Another awful result. Can’t really comment too much on the performance for a few reasons. Firstly I didn’t see most of the game as I was working. And secondly, I guess the performance is never going to be particularly good if you have to play with ten men for 85 mins of the game. In previous years Oniki has been shown up in this competition and this year when we get shown up by pretty much anyone on a weekly basis, it’s no surprise we’re not doing well in the ACL. I think I said previously that the big problem with us not sacking Oniki or even coming to a ‘mutual consent’ agreement for him to leave earlier meant that he had the opportunity to not only destroy our league, Emperor’s Cup and Levain Cup prospects, but also do irrevocable damage to our ACL campaign for 24/25 before we’ve even got to 2025. In a competition where eight out of the twelve teams progress to the next round, it really takes a high level of incompetence to get your team knocked out, but it looks like Oniki has got the skills for the job. with only two teams sitting below us, we look like we’re in a pretty bad position. One of those two teams is Ulsan, who we just about sneaked past, against the run of play, in our opening game in what was a great triumph for Oniki. The fact that their two consequent opponents haven’t had much trouble scoring against them and beating them says a lot. We have one goal from over 270 minutes of football in this competition. Truly glorious stuff.
I can’t say for sure, but it seems that Oniki might have reverted to his favoured 4-3-3 for this game. Remember that formation that prevents us from winning almost every game recently? You know, the one that when he changes it results in significantly better performances? And then is brought back right in time for a defeat to follow up any half decent result? Lovely stuff! It’s hard to say if this game really was 4-3-3 as we were almost immediately a man down. But the pre-match line ups seem to suggest that is what happened. And after all, it’s Oniki we’re talking about, so it probably was. Marcinho has been sent off again, for pretty much the same thing he is always sent off for. You have to go back to 2017 for his previous red card before the ones this year. Which all suggests that perhaps he’s being asked to do something he clearly can’t do. But still the clown in charge is asking him to do it. I guess maybe Oniki doesn’t mind so much, as now it gives him something to divert the blame for the defeat from it being the result of his own massive inadequacies. In recent years Marcinho only seems to pick up a couple of yellows a season at the most. But this year he’s on fire in that respect too. Although a ratio of five yellow to one red suggests that more often than not, when he fouls, he really fouls. Given that he clearly can’t tackle, I wouldn’t be surprised to see Oniki try him at full back sooner or later. Because whilst it’s easy to say Oniki doesn’t ever really change anything much, the one thing he is constantly innovating with is playing new attackers out of position at full back. There really is no beginning to his managerial talents. But still, we can look forward to the after game comments where he once again says that the team wanted to win the match for all the fans who’d gathered in the stadium and those who were watching at home. Quite why he persists in saying something so blatantly obvious after every cock up makes me suspicious. Such is the lack of managerial talent from him that if he ever tried to throw a match I suspect we’d probably end up winning it. For years we said Oniki was an unbelievably lucky manager. I’m not sure he ever really had the golden touch. I think it was more a case of us having a platinum situation that he managed to not cock up too much. But whichever way you look at it, any golden touch is long gone, and any gold we might see now is clearly going to be from the kilolitres of golden liquid resulting from masses of absolutely piss poor performances, mostly thanks to piss poor management.
It’s very dangerous for us to get a win in 2024. After a win against the mighty Sony Sendai, we crashed out in the following round of the Emperor’s Cup to a J2 team. After just about defeating another J2 team in Kofu in the Levain Cup, we royally fucked up the next tie and were out. After a win in our opening game in the league, we then lost to Jubilo at home conceding five. It might be an exaggeration to say that put paid to our title hopes, but I think it clearly pointed at what was to come. And then in the ACL, a squeaky win against Ulsan and then two defeats. I mean, I know 2024 could have gone worse, but honestly it couldn’t have been much worse, could it? Next up Kashima at home on Friday next week. I intend to get smashed before the game and perhaps then I can sleep through most of it in the stands, the most effective way of enjoying Oniki’s football to the max.
