sing when we’re not in possession. I find this quite irritating, but can totally understand it this year, as there has not been much to sing about if we’re being honest. So for once, my criticism of FC Tokyo fans is tempered with me recognising that our support isn’t that great recently either, and that both sets of fans have perfectly good reasons for not being that bothered when it comes to getting over-excited. Oh, one last observation, it seems that Nagatomo is another convert to the cause of autonepiophilia. It seems to be rampant amongst players who’ve played overseas and then come back to the J League. I wonder if they should start screening for it when people arrive back in Japan. There are probably vaccines that could be given too.

Ref and VAR -

Ikeuchi has a shocking reputation and deservedly so, but I didn’t find much if anything to get irritated about on this occasion. And although the one VAR decision (which was being made by Nishimura of all people) did take a while and didn’t allow us a goal, I’ve heard (not having bothered to watch it back), that it was correct. So… ermmmm…. nothing much to see here.

 

And nothing much to see here in the conclusion either. We weren’t that good but we did the job. I’m not going to bother with a man of the match as there wasn’t really one. Don't get me wrong, it was by no means a disaster. I'm trying not to moan too much about things that don't merit moaning about. And we actually won! And our time-wasting for the last ten minutes of the game was absolutely top notch stuff! Next up, Johor away on Tuesday and then back to the national stadium next Sunday for Shonan away in the league. It’s perhaps slightly amusing that Shonan fans will have to travel through Kawasaki to get to their home game. It’s not amusing that we’ll have another game in that rotten stadium. Fingers crossed we can get the job done on Tuesday. Well, actually maybe I mean fingers crossed that we don’t cock up too badly on Tuesday. A win would be lovely, but this is Frontale 2023, so avoiding defeat is the first and toughest hurdle!

Team

GK 1. JUNG Sung-Ryong

DF 13. YAMANE Miki

DF 7. KURUMAYA Shintaro

DF 3. OMINAMI Takuma

DF 2. NOBORIZATO Kyohei

MF 8. TACHIBANADA Kento

MF 16. SEKO Tatsuki

MF 14. WAKIZAKA Yasuto

FW 41. IENAGA Akihiro (Yellow card 44')

FW 18. Bafetimbi GOMIS

FW 23. MARCINHO

 

Subs

GK 99. KAMIFUKUMOTO Naoto

MF 6. JOAO SCHMIDT

FW 9. LEANDRO DAMIAO (on for GOMIS 62')

FW 17. TONO Daiya (on for SEKO 87')

FW 30. SEGAWA Yusuke (on for MARCINHO 80')

DF 31. YAMAMURA Kazuya (on for KURUMAYA 87')

FW 33. MIYASHIRO Taisei (on for IENAGA 87')

 

Goals

MARCINHO (Frontale) 52' 1-0

Highlights

 

Vs Cerezo Osaka (away) 2/9/23 J League match 26

Cerezo Osaka 3 - 0 Kawasaki Frontale

Where to start with this game? This is probably going to be a post that surprises some people with its light positivity and occasional complimentary words for Oniki. At the same time though, this was another truly horrible result in a year that just keeps on disappointing. There are so many things to talk about, but at the same time I don’t really want this to be ridiculously long and instead only very long. The stuff about the game is fairly straightforward, although perhaps I have a different opinion to most about it. The other stuff around the game and about the club in general is a bit more complicated. And given that I have no insider knowledge or gossip, I’ll try to deal with that in as much of a detached way as possible. We have no games for a couple of weeks now, (next up, FC Tokyo at home in the league), which is probably a good thing. But at the same time, when you have a result like this, it’s sometimes a good thing to get it out of your system as soon as possible, rather than think about it for 14 days, but that’s what we’ll have to do, I guess. For once I’m not going to dwell on the opposition or the ref. I didn’t really have any complaints about the ref to be honest, apart from a VAR moan which I’ll put in the part about the game. As for the opposition, the beer truck wasn’t as good this year as aside from a couple of slightly mediocre Kawasaki beers, it only had Deraileur stuff, and I’m not a massive fan of them. Seems a bit ungrateful as it is that brewery’s beer truck, but hey, I’m a beer snob, I guess. The only other opposition point is that Croux is still a total wanker and an unbelievable diver. To slightly throw some shade on the ref perhaps I should moan that although he didn’t fall for all of Croux’s dives, he did fail to punish Croux for his dives when he spotted them. Although I can’t remember the last time I saw anyone get booked for diving. Start dishing out those yellows J League refs! I guess most of them have enough trouble with the basic rules of the sport so they should probably work on understanding them first. Anyway, here’s a bit about the game, a bit about things surrounding the game, and a bit about the state of the club in general.

