Jubilo Iwata 2 - 2 Kawasaki Frontale
Another wonderful draw! Another lead thrown away! Another day at the football where the most fun things happened when we were not in the stadium! Perhaps the big development in this match was the fact that the booing was back again, along with quite a lot of shouting at the players when they came over to us after the match. As it’s quite difficult to come up with new ways to describe us being alright for a little while but countering that with at least one truly awful half of football, I’m not going to bother writing too much about it. It’s marvelous that Oniki is persevering in coming up with ever new ways to draw a match. We’ve gone with all the possible variations now surely? Have a terrible first half or have a terrible second half. Take the lead and give it up, or go behind, then somehow come back to take the lead but ultimately throw it away. Perhaps the new innovation in this game was the fact that we were really unlucky with both of the goals. The second one looked pretty bad, but I’d put it down to bad luck. Sung-Ryong seemed to be ready to save the shot, but Sasaki’s touch meant that he probably couldn’t handle the ball, and it looked like he half got caught between two decisions and half was undone by the horrible condition of the pitch. (If you saw my tweet before the game you’ll know I got my excuse in early on this topic). I wonder if he’d handled the ball the ref might have let it go. Or equally, even having given away an indirect free kick we probably would have a decent chance of stopping it. I think though, perhaps it was more that he tripped over that was the main cause. Either way, it was a bit of a kick in the guts. Not going to blame Sung-Ryong though, as although it looked horrible, he’s saved us on numerous occasions in the last couple of months. As much as Kamifukumoto seems to be a nice guy, I really hope Oniki doesn’t use this ONE mistake as a justification to get his favourite keeper back between the sticks. We’ll see I guess.
So, basically, some variables are changing but there are also plenty of things that stay the same. Firstly, the results. Drawing four games in a row gets you as many points as winning one, drawing one and losing the other two. Drawing four games in a row gets you a lot less satisfaction and a lot less excitement though. One other thing that remains the same, aside from the nominal at best switch between one and two defensive midfielders, is the formation. It’s a common saying that ‘if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it’. I think that Oniki has this on a magnet board in his living room and follows this mantra every day, but hasn’t noticed yet that the ‘ain’t’ part has fallen off. Some might say that our run of poor results has been bad luck, and whilst as I said above, I feel like that was the case in this match, I think on pretty much every other occasion, our poor results have come from poor tactics and an absolute refusal to try anything new or even anything old. Unlike Oniki, the Jubilo manager had clearly done his homework before this match. They didn’t bother pressing us at all. Definitely not in our own half, and quite often, not even in their half. Clearly they realised that it made more sense to just let us have the ball, so we’d fart around with it, making almost no progress up the pitch and would eventually lose it under no pressure. In the past at least we’ve had the excitement of our sideways and backwards passing making the opposition run around a bit. In this match they just stood back and watched us, waiting for the inevitable cock up. For their first goal, they used this ‘don’t worry, they’ll cock it up’ approach attempting a somewhat tame shot from quite a way out which was perfectly deflected by a block from our defender directly to the feet of their striker who was absolutely unmarked, pretty much on the penalty spot. Definitely unlucky, but the truth is that our play was so bad and pointless in the first half that even Jubilo being pretty shit, meant that they deserved to be winning, because pretty shit is much better than totally shit.