Subs GK 22. HAYASAKA Yuki GK 98. YAMAGUCHI Louis FW 9. ERISON (on for YAMADA 69')
FW 11. KOBAYASHI Yu (on for IENAGA 79') DF 15. TANABE Shuto FW 17. TONO Daiya (on for MIURA 79') MF 19. KAWAHARA So (on for YAMAMOTO 64') FW 24. MIYAGI Ten FW 26. YAMAUCHI Hinata FW 30. SEGAWA Yusuke(on for VAN WERMESKERKEN 69') MF 34. YUI Kota DF 44. CESAR HAYDAR
Goals
WANG (Shanghai)24' 1-0 ANDRE LUIS (Shanghai)90+3' PEN 2-0
Let’s start at the end with this post. As the Gamba players approached their fans after the final whistle a chorus of boos rang out, their fans clearly being upset that they’d failed to beat a team as shit as us. To be honest I had some sympathy for them, as for the majority of this game we were once again absolutely awful, completely clueless and terribly turgid. We did have a good last fifteen minutes though… How far we’ve fallen since the times when we were good. Perhaps these bad times might be about to come to an end though as clearly the big news I’m burying with that intro is that Oniki is leaving at the end of the season. It was apparently not by mutual consent, but I guess it doesn’t need to be if his contract will be expiring. There was some surprise expressed that it wasn’t stated more like it was something that both parties felt was for the best though. I’m sure even Oniki has now realised that his magical touch has long gone.
So with Oniki’s impending departure in mind, this was a kind of emotional day for many people. Before the game the usual Oniki Frontale chant was massively extended. Heart strings were yanked. People reminisced about the good old days and reflected on the fact that Oniki has brought the club the success that in the past was always elusive. He put the final piece in the jigsaw that saw ‘not quite’ turn into ‘almost certainly’, repeatedly. It’s fair to say that recent seasons might have soiled previous memories a little, but the fact is he did what previous managers had failed to do, and to be honest, what no other manager in the league had managed to do. His run of success is unrivalled. So in a way it’s a bit of a shame that his departure came at least a couple of years too late. There were definitely lots of opportunities for him to leave on a high but for whatever reason, we kept offering him new contracts and he kept deciding to accept them. Getting booted out of the Levain Cup last weekend was perhaps the final straw, with us now having an utterly pointless run to the end of the year. (Well actually relegation is still mathematically possible, so maybe there is some point to these last few games, but the fact remains that the most positive emotion we can hope for is relief about having avoided a bad fate rather than delight at achieving something). So yeah, people were emotional in the run up to this game and I have to admit that my usual harsh feelings towards 2024 Oniki softened a little, and melted into a kind of end of term, ‘we’re all moving on but it’s been fun’ kind of thing. Oh, and then I saw the starting line up and realised that his departure is way too late and that the last few games are going to be filled with the same frustrating shit, rather than be a kind of handbrake off, expression of fun and excitement. It’s not going to be pitch time for unheralded squad members. It’s going to be the same players, squished into the same shitty formation with the same shitty tactics.
Yeah, we’ve got injuries, but did we really need to field a back four where only one player was playing in their preferred position? And even that player was a veteran who’s had a bit of a challenging year with us. And naturally, it was only a matter of time before Tachibanada got moved to play at full back! We’ve got lots of players who could play on the wing so we didn’t need to play our central midfielder there. But as usual with Oniki it’s pick the players first and then try to squeeze them in where you can. And the results were utterly predictable. It was a strange decision to play the not very big attacker Segawa at right back and put him up against the muscly Brazilian Gamba we’re playing there. Blog Gamba pointed out to me that Welton had had a storming start to the season before teams worked out exactly how to nullify his threat. Naturally Oniki didn’t bother with this and instead basically gave him an easier route to break through us. Almost every set piece Gamba took saw the ball end up at the far post where they had at least one player in acres of space, completely unmarked. For it to happen once was unfortunate. For it to happen repeatedly, well, it just seems kind of stupid. We had quite a few shots in the first half but I wouldn’t say we ever really threatened. it was the same old thing, some quantity, but zero quality. Half time came and we weren’t playing well. So zero changes to personnel or approach! The second half started the same way. We didn’t have a shot at all for the first 25-30 minutes of the half. And don’t forget, we were trailing at the time. The last bit of the game was alright though. But you can’t really say that we deserved to win when you consider we didn’t really play for 80% of the game. Equally Gamba didn’t deserve to win so you could say a 1-1 draw was the perfect result. I’d disagree. I think a 0-0 would have better portrayed the pointlessness on show from both teams. Let’s briefly digress into some bitching. Blimey, Gamba were big on the time wasting. I guess that’s to be