The game -

I was strangely pleased with the line up in this game. It seemed that Oniki had finally realised that we are not in the title race anymore, something which most of us have known since the first few weeks of the season. Perhaps with this in mind, or perhaps because we played 120 minutes on Wednesday and then had to come to Osaka for Saturday, Oniki shuffled the pack. Finally we saw Ienaga and Yamane get a rest, (although quite why the former, a laid back and slightly lethargic influence at the best of times, was brought on in the second half to chase the game, I don’t know). We saw a shake up up front, the defence was shuffled, the midfield was… pretty much the same as usual. We maybe even saw a change in formation!!!! There was talk online from an expert before the game of us playing 3-5-2, the main reason being that Ominami couldn’t be expected to do the high intensity right back thing after playing the whole game on Wednesday. Well, that person was half right. It looked like the normal formation to begin with but soon seemed to change into the 3-5-2, but instead of giving Ominami a partial rest and playing him as part of the back three he was instead played as the right wing back and therefore had to do even more work than usual. I thought he did pretty well though. Segawa on the other side looked good going forward and did his best to help out Tanabe, (long time no see!), on the left hand side of the back three, but Segawa is absolutely not a defender and got caught out quite a few times. Guess he joins the long list of non-defenders who Oniki has played on the left hand side in a defensive position. Tanabe had a good game I thought. I’d been cursing Oniki for recalling him and then after he got injured, totally forgetting him, but he was back again and showed that he can become an important player for us. I guess some people suspected he might be playing as a wing back as he can play anywhere across the back line. But he looked good at centre back. Likewise, Takai was back after a bit of a rest perhaps due to some shocking errors, and also looked reasonably solid. Yamamura, the other centre back had a bit of a nightmare game, but I don’t particularly blame him either. He’s not a defender. The Cerezo fans must be bewildered why we signed their midfielder, who can do a job up front and had on occasion filled in at the back in an emergency and then refused to play him anywhere other than at centre back. It definitely true that he had an unlucky game. The first penalty looked borderline and far from clear cut. The VAR check took just under five minutes (speedy!). Remember that these things are supposed to be for clear and obvious errors. It’s a common moan of mine and many others that if a check takes that long, it’s probably not a clear and obvious error. Also, if the only angles the ref saw were the ones that were displayed on the screen in the ground, it’s a total joke. There were only two marginally different side-on angles neither of which had any hope of showing where the ball made contact with the player. VAR with these angles is like trying to read the small print on your refereeing job contract whilst looking through the wrong end of a telescope. If that’s how the J League refs are told to read the rule book it would certainly explain some of their decisions. The ref was perhaps taking guidance from Kagawa who seemed to be offering advice non-stop as we waited for the VAR guys to watch the same two wholly inappropriate angles before basically tossing a coin to make the decision. And I’m pretty sure that whilst the check was being painstakingly done, the Cerezo fans were chanting ‘VAR, Ole! Ole! Ole!’, which was a bit weird. Actually that was a lot weird, but kind of makes sense as whenever there’s a VAR incident we’re involved in at that ground, it goes against us. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying it 100% wasn’t a penalty, but it was nowhere near such a sure thing as the Cerezo fans and players thought it was, and with the evidence available, there was no way the ref’s original (perhaps correct, perhaps incorrect) decision should have been overturned. But these things happen. And pretty sure this thing happened in the same stadium to us last year, or maybe the year before. We never seem to do that well away at Cerezo, so all the failures blur into one somewhat. 

 

