Kawasaki Frontale 1 - 1 Gamba Osaka
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.
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.
Team
GK 1. JUNG Sung-Ryong
DF 30. SEGAWA Yusuke (Yellow card 48')
DF 5. SASAKI Asahi
DF 35. MARUYAMA Yuichi
DF 31. VAN WERMESKERKEN Sai
MF 8. TACHIBANADA Kento
MF 77. YAMAMOTO Yuki
MF 14. WAKIZAKA Yasuto
MF 23. MARCINHO (Yellow card 53')
FW 20. YAMADA Shin
FW 9. ERISON
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
Goals
WELTON (Gamba) 7' 0-1
KOBAYASHI (Frontale) 81' 1-1
WELTON (Gamba) 7' 0-1
KOBAYASHI (Frontale) 81' 1-1
Highlights
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