Even with the option of using five subs, still nothing changes. Oniki’s subs, (aside from when we’re trying to chase the game in the last five minutes - throw on a tall defender and play him up front), are always either like-for-like or become like-for-like as he shifts midfielders and forwards from one spot to another, never with any notion of changing the shape. Using Kobayashi and Yamada he’s not even changing the type of player in the forward position. I don’t know if Gomis is injured, I suspect he’s just been dropped in favour of some Oniki favourites. Likewise in the midfield, it’s just changing one player for a very similar player. I guess it helps us maintain some consistency and it works. We are consistently predictable and bad. Why would you try to give the opposition something to think about and a problem to solve when you could just change one player for a very similar player and give everyone an easy afternoon? No need for the opposition to get worried. At the same time, plenty of reason for our players to get worried as every time they try to play the ball forward in a way that doesn’t involve 25 preparatory passes beforehand, the first thing the passing player sees is Oniki taking out his notebook and presumably putting an ‘x’ against their name. It’s no wonder we keep throwing away leads. The atmosphere seems to be awful. And this awful atmosphere has now spread to the stands and even got some of our fans, who let’s be honest are way too happy clappy most of the time, a little frustrated. At the end of this game, I didn’t boo. I don’t think I have booed the players after the game ever to be honest. (At this point I think I should add here, before anyone else might say it, that I did shout ‘fucking shit!’ at the end of the Tosu game, but not to the players, and more in a screaming-into-the-night-sky way). I’m not sure what I’d do if Oniki ever graced us with his presence after a game. I think he’s to blame. I think pretty much anyone could do a better job than him right now. But as the situation with Oniki in charge is extremely unlikely to change, I’m not getting annoyed and freaking out at the end of the game. Just going with the ‘I’m not angry with you, I’m just disappointed’ kind of thing. Of course, the players aren’t trying to play badly. Of course, Oniki thinks what he’s doing is the right approach. And of course he seems to be totally wrong in that respect, buy hey ho! I wish there was someone in his management team who could suggest to him that doing the same thing over and over might not be the route to a different result. I don’t know if there is, but I suspect there isn’t. Maybe it’s because he’s built up a reputation and some goodwill from his past successes. At this stage it feels a bit like Vanilla Ice, after having had a big hit with Ice Ice Baby, coming into the studio to record his second album and thinking it should be called ‘Ice Ice Baby ’91’ and the singles should all be based on the same sampled bassline, but be called ‘Ice Baby’, ‘Ice Ice Ice Baby’, Ice Toddler’, and ‘Ice Adolescent’ and then being surprised when people don’t want to hear these ‘different’ songs and have also got a bit sick of the original song too.
With the European Championship on at the moment, I’ve started to notice some things. I’ve been only vaguely following it. I’m not a big national team supporter, and the kick off times don’t help either. But what I am fully aware of is the stick that Gareth Southgate is getting. On the Guardian podcast there have been plenty of references to utterly dull and pointless sideways passing, possession for the sake of it, a complete lack of cutting edge, conservatism to the end, unwillingness to change anything and individually good players turning into a shitty sodden mess once combined. Does this sound familiar at all? I think pretty much all of it also could be said about Frontale at the moment. To me, as a relatively uniformed observer, the criticism of Southgate seems a bit harsh. He’s by far the most successful England manager of my lifetime, but it seems that people are happy to pile on after a dodgy performance. This lead me to think that maybe I shouldn’t criticise Oniki so much as he is the most successful manager of Frontale’s lifetime. Maybe all those people who only watch highlights and check statistics were right all along, they know best and I am totally ignorant. Well, the last part is certainly true, but I reckon the causal Frontale / J League observer is pretty ill-informed when it comes to our current travails. It certainly gave me something to think about anyway. Oh, but there’s one difference isn’t there? Southgate has taken England to another semi-final and Oniki looks like he might be taking us to another season in J2. It’s far from ideal, but dull stuff is a lot more bearable when it actually is effective, no matter how ugly or dissatisfying the method. Right now we have a stick with two shitty ends. Not only do we get simultaneously bored to death and frustrated almost to the point of spontaneous combustion, but we also get crap results, with us steadily slipping closer and close to the relegation zone. There are only five teams below us in the league. On this match day, three of them won and we drew with one of the others. Coming up in the next three matches we have two of the top five. We could be seriously fucked quite soon. But you know, still better stick with that same formation, eh? Something will work out soon, won’t it?
A quick word on the opposition and the ref. Germain’s headgear was pretty weird. Looked like a pair of cuboid sideburns attached to an Alice band. Interesting… I quite enjoyed the Jubilo centre back Graca moaning at their substitute keeper after the goalie rolled him the ball quickly and under a little pressure he proceeded to boot the ball off the pitch. He gave him the well known ‘calm down’ double hand signal, clearly informing all that it was the keeper’s fault. About five minutes later the same centre back almost identically booted the ball off the pitch under no pressure. I would have loved it if the keeper had done the same gesture back to him. The ref was… alright. Mikuriya has a reputation for being crap but I can’t complain about anything he did. Our struggles are always of our own making, but usually the ref piles a bit of extra on, but on this occasion, it was entirely down to us.
