Tuesday, 31 December 2024

2024 season player stats


(This is one part of an ongoing series of end of season posts. You can see them all here)


I’m quite surprised I’ve gone to all this effort this year. As I’ve said numerous times, it’s been a challenging year for my Frontale enthusiasm. Not that I’d stop going to games, but it has been a bit of a hassle to spend time thinking of different ways to say ‘we’re shit!’ which is what I had to do for at least 2/3 of the season. But a new season brings new excitement and this time we have a new manager too, so why not rake over the horror of the majority of 2024 one more time! Here are the individual player stats and at the bottom we have some little charts which make for quite interesting reading so I’ll add some comments to those.

AP - Appearances
M - Minutes played
G - Goals
AS - Assists
Y - Yellow Cards
YY - Second yellow card
R - Red card

1. Sung-Ryong JUNG (GK)
AP 45 M 4050 G 0 AS 0 Y 3 YY 0 R 0

2. Kota TAKAI (DF)
AP 31 M 2324 G 2 AS 1 Y 6 YY 0 R 0

3. Takuma OMINAMI (DF)
AP 32 M 2511 G 1 AS 1 Y 3 YY 0 R 0

4. JESIEL (DF)
AP 26 M 1329 G 1 AS 0 Y 3 YY 0 R 0

5. Asahi SASAKI (DF)
AP 51 M 4132 G 2 AS 2 Y 8 YY 0 R 0

6. ZE RICARDO (MF)
AP 14 M 559 G 0 AS 0 Y 2 YY 0 R 0

7. Shintaro KURUMAYA (DF)
AP 6 M 380 G 0 AS 0 Y 2 YY 0 R 0

8. Kento TACHIBANADA (MF)
AP 55 M 4488 G 5 AS 1 Y 7 YY 0 R 0

9. ERISON (FW)
AP 37 M 1817 G 10 AS 4 Y 7 YY 0 R 0

10. Ryota OSHIMA (MF)
AP 17 M 813 G 0 AS 2 Y 1 YY 0 R 0

11. Yu KOBAYASHI (FW)
AP 37 M 1033 G 5 AS 2 Y 1 YY 0 R 0

13. Sota MIURA (DF)
AP 35 M 2771 G 3 AS 5 Y 2 YY 0 R 0

14. Yasuto WAKIZAKA (MF)
AP 47 M 3833 G 8 AS 9 Y 2 YY 0 R 0

15. Shuto TANABE (DF)
AP 9 M 258 G 0 AS 0 Y 2 YY 0 R 0

16. Tatsuki SEKO (MF)
AP 35 M 1931 G 1 AS 4 Y 2 YY 0 R 0

17. Daiya TONO (FW)
AP 51 M 2415 G 6 AS 6 Y 4 YY 0 R 0

18. Bafetimbi GOMIS (FW)
AP 15 M 636 G 3 AS 0 Y 1 YY 0 R 0

19. So KAWAHARA
AP 18 M 1124 G 0 AS 0 Y 2 YY 0 R 0


20. Shin YAMADA (FW)
AP 56 M 2769 G 21 AS 6 Y 3 YY 0 R 0

21. Shunsuke ANDO (GK)
AP 0 M 0 G 0 AS 0 Y 0 YY 0 R 0

22. Yuki HAYASAKA (GK)
AP 1 M 90 G 0 AS 0 Y 0 YY 0 R 0

23. MARCINHO (FW)
AP 54 M 3308 G 16 AS 3 Y 4 YY 1 R 2

24. Ten MIYAGI (FW)
AP 5 M 89 G 0 AS 1 Y 0 YY 0 R 0

25. Renji MATSUI (MF)
AP 0 M 0 G 0 AS 0 Y 0 YY 0 R 0

26. Hinata YAMAUCHI (MF)
AP 21 M 630 G 0 AS 1 Y 0 YY 0 R 0

28. PATRICK VERHON (FW)
AP 3 M 87 G 0 AS 0 Y 0 YY 0 R 0

30. Yusuke SEGAWA (FW)
AP 47 M 2178 G 1 AS 1 Y 8 YY 0 R 0

31. Sai van WERMESKERKEN (DF)
AP 40 M 2903 G 4 AS 3 Y 4 YY 1 R 0

32. Soma KANDA (FW)
AP 3 M 8 G 1 AS 1 Y 0 YY 0 R 0

34. Kota YUI (MF)
AP 0 M 0 G 0 AS 0 Y 0 YY 0 R 0

35. Yuichi MARUYAMA (DF)
AP 17 M 1184 G 0 AS 0 Y 0 YY 0 R 0

41. Akihiro IENAGA (MF)
AP 54 M 3714 G 10 AS 7 Y 3 YY 1 R 0

44 CESAR HAYDAR
AP 6 M 459 G 0 AS 0 Y 1 YY 0 R 0


77. Yuki YAMAMOTO (MF)
AP 34 M 1999 G 2 AS 3 Y 3 YY 0 R 0

98 Louis YAMAGUCHI
AP 2 M 180 G 0 AS 0 Y 0 YY 0 R 0


99. Naoto KAMIFUKUMOTO (GK)
AP 8 M 720 G 0 AS 0 Y 0 YY 0 R 0


Most minutes played (all competitions)

1. TACHIBANADA Kento - 4488

2. SASAKI Asahi - 4132
3. Sung-Ryong JUNG - 4050
4. WAKIZAKA Yasuto - 3833

5. IENAGA Akihiro - 3714
6. MARCINHO - 3308

No surprises here. Perhaps the biggest shock, (which I guess isn’t really a shock so much but more evidence of quite how predictable Oniki’s selections were), is that Wakizaka still made position number four, even though he was injured for the last six games of the season. Also, not sure it’s a great thing that the number five player in the list is one of the veterans of the squad. I think Ienaga definitely deserves a good rest over the festive season. And well done to Marcinho, who still managed to end up in sixth in spite of being sent off three times and consequently serving plenty of bans.