Jumping to the second penalty, I don’t think VAR got involved, perhaps realising that they’d already wasted enough time with the first one. The way the Cerezo player celebrated suggests that perhaps he thought he had ‘won’ the penalty, rather than it being a sure thing. Again, it looked possible, but nowhere near nailed on, so perhaps VAR did the right thing on this occasion as the ref had given it and no clear error had been made. I guess it’s just our luck at the moment that when there are two borderline penalty decisions in a game, both go against us. Prior to both of these we’d already conceded when Yamamura glanced a defensive header onto the head of Takai which sent the ball past Kamifukumoto. Later in the game when we were attacking, one of our headers deflected off the head of a defender and it floated perfectly into the arms of the keeper. Unlucky again, as was the case with most things in this game for us. It’s not good to concede three times, but aside from three bits of bad luck / borderline decisions that all went Cerezo’s way, they didn’t threaten us that much, particularly in the first half. The big problem is that we didn’t threaten much either. It was interesting to see Oniki try a front two for the first time in ages. It was perhaps a bit of a shame that he did it with two players who’ve hardly ever played together. There really was a lack of understanding between Damiao and Yamada, but it felt that with a bit of instruction from the manager it could have worked. I don’t know if Oniki gave them any instructions before the game. You’d hope so, but at the same time, you can’t really guarantee he would have done. I was kind of encouraged though by the possibilities in the first half and was delighted when Oniki went against my expectations and kept the front two the same for the start of the second half. We still didn’t really make any good chances though, but there was a feeling that perhaps with a bit of time it might work. Up until Oniki made his first QUADRUPLE substitution, I thought we were still a work in progress and were doing ok. Not great, but ok and certainly there were more things to be hopeful about than in recent times. We had conceded a goal in quite unfortunate circumstances but things weren’t a disaster. In the interminable seven or eight minutes that it took Oniki to get the subs on, we conceded again. I don’t know how exactly many times we’ve conceded whilst waiting to make subs, but it’s happened memorably often. Out of the subs we had available, my thinking was that if you need a goal, the two most likely sources on the bench would be Seko or Tono. They were the two players who weren’t changed. Marcinho has been a shadow of himself this year, perhaps troubled by his injury still. But he did alright when he came on, but alright in that some chances were almost created but not to the point of actually having a shot or passing to someone to have a shot. Ienaga came on and didn’t do much at all. Give the guy a proper break. Oh, and with these subs we switched back to the good old 4-3-3, which has never not failed to get us a goal this year. So after the subs, all there was to look forward to was the final whistle and the pub after the game, and even that experience was delayed by 10 minutes of injury time (and that second penalty). So we left immediately on the final whistle, (which probably is a bit harsh as the players had done their best but had been let down by what seemed like a bit of a failure with the preparation and some bad luck), and missed out on the next big talking point.
 

The other stuff -

Ooooooohhhhhhhhh. There was pitch invasion by a pair of ‘Frontale fans’ whilst the hero interview was being done! Some people online compared it to when about 50 Urawa fans broke through the barriers, invaded the opposition fans area, tried to fight them and destroyed their flags. At this match, two people climbed over the barrier, ran around briefly and then climbed back over the barrier into the crowd where they were dealt with by Frontale staff, who had managed to get to them before any of the security had actually noticed anything had happened. I’m not condoning it as it’s a pretty stupid thing to do in any situation. I think it’s a bit of a non-story though. There has been speculation that they weren’t even Frontale fans as they weren’t wearing anything that suggested they might be. It was actually noticeable that alongside the empty seats, there were quite a few new fans / interested tourists in our end. It’s a bit of shame that we couldn’t do anything to retain their interest. If that was my first game as a potential Frontale supporter, I think I’d start looking for not just a new team to follow but a new sport to get interested in. I did quite enjoy the atmosphere though. Cerezo do their best to make the away supporters experience as ineffectual and unsatisfying as possible, by not giving us a roof for the sound to bounce off or to protect us in the event of rain, making the stand not very steep to make the view of the other end of the pitch pretty bad and making the distance from the pitch extra big so they could get some extra advertising hoardings in. I’m only whinging for fun though. It’s better than their old stadium. Along with the pitch invasion, and also missed by those of us who left promptly, was some booing. A very rare thing at Frontale matches, but some might say long overdue. I don’t know where I stand on this. I think we should be able to express our dissatisfaction at our results and the way we’re playing. At the same time, I don’t think booing is particularly going to help. Equally, cheering and singing wildly after another defeat isn’t exactly very useful I think. It makes us just look like we’re nuts. Perhaps leaving on the final whistle is the thing. It certainly works for me. If the whole crowd did it, it might send a message. Support them during the game, but when it’s over, save yourself some time and a lot of effort by just leaving. I think I’ve made it quite clear that I don’t blame the players particularly. Some people are having bad seasons, but the same guy keeps picking them and the same guy is deciding on the tactics. I don’t even want to moan about Oniki in this game. The saddest thing about this result is that any hopes for us experimenting a bit more in what are now utterly pointless league matches are probably now dead. We saw in this match that as soon as things started going wrong, Oniki reverted back to the same players and the same system that hasn’t worked all year. After getting a walloping I can’t see that he’ll try anything new in the next match and it will be 4-3-3, Ienaga, Yamane, and the usual sideways passing. Two up front is probably dead. Three at the back is probably dead. The same midfield will obviously live on. The truth is we can’t get away from the fact that we haven’t won in the last six games and we’ve lost four of them. We’re conceding goals at a shocking rate and there doesn’t seem to be any ideas from Oniki how to stop that happening. We’ve conceded ten goals in the last four games! Since we beat YFM in the last minute halfway though July, the only team we’ve beaten is Kochi United and that wasn’t exactly a comfortable win. We signed one player in the summer transfer window and he is still nowhere to be seen apart from in promotional materials and social media posts. I don’t know what we’re saving him for. We let two central midfielders go and now find ourselves with almost not enough people to play in that position. It’s all a bit hopeless really. It’s too easy for some fans to pile on to certain players online for individual mistakes but we probably should remember that the one constant in all of our horrible games this year is the manager. And he must have something to do with the fact that we don’t have enough defenders. He used to be lucky, but the whole thing about luck eventually evening itself out casts a horrible shadow over the next couple of years as right now we’re experiencing some misfortune, but judging by how much good luck we got in the last couple of years, we’ve got quite a bit of bad luck still to come.
 