expected when you give them an early goal, but jeez, they could have scored loads against us in the first half if they hadn’t taken every opportunity to delay, roll around on the pitch or in the case of the keeper, take countless drinks of water in between picking up the ball and placing it down for a goal kick. Then another few drinks before retreating for the run up. Then a couple more before actually taking the goal kick. I thought my tweet about Ichimori was one of the most amazing things ever written, but predictably was pretty much ignored. So they seemed determined to get a 1-0. And for some reason it seemed that for most of the match we were equally determined to lose 1-0, given that when we had the ball, we just did the usual tidy passing until we get out of our half and then lost it. But let’s get back to Gamba moaning. Their winger Yamashita was an unbelievable diver, and this was most clearly demonstrated when, in an attempt to get another one of our players booked, he not only flopped down, but seemed to do that roll and flip back into the air like a leaping salmon as he rotated his way towards the edge of the pitch, crucially stopping before he left the field. The ref hadn’t even given the free kick initially I thought, but clearly impressed by his midair version of the famous break dancing move the worm, decided she’s clearly missed something and had a guess what that might have been. I’ve had a look at the replay and it seems like there was no contact at all. A good thing for Yamashita when it came to getting decisions given his way was the fact that his mum was reffing the game. I say his mum, but I’m only guessing. The ref Yamashita isn’t that old, but definitely old enough to have birthed Yamashita the player, who judging by his size and his little-shitheadness, has probably just entered his teens. The poor lad was having a right strop! A bit more on Yamashita the ref. Any criticism of a female ref is clearly going to look like the rantings of a gammon, so I have to tread carefully here. Given that her name was roundly booed by the Gamba fans when announced before the game, I guess she has some history with them. So this match gave her the perfect opportunity to try to win back their favour by giving them pretty much everything. I’m sure Gamba fans won’t agree with me about this, but to me it seemed like every time we got with a metre of a Gamba player they’d drop and she’d give them a free kick. In contrast there’s the widely shared clip on Twitter of a horrible challenge from a Gamba player on the ankle of Tachibanada, (I think), which could easily have been and probably should have been a red, but didn’t even warrant a yellow according to Yamashita. To be fair though, this is clearly something that VAR should have mentioned to her. Instead we just took a quick free kick short, as we always do in every situation. So on the ref, some might say she’s not up to the job, but on the evidence of this game, I’d say she fits in perfectly in the J League as she is without a doubt as shit as most of the male refs are. Bravo!
So, yeah, another shit game, overshadowed slightly by the Oniki love in, but which perfectly encapsulated why he should be leaving. Knowing that he’s on his way definitely makes it easier to balance my emotions about him recently. I know he’s trying his best and doing what he thinks will be best. I also have heard that he’s a nice guy and that everyone loves him. I have no desire to constantly moan about him, but he hasn’t exactly given me any other option in recent times. With the news that he’s leaving having sunk in, I feel that I can now watch the games, get a grump on about our shitness but not feel any personal animosity towards him. It’s definitely a very sad moment for some of our fans. It probably speaks volumes that with all of the tweets and posts of people rightly saying how much he has achieved for us and how sad it is that it’s the end of an era, I don’t think I’ve seen even his biggest fans saying that we shouldn’t be parting ways. When even your biggest fans think it’s time to move on, you know you’ve probably left it a bit too late. Anyway, I presume I’ll be repeating this kind of thing in every blog post from now till he goes, so I should stop going on about it now.
Next up Shanghai Shenhua away in the ACL on Wednesday. The good news for Frontale fans is that once again I will be working that night so won’t see the game, perhaps ensuring that we play a bit better than we did against Gwangju. So far in the ACL it seems that plenty of teams have won one game and lost one so whilst it looks promising that Johor hammered them in the last game, it doesn’t look so good that they won their first game handsomely against Pohang. We have the same amount of points as them but have only scored the one goal, boring our way through two games. So basically, I dunno what will happen. After that we’ve got Kashima at home at the start of November in more FRIDAY NIGHT J LEAGUE!!! The Kashima board can have a good look at their new manger for 2025. Presumably Oniki will want to do well as if he’s crap, whilst it might please Kashima in the short term, it might affect his future employment opportunities. As we run out of games and trundle towards the end of the season it’s quite difficult to get too excited or be optimistic. But fingers crossed we’ll at least have something to cheer about sooner or later.