Next up in the league, Cerezo at home next Sunday. Not a team we play particularly well against… Expect the same formation, almost the same players, the same lack of ideas, and well, actually, I wouldn’t mind another draw as I think we probably could easily lose. Whether next week’s game sees up drop down the league table a bit more, well, we’ll see. Before that on Wednesday we travel to Oita in the Emperor’s Cup. It will be interesting to see who Oniki plays. Hahahahahahahha. Who am I kidding? It will be pretty much the same players won’t it? If he ever rotated, Oniki could have had a bit of a quandary though, as in previous seasons after he’s wrecked out chances in the league he’s slightly prioritised the cup where he still has a chance to avoid complete failure. This year, well, I’d say it’s probably more important to focus on not getting relegated. But we’ve seen how effective his first choice selection and tactics are, haven’t we, so maybe his second string might be better. I’m not going to that game and won’t even have the chance to watch it. I. The last, this would be a disappointment for me, but right now, avoiding it seems like it could be an act of self care. Oniki used to be a slightly limited but quite lucky manager. Now, the luck has totally gone and somehow he has developed into a more limited manager. If you asked every J League manager how we will play in any match, they’d all say the same thing. If you asked them how that would work, you’d have 19 who’d say it will probably fail as the opposition always know how to stop us, and on the other side you’d have Oniki who’d say that there’s no doubt the same thing will have a different effect in the next match. I wish I had his confidence. And I wish almost anyone else had his job right now.
So, basically, some variables are changing but there are also plenty of things that stay the same. Firstly, the results. Drawing four games in a row gets you as many points as winning one, drawing one and losing the other two. Drawing four games in a row gets you a lot less satisfaction and a lot less excitement though. One other thing that remains the same, aside from the nominal at best switch between one and two defensive midfielders, is the formation. It’s a common saying that ‘if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it’. I think that Oniki has this on a magnet board in his living room and follows this mantra every day, but hasn’t noticed yet that the ‘ain’t’ part has fallen off. Some might say that our run of poor results has been bad luck, and whilst as I said above, I feel like that was the case in this match, I think on pretty much every other occasion, our poor results have come from poor tactics and an absolute refusal to try anything new or even anything old. Unlike Oniki, the Jubilo manager had clearly done his homework before this match. They didn’t bother pressing us at all. Definitely not in our own half, and quite often, not even in their half. Clearly they realised that it made more sense to just let us have the ball, so we’d fart around with it, making almost no progress up the pitch and would eventually lose it under no pressure. In the past at least we’ve had the excitement of our sideways and backwards passing making the opposition run around a bit. In this match they just stood back and watched us, waiting for the inevitable cock up. For their first goal, they used this ‘don’t worry, they’ll cock it up’ approach attempting a somewhat tame shot from quite a way out which was perfectly deflected by a block from our defender directly to the feet of their striker who was absolutely unmarked, pretty much on the penalty spot. Definitely unlucky, but the truth is that our play was so bad and pointless in the first half that even Jubilo being pretty shit, meant that they deserved to be winning, because pretty shit is much better than totally shit.
