Aichi Grampus 2 - 0 Kawasaki Frontale
Last weekend saw us head down to Nagoya. We had a nice lunch at Y Market before getting on the train to Toyota. Later we got the train back to Nagoya went to a brewpub and then a couple of bars before getting a relatively early night. The threat of heavy rain had convinced us to stay the night instead of trying to come home. My big conclusion about Nagoya this year is that I always forget that the beer is a bit more expensive than Tokyo, which I shouldn’t, because it always is, but still somehow surprises me. Didn’t manage to make it to any record shops this time which was a bit of a shame, but instead we had a nice leisurely trip home stopping off at a few places on the way. So that’s about it, isn’t it? I don’t think anything else happened in Nagoya last weekend. Oh? You wanted to know about the game? Well, I’ve got a bit fed up with watching the crap that Oniki seems to think is one small step away from perfection and even more fed up with writing about it. So, although I usually say it but fail to follow it up, this post WILL be brief.
- Same approach as in the ACL, which obviously wasn’t going to work with Ienaga on the right as he never stays there. We had a decent ten minutes but of course failed to trouble the keeper in spite of having loads of possession. As soon as they put the ball in the net, (for the goal which ended up being disallowed), we fell to pieces. And for the rest of the game I was delighted that massive flags were blocking most of the action as it meant I didn’t have to watch it.
- All their attacks were coming down the side where Oniki decided to play a midfielder at full back. As it always does when he invariably does that. The defence looked a mess in general, but not playing a right back definitely didn’t help.
- People are complaining about their first goal but the fact is we knew they would keep it tight and wait for counter attacking opportunities when their fast guy could run into long balls. Well everyone apart from Oniki knew it. Once again we didn’t bother trying to understand how the opponent would play and pretty much stuck with the same style that everyone knows we always use. So no surprises with both teams tactics and no surprises for me about the result. The slight tweak Oniki has ‘come up with’ that he used in the ACL is basically using the furthest forward midfielder to play a tiny bit further forward. Would be a genius move if it hadn’t stopped working completely about 55 minutes after he started using it. Sadly we’ll have to wait another few months till he comes up with something else. In the meantime he’ll keep hoping that it magically starts working again.
- The ref has come in for some stick but I think I was only irritated by his inconsistency. All game he’d been letting most things go but he suddenly decided to crack down at an apparently arbitrary moment. It was pretty shocking that Sai managed to get sent off for two yellows in two minutes though. But it shows the desperation in the squad at the moment. Nothings going our way, but we’ve got to stop blaming pitches, officials, opposition and start blaming the manager. There’s no way we’ve got the 6th worst squad in the league but we’re fifth from bottom so something must be going wrong elsewhere. I suspect after he goes, (and let’s pray it’s at the end of this season), we might hear something more about Oniki's management other than the usual ‘he’s a really nice guy’ from the players. Surely they can’t think he’s the right person for the job at the moment, can they? So I won’t slag off the ref. But I will slag off the prick of a linesman who delayed his flag for their first, then put it up, then put it down again. I don’t know if he thought he’d made a mistake or whether he was worried about having to explain why he’d flagged in English to a foreign ref, but his brief excursion into semaphore definitely caused some of our players to stop. This is not good on their part, as they should play to the whistle, but I can understand the logic of flagging either at the time or after the event, but half flagging too late for it to be at the time of the event and too early for it to be after the event is a classic bit of J League shit officiating. In the same way our play was a classic bit of shit Oniki Frontale.
- Can’t even be bothered to write anything snarky about Nagoya apart from to say that Morishima seemed like a cheating twat. Oh, I should say that trains back after an afternoon kick off are much better than after an evening one when their infrequency is a disgrace. Oh, and the usual refrain that they should rename the team Aichi Grampus or Toyota Grampus as that stadium is very much not in Nagoya. If they moved a home game to the National Stadium it wouldn’t take much longer to get to from the city in the team's name than the Toyota stadium does.
- Let me finish with something that I think sums up this game perfectly. Kawasaki Frontale FR on Twitter made a poll asking whether this was our worst game of the season. The completely damning indictment of how awful we are is that I couldn't answer confidently either 'yes' or 'no'. I couldn't definitively say that this was our worst because there have been so many bad performances this year. Equally I couldn't definitively say 'no' because this was absolutely awful and certainly felt like the worst during the game. In a season where there are so many options for worst game, you know we must be really, really bad.
Next up, a game I’m not going to! Delighted! I really am sick of Oniki Frontale. So sick that I was quite happy when I was asked to work that evening. So I will experience the game in the best possible way at the moment ie. by paying it absolutely no attention at all and then probably watching the highlights once. Recently there hasn’t been a game I’ve been looking forward to more! Some might say this is all sour grapes and sounds like I’m a spoilt brat because we’re not winning but it’s not that. It’s the relentlessly predictable disastrous use of our assets and the grindingly dull way it is done. 40 sideways passes and then a blast high and wide over the bar. 40 more passes and then a soft pass directly to their keeper. The news has come through today that Gomis has left the club. Completely understandable. In fact I’m quite jealous. Wonder if he’ll spill the beans that I am fairly sure are there, but not yet spilt. Probably not as he’s a nice guy. We’re now five points off relegation and in terrible form. It’s a miracle that we ever score let alone that we occasionally fluke a win. Is Kawahara going to get the unenviable achievement of having played for two of the three teams that go down in the same season? If things continue as they are I can’t see where our next three points might come from. Our even our next one point. Or even our next goal. It was certainly clear in this game that we weren’t going to score. And as far as I’m concerned it certainly clear that Oniki is absolutely not the man to get us out of this mess. Please get this season over and done with, with us hopefully avoiding relegation and hopefully avoiding an Oniki contract extension which right now would be tantamount to ordering all the players to try to score in their own net. Oh damn, I shouldn't have said that, I might be giving Oniki ideas. But then again, even if he tried that, he'd probably get them to overdo the build up and they'd end up blasting the ball wide.
GK 1. JUNG Sung-Ryong
DF 5. SASAKI Asahi
DF 13. MIURA Sota
MF 10. OSHIMA Ryota
FW 41. IENAGA Akihiro
FW 20. YAMADA Shin
FW 23. MARCINHO
GK 98. YAMAGUCHI Louis
FW 9. ERISON (on for MARCINHO 64')
FW 11. KOBAYASHI Yu (on for YAMADA 75')
DF 31. VAN WERMESKERKEN Sai (Yellow card 80', second yellow/red card 82') (on for OSHIMA 45+3')
DF 44. CESAR HAYDAR
Goals
NAGAI (Nagoya) 34' 1-0
IZUMI (Nagoya) 67' 2-0
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