Subs GK 98. YAMAGUCHI Louis FW 11. KOBAYASHI Yu (on for ERISON 68') DF 15. TANABE Shuto FW 17. TONO Daiya (on for SEGAWA 68') FW 26. YAMAUCHI Hinata (on for MARCINHO 68') FW 41. IENAGA Akihiro (on for YAMADA 68') DF 44. CESAR HAYDAR
Kawasaki Frontale 0 - 2 Albirex Niigata (1-6 on agg.)
With us needing to do a bit of work after a terrible first leg, one thing was certain before this game. It was going to be a GOAL RUSH! Plenty of attacking football. GOAL RUSH! Lots of shots and lots of goals. GOAL RUSH! Of course all of our attacking might mean that we gave away a few chances at the back, but we’d more than compensate for that by the amount of great goals we’d score. GOAL RUSH! Oh, unfortunately in a game where scoring three times to take it to extra time was the bare minimum required, we failed to score. And not only did we fail to score, we also conceded twice. So in the end we were just the six goals short of making the final. It says a lot that in all of the photos I took of the game, all of our players just seem to be hanging around doing nothing. I've only included one, as much like the game, the photos were even worse than they usually are. I’m totally fed up with wasting time writing these posts as there’s nothing left to say. It’s always the same old shit from Oniki. The opposition always know what to do. Even if Oniki nominally changes the formation, still the approach is the same. In the first leg we needed over 500 passes for one shot on target. In this game the stats were marginally better, but still the important one was the same. Zero goals. In a game we needed to win and they just needed to not concede four times, we ended up having significantly less shots than the opposition. Right from the start, aside from the immediate time wasting from Albirex, (not a criticism, a legitimate tactic which the ref seemed to notice and moan at them about but of course did nothing to prevent it happening again), you would really have thought that we were the team with the big first leg lead. The usual ridiculous amount of passing amongst the defence and then… nothing. As soon as we got the ball out of our half we gave it away. Even players who’ve stood out a bit recently for not being shit had a bad day. The only possible justification for our slowly slowly patient build up could be if the intention was to bore Niigata sufficiently that they fell asleep and then we’d be able to perhaps score a couple of goals past their prone snoozing bodies. Judging by our finishing though, I wouldn’t even say that would have been a given anyway.
I don’t think there’s much else for me to say. I don’t have anything amusing to write as there is nothing amusing about our games at the moment. It’s all shit. The end of the game was greeted with what was perhaps the most booing I think I have ever heard at Todoroki. As I always say, I’m not a booer myself, but I think it was totally justified. Although it might be a bit unfair as the target of the booing should clearly be the manager rather than the players. And he has very rarely come out after a game and, surprise surprise, that was a game we won. Usually he weasels away and lets everyone else take the criticism. Maybe the chairman could do with getting a bit of stick too. After all it’s him who clearly thought Oniki was the answer at the end of last season, (well actually, quite a bit before the end of last season but that new contract was particularly galling), and who still presumably thinks things are going well. It reminds me of his astonishment when Chanathip left, being surprised that he didn’t want to sit in the stands and wait for his chance (which clearly would only really come if all of Oniki’s favourites were either injured or got sold). Perhaps the chairman like Oniki, believes that we should all wait patiently for Oniki’s tactics to start working again. At the same time, try to dilute the home advantage as much as possible by allowing Niigata fans to take over almost half of the stadium. MONEY! MONEY! MONEY! However, this does explain how this game managed to almost be a sell out even though we are not only shit, but utterly dull right now. Why would anyone apart from the most masochistic of Frontale fans think that this would be a good way to spend a Sunday afternoon. The pre-game motivational video showing previous times we’ve come back from deficits and scored goals, (they had to dig quite a way back into the past to find some of that footage as recently we’ve been more often than not, throwing away points at the end of matches rather than gaining them), did a good job of getting the fans going and there seemed to be some kind of (clearly delusional) belief that we might be able to get the job done. This was all smashed to pieces as soon as the match started though. The video stated that statistically we had close to zero chance of winning the tie. I don’t know if it’s possible to have a minus % chance of something happening, but clearly that was going to be the only way our chance of winning would be going right from the kick off. Maybe some of the fans believed, but it didn’t seem like the players did. And who can blame them? They probably don’t know how to react when they hear an Oniki team talk now. ‘Really? That’s what you think we should do? Have you watched any of our games this year? Is your magnet board broken?’ And still the clown is in charge. Of course I don’t expect him to be fired, but at least give us the slight morale boost of announcing that he’ll leave at the end of the year. Please, I’m begging you. Please… won’t somebody think of the poor children!