Even with the option of using five subs, still nothing changes. Oniki’s subs, (aside from when we’re trying to chase the game in the last five minutes - throw on a tall defender and play him up front), are always either like-for-like or become like-for-like as he shifts midfielders and forwards from one spot to another, never with any notion of changing the shape. Using Kobayashi and Yamada he’s not even changing the type of player in the forward position. I don’t know if Gomis is injured, I suspect he’s just been dropped in favour of some Oniki favourites. Likewise in the midfield, it’s just changing one player for a very similar player. I guess it helps us maintain some consistency and it works. We are consistently predictable and bad. Why would you try to give the opposition something to think about and a problem to solve when you could just change one player for a very similar player and give everyone an easy afternoon? No need for the opposition to get worried. At the same time, plenty of reason for our players to get worried as every time they try to play the ball forward in a way that doesn’t involve 25 preparatory passes beforehand, the first thing the passing player sees is Oniki taking out his notebook and presumably putting an ‘x’ against their name. It’s no wonder we keep throwing away leads. The atmosphere seems to be awful. And this awful atmosphere has now spread to the stands and even got some of our fans, who let’s be honest are way too happy clappy most of the time, a little frustrated. At the end of this game, I didn’t boo. I don’t think I have booed the players after the game ever to be honest. (At this point I think I should add here, before anyone else might say it, that I did shout ‘fucking shit!’ at the end of the Tosu game, but not to the players, and more in a screaming-into-the-night-sky way). I’m not sure what I’d do if Oniki ever graced us with his presence after a game. I think he’s to blame. I think pretty much anyone could do a better job than him right now. But as the situation with Oniki in charge is extremely unlikely to change, I’m not getting annoyed and freaking out at the end of the game. Just going with the ‘I’m not angry with you, I’m just disappointed’ kind of thing. Of course, the players aren’t trying to play badly. Of course, Oniki thinks what he’s doing is the right approach. And of course he seems to be totally wrong in that respect, buy hey ho! I wish there was someone in his management team who could suggest to him that doing the same thing over and over might not be the route to a different result. I don’t know if there is, but I suspect there isn’t. Maybe it’s because he’s built up a reputation and some goodwill from his past successes. At this stage it feels a bit like Vanilla Ice, after having had a big hit with Ice Ice Baby, coming into the studio to record his second album and thinking it should be called ‘Ice Ice Baby ’91’ and the singles should all be based on the same sampled bassline, but be called ‘Ice Baby’, ‘Ice Ice Ice Baby’, Ice Toddler’, and ‘Ice Adolescent’ and then being surprised when people don’t want to hear these ‘different’ songs and have also got a bit sick of the original song too.
With the European Championship on at the moment, I’ve started to notice some things. I’ve been only vaguely following it. I’m not a big national team supporter, and the kick off times don’t help either. But what I am fully aware of is the stick that Gareth Southgate is getting. On the Guardian podcast there have been plenty of references to utterly dull and pointless sideways passing, possession for the sake of it, a complete lack of cutting edge, conservatism to the end, unwillingness to change anything and individually good players turning into a shitty sodden mess once combined. Does this sound familiar at all? I think pretty much all of it also could be said about Frontale at the moment. To me, as a relatively uniformed observer, the criticism of Southgate seems a bit harsh. He’s by far the most successful England manager of my lifetime, but it seems that people are happy to pile on after a dodgy performance. This lead me to think that maybe I shouldn’t criticise Oniki so much as he is the most successful manager of Frontale’s lifetime. Maybe all those people who only watch highlights and check statistics were right all along, they know best and I am totally ignorant. Well, the last part is certainly true, but I reckon the causal Frontale / J League observer is pretty ill-informed when it comes to our current travails. It certainly gave me something to think about anyway. Oh, but there’s one difference isn’t there? Southgate has taken England to another semi-final and Oniki looks like he might be taking us to another season in J2. It’s far from ideal, but dull stuff is a lot more bearable when it actually is effective, no matter how ugly or dissatisfying the method. Right now we have a stick with two shitty ends. Not only do we get simultaneously bored to death and frustrated almost to the point of spontaneous combustion, but we also get crap results, with us steadily slipping closer and close to the relegation zone. There are only five teams below us in the league. On this match day, three of them won and we drew with one of the others. Coming up in the next three matches we have two of the top five. We could be seriously fucked quite soon. But you know, still better stick with that same formation, eh? Something will work out soon, won’t it?