So to summarise, as far as I am concerned, we weren’t as bad as the score line suggests and there was even something to be a little positive about when it comes to perhaps trying new things. But any chance of that happening in the future has now probably been destroyed. I think Oniki did the right thing on plenty of occasions in this match, (apart from the subs), and I’m sure that he’s not enjoying how bad we are. I just hope he continues trying to change things, even a little. The problem we’ve had is that we’ve rigidly stuck to a once winning formula for so long, that when we get an injury or we lose a player to the bright lights of the Albanian third tier we can’t replace them as the players who might take over have only featured in the final five minutes of a few games. I once again will say that it seems unlikely that all of of squad have simultaneously become awful players, so we need to have a look elsewhere when it comes to trying to discover what’s going wrong. For once, and in a hugely ironic way considering the bluntness of our attacks and the result of the game, I wasn’t that upset by watching us try to do things in the first half. Nothing worked, but at least we were trying. It was only when the same old crap was wheeled out with the first substitutions that everything became a lot more irritating. But I’m calm now, so it didn’t even leave a scratch on me. It’s pretty futile to moan on the internet about this stuff. (Hmmmm, brief moment of self-observation there where I thought perhaps I was trolling myself). It’s probably also not going to help to moan about it at games and boo. But I understand people’s frustrations, particularly as plenty of our fans have only known good times. I don’t particularly want Oniki to leave. I do want Oniki to change, but as I don’t think he’ll easily do the latter, I guess the former has to happen. But in this match he tried something and if he has the courage of his convictions to carry on with this in the future, I’ll be happy. I think it’s unlikely he will though. If we’re back to the normal stuff next game I won’t be very happy. And presumably now Oniki will really be under pressure to lift the mood so perhaps he’ll play the Gomis card. If Gomis isn’t ready to be involved by the next match we play in two weeks, I think we really have to wonder quite how old he will be when he is deemed worthy of some involvement. All of our eggs are now in the Emperor’s Cup basket so we can definitely afford to try something different again in our remaining league games. It would probably be a better idea to pick a formation that we actually have the players to play though, instead of putting square pegs in round holes. But what do I know, eh? I know that we have only three away games left this year, one is at the worst ground for away fans in the J League and one is at the national stadium, which to be honest, could be a competitor for the former title. It’s a bit of luck that we finish up the year with one of the best away trips. So there you go, there is something to look forward to after all!  We’ll be able to celebrate our 10th place league finish with shochus galore on the terrace behind the goal at Tosu! 

 

Team

GK 99. KAMIFUKUMOTO Naoto

DF 29. TAKAI Kota (Yellow card 90+4')

DF 31. YAMAMURA Kazuya

DF 15. TANABE Shuto

MF 6. JOAO SCHMIDT

MF 3. OMINAMI Takuma

MF 8. TACHIBANADA Kento

MF 14. WAKIZAKA Yasuto

MF 30. SEGAWA Yusuke

FW 20. YAMADA Shin

FW 9. LEANDRO DAMIAO

 

Subs

GK 1. JUNG Sung-Ryong

DF 2. NOBORIZATO Kyohei (on for TANABE 74')

MF 16. SEKO Tatsuki

FW 11. KOBAYASHI Yu (on for LEANDRO DAMIAO 74')

FW 17. TONO Daiya (on for TACHIBANADA 84')

FW 23. MARCINHO (on for SEGAWA 74')

FW 41. IENAGA Akihiro (on for YAMADA 74')

 

Goals

 

TAKAI (Frontale) OWN GOAL 52' 1-0

LEO CEARA (Cerezo) PEN 72' 2-0

WATANABE (Cerezo) PEN 90+2' 3-0

 

My Frontale Man Of The Match

I mean, I know I've been a bit more positive than you might have expected, but a man of the match is taking it a bit far, isn't it?

Highlights