Next up, who gives a shit? Well actually it’s Gamba Osaka for another Friday Night J League. As the game is kind of meaningless, maybe we’ll get something from it. Nothing to play for means that we now have the oppotunity to give some other players a chance. But of course we probably won’t because of the clown who is picking the team. Maybe it’s important for him to try to not get his worst ever league finish when he’s thinking of future employment. But to be honest, I think most of us don’t really care if we finish 11th or 16th. We’ve been so bad in 2024 that we deserved to get nothing. And that’s exactly what we’re going to get.
Subs GK 98. YAMAGUCHI Louis MF 8. TACHIBANADA Kento (on for MIURA 46') FW 11. KOBAYASHI Yu (on for YAMADA 57') DF 15. TANABE Shuto FW 17. TONO Daiya (on for MARCINHO 67') FW 24. MIYAGI Ten (on for YAMAMOTO 67') FW 26. YAMAUCHI Hinata FW 30. SEGAWA Yusuke(Yellow card 90+1') (on for ERISON 57') DF 44. CESAR HAYDAR
Goals
KOMI (Niigata)31' 0-1 OTA (Niigata)89' 0-2
My Frontale Man Of The Match
A somewhat surprising return of this section, particularly because this game was so bad. But it has to go to...
JUNG Sung-Ryong -
If we hadn't had him in goal we would have been humiliated in both the home and away legs of this tie.
With a two legged-tie, the first leg can sometimes be a tough sell. We never do particularly well away at Niigata and this fairly hastily arranged game on a Wednesday evening, with us having a shit year definitely fitted that bill. So instead I went to work, feeling confident that we might do the business as recently my absence from our games has meant that we play well and my attendance meant that we just pass the ball endlessly. And as this is basically only the first half nothing would really be decided and all the excitement would come in the second leg on Sunday, right? Well, unless we got so utterly battered to the point of almost making the second leg irrelevant. It’s a bit of a shame that happened, particularly after we smashed Machida last weekend. But somehow utterly predictable. You might imagine I would have run out of original ways to get irritated by Oniki but perhaps I’ve found another relatively new one after this match. We’ve done well in a few games recently where Oniki has finally given in to the calls to play 442 with an approach that puts a bit more emphasis on trying to score than trying to rack up passes. Yamamoto and Erison were back in the team together, (admittedly due to Oniki running out of options so definitely more by luck than judgement), and were playing well. Quite why Oniki decided to break up that partnership for every game that followed a good performance, I don’t know. All the years he’s been sticking with the same formation and the same line up in spite of us playing awfully. Finally he perhaps accidentally came up with something that did work and suddenly he wants to rotate and change the formation between every match. It’s almost as if he got a win to take the pressure off and then decided to immediately revert to working on his plan of getting his favoured formation and players back and blasting regardless of the fact that it is a terrible idea and there’s any evidence it will ever happen. Even when he’s won some games doing something different he still thinks that his original way is the best. It’s infuriating, but utterly predictable.