A quick word on the opposition and the ref. Germain’s headgear was pretty weird. Looked like a pair of cuboid sideburns attached to an Alice band. Interesting… I quite enjoyed the Jubilo centre back Graca moaning at their substitute keeper after the goalie rolled him the ball quickly and under a little pressure he proceeded to boot the ball off the pitch. He gave him the well known ‘calm down’ double hand signal, clearly informing all that it was the keeper’s fault. About five minutes later the same centre back almost identically booted the ball off the pitch under no pressure. I would have loved it if the keeper had done the same gesture back to him. The ref was… alright. Mikuriya has a reputation for being crap but I can’t complain about anything he did. Our struggles are always of our own making, but usually the ref piles a bit of extra on, but on this occasion, it was entirely down to us.
Next up in the league, Cerezo at home next Sunday. Not a team we play particularly well against… Expect the same formation, almost the same players, the same lack of ideas, and well, actually, I wouldn’t mind another draw as I think we probably could easily lose. Whether next week’s game sees up drop down the league table a bit more, well, we’ll see. Before that on Wednesday we travel to Oita in the Emperor’s Cup. It will be interesting to see who Oniki plays. Hahahahahahahha. Who am I kidding? It will be pretty much the same players won’t it? If he ever rotated, Oniki could have had a bit of a quandary though, as in previous seasons after he’s wrecked out chances in the league he’s slightly prioritised the cup where he still has a chance to avoid complete failure. This year, well, I’d say it’s probably more important to focus on not getting relegated. But we’ve seen how effective his first choice selection and tactics are, haven’t we, so maybe his second string might be better. I’m not going to that game and won’t even have the chance to watch it. I. The last, this would be a disappointment for me, but right now, avoiding it seems like it could be an act of self care. Oniki used to be a slightly limited but quite lucky manager. Now, the luck has totally gone and somehow he has developed into a more limited manager. If you asked every J League manager how we will play in any match, they’d all say the same thing. If you asked them how that would work, you’d have 19 who’d say it will probably fail as the opposition always know how to stop us, and on the other side you’d have Oniki who’d say that there’s no doubt the same thing will have a different effect in the next match. I wish I had his confidence. And I wish almost anyone else had his job right now.
Team
GK 1. JUNG Sung-Ryong
DF 31. VAN WERMESKERKEN Sai
DF 3. OMINAMI Takuma
DF 2. TAKAI Kota
DF 5. SASAKI Asahi
MF 16. SEKO Tatsuki
MF 10. OSHIMA Ryota
MF 14. WAKIZAKA Yasuto
FW 17. TONO Daiya
FW 11. KOBAYASHI Yu
FW 23. MARCINHO
GK 1. JUNG Sung-Ryong
DF 31. VAN WERMESKERKEN Sai
DF 3. OMINAMI Takuma
DF 2. TAKAI Kota
DF 5. SASAKI Asahi
MF 16. SEKO Tatsuki
MF 10. OSHIMA Ryota
MF 14. WAKIZAKA Yasuto
FW 17. TONO Daiya
FW 11. KOBAYASHI Yu
FW 23. MARCINHO
Subs
GK 99. KAMIFUKUMOTO Naoto
MF 8. TACHIBANADA Kento (on for OSHIMA 46')
GK 99. KAMIFUKUMOTO Naoto
MF 8. TACHIBANADA Kento (on for OSHIMA 46')
DF 15. TANABE Shuto
FW 20. YAMADA Shin (on for KOBAYASHI 68')
FW 20. YAMADA Shin (on for KOBAYASHI 68')
FW 26. YAMAUCHI Hinata (on for MARCINHO 68')
FW 41. IENAGA Akihiro (on for TONO 75')
MF 77. YAMAMOTO Yuki (on for SEKO 81')
Goals
GERMAIN (Jubilo) 20' 1-0
TONO (Frontale) 51' 1-1
TACHIBANADA (Frontale) 80' 1-2
YAMADA (Jubilo) 90+2' 2-2
FW 41. IENAGA Akihiro (on for TONO 75')
MF 77. YAMAMOTO Yuki (on for SEKO 81')
Goals
GERMAIN (Jubilo) 20' 1-0
TONO (Frontale) 51' 1-1
TACHIBANADA (Frontale) 80' 1-2
YAMADA (Jubilo) 90+2' 2-2
My Frontale Man Of The Match
No
Highlights
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