As I have only seen the highlights of his match, I’m not going to write anything about it apart from the moan above. Actually highlights isn’t really the right name for them. From our point of view It was more like a blooper reel. I think I can only remember two shots of ours being in there and the rest was Yamaguchi looking frustrated whilst picking the ball out of the back of the net. 568 passes for just the one shot on target. Really awful stuff, real Oniki stuff. Barring an insane comeback, Oniki’s fucked another competition at almost the first time of asking. I am really looking forward to the end of the season. Well, as long as it brings the end of his time with us. If it doesn’t, I might look into the possibility of somehow hibernating for the whole of 2025. I think we’ve reached the stage now where all of the success that he brought us has been undermined by his utter uselessness for the last three or four years. If we somehow managed to win this tournament it would be kind of undeserved as we were parachuted in to the quarter finals against a J2 team and barely scraped through. And to be honest, as petty as it sounds, I don’t really want Oniki to finish his time with us with any kind of success. He should have gone a long time ago. We shouldn’t have offered him at least the last two contract extensions, but equally he shouldn’t have accepted them. I think he’s going to be really shown up in his next job, particularly if it’s at a big money basket case team.
To make a very clumsy cooking comparison, when he took over from Kazama, he basically had to only make the change of putting the deliciously cooked meal on a plate and serving it, rather than employing the risky but admittedly more exciting route of flinging it across the room, forkful by forkful directly into the diner’s mouth. As the years have passed Oniki has used up all the pasta, run down the spice rack, gone through everything in the freezer and is now wondering why no one has done the shopping. At the same time, the kitchen is now about to properly catch on fire. Although he accidentally avoided a massive inferno on a few previous occasions by accidentally turning the gas off whilst trying to switch the lights on, he’s made sure to go back and set things on fire again immediately afterwards as he was worried that going straight from building catching fire to safety was a bit too much of an adventurous step. He’s still trying to make that original meal without realising he’s put all his new ingredients into the wrong containers. And let’s be honest, after we’ve been made to eat the same meal for eight years, even if the cooking had improved it would still be quite boring. As it is, it’s now an almost inedible mess and the best we can hope for is that we don’t get food poisoning from it. On a couple of occasions he had a go at using the rice and curry sauce he found to make a curry and it was nice! But a bit too spicy for his taste, so afterwards immediately went back to attempting to use the rice and curry sauce to make an omelet instead and was shocked when it didn’t seem to work. I know this lengthy analogy doesn’t really work, but writing it was marginally more fun than watching us play football right now.
Next up, our almost certain elimination from another competition due to our manager completely fucking things up. As I didn’t see this game, some of you might think it’s a bit unfair to criticise Oniki so much. But don’t worry, I’ve seen plenty of his uselessness already, so even from a distance feel I can spot an Oniki dog’s dinner when I see one. After that, we have Gamba at home next Friday for yet another Friday Night J League. Let the joy overflow! Team
GK 98. YAMAGUCHI Louis DF 31. VAN WERMESKERKEN Sai DF 5. SASAKI Asahi DF 44. CESAR HAYDAR DF 13. MIURA Sota MF 8. TACHIBANADA Kento MF 19. KAWAHARA So (Yellow card 81') MF 14. WAKIZAKA Yasuto MF 23. MARCINHO FW 17. TONO Daiya FW 9. ERISON
Subs
GK 22. HAYASAKA Yuki FW 11. KOBAYASHI Yu
DF 15. TANABE Shuto FW 20. YAMADA Shin(on for ERISON 46') FW 26. YAMAUCHI Hinata FW 30. SEGAWA Yusuke (on for MARCINHO 54') DF 35. MARUYAMA Yuichi (on for CESAR HAYDAR 54') FW 41. IENAGA Akihiro(on for TONO 46') MF 77. YAMAMOTO Yuki (on for TACHIBANADA 69')
As is probably obvious from the result of this game, I didn’t go. This time it was due to me being sick though. So sick that I slept through the first half and even when I watched the second, I did so horizontally and with not a great deal of conviction. All I’ll say is that Oniki went back to 442 and almost the same starting line up as against Niigata and once again we scored lots of goals. Whether he’ll stick with it in the next Levain Cup game or revert to his beloved and ineffective 433, we’ll see. I’m prepared to listen to financial offers from either Frontale fans, opposition fans or Frontale haters as to whether I should attend next weekend. If I have the power to curse us, I might as well get something out of it, right? Send me a message with your pledge.
Next up the first leg against Niigata, away on Wednesday. I’m not going so we can maybe be positive about that game.