Most goals (all competitions)

1. YAMADA Shin - 21
2. MARCINHO - 16
3. IENAGA Akihiro - 10
3. ERISON 10
5. WAKIZAKA Yasuto - 8
6. TONO Daiya - 6
7. TACHIBANADA Kento - 5
7. KOBAYASHI Yu - 5

Least minutes per goal (all competitions)

1. YAMADA Shin - 132
2. ERISON 182
3. MARCINHO 207
3. KOBAYASHI Yu - 207
5. IENAGA Akihiro - 371
6. TONO Daiya - 402
7. WAKIZAKA Yasuto - 479
8. TACHIBANADA Kento - 898

(For goals, I only included people who finished with five or more goals).

Congratulations to Yamada for finishing top on both of these. 21 goals in a season that was pretty bad is a great outcome and even better when you consider he had the best minutes per goal rating too. We did end up scoring quite a few goals in the end, but this was definitely skewed by a strong finish to the year, (which coincided with the formation change).


Most assists

WAKIZAKA Yasuto - 9
IENAGA Akihiro - 7
YAMADA Shin - 6
TONO Daiya - 6
MIURA Sota - 5
ERISON 4
SEKO Tatsuki - 4

Wakizaka finishing top again in this. I am definitely guilty of underestimating his contributions sometimes. But maybe when you consider he was taking most of our corners in 2024, maybe you might have hoped the figure could have been a bit higher. But still I’m being unfair. He was top so well done to him. Nice to see Seko get in at the bottom in spite of leaving half way through the season. I miss him! But I suspect he doesn’t miss us as much.


Most yellow cards

SASAKI Asahi - 8
SEGAWA Yusuke - 8
TACHIBANADA Kento - 7
ERISON - 7
TAKAI Kota - 6
TONO Daiya - 4
MARCINHO - 4
VAN WERMESKERKEN Sai - 4

Most red cards

MARCINHO - 3
IENAGA Akihiro - 1
VAN WERMESKERKEN Sai - 1

I was a little surprised to see Sasaki finish top of the yellow card chart but I guess when you consider he spent most of the year playing at centre back and had the second highest minutes I guess it’s understandable. Equally surprising was the fact that Segawa got eight yellows. I guess he was played out of position in defence a lot though and his tackling isn’t his strong point. The real bad boy has got to be Marcinho though with two straight reds, and one red for a second yellow, along with four other yellow cards. He doesn’t even tackle that much! I guess he’s just really bad at doing it, so on the occasions he has to, he usually gets a card. Ienaga can be excused for his red as it was a horrific refereeing error to miss prime wanker Oscar’s play acting. Particularly shocking when you consider it was right in front of the linesman.


Frontale Rabbit man of the match awards

1. Sung-Ryong JUNG - 5
1. SASAKI Asahi - 5
3. ERISON - 3
4. SEKO Tatsuki - 2
4. YAMADA Shin - 2
4. TAKAI Kota - 2
7. TONO Daiya - 1
7. ZE RICARDO - 1
7. Bafetimbi GOMIS - 1
7. KAWAHARA So - 1
7. IENAGA Akihiro - 1
7. KAMIFUKUMOTO Naoto - 1
7. MIURA Sota - 1
7. Everyone - 1
7. Karma - 1
7. Alcohol - 1
7. Hideji Beer’s Doppelbock - 1

If I included the multiple times I made a sarcastic comment about no-one deserving it due to us being horrible that would have been an absolute run away winner in this category. The only reason we have some many contenders is that on the rare occasions I gave the award, I often gave it to multiple players. I’m pleased that my end of year reflections that Sasaki and Sung-Ryong were our best players of the season was backed up by my feelings after games when writing blog pots. Erison got three awards but the sad thing is that two of those came in the first two league games of the season. The real fun comes at the bottom of the chart where I felt I had to include the awards given to karma, alcohol and Hideji Beer’s Doppelbock. Good times!

Monday, 30 December 2024

2024 season survey questions


It’s a bit later than usual, but here are the questions for the annual Frontale Rabbit survey. There are unsurprisingly a few new questions this year. Please respond any way you can. I don’t really use Twitter anymore but will check in a few times to see if I have any responses on there. Otherwise, please leave a comment on the post, send me an email to frontalefan(at)gmail(dot)com, Instagram message me…. any way you can think of really.
Thank you in advance.

いつもより少し遅くなりましたが、今年もFrontale Rabbitブログの年末アンケートを行います。今年はいくつか新しい質問がありますので、回答いただけるとうれしいです。返答方法は、ブログコメント欄、メール(frontalefan(at)gmail(dot)com)、Instagramのメッセージなど、何でもOKです。Xはもう使っていませんが、アンケートの確認用にチェックするようにします。よろしくお願いします!
 
 
1. Game of season
今シーズン1番良かった試合

2. Player of the season
今シーズン1番良かった選手

3. Goal of the season
今シーズン1番のゴール

4. Disappointment of the season
今シーズン1番がっかりしたこと

5. Villain of the season (anyone, from any team or an official or...)
今シーズンの悪者(他のチームの選手でも審判でも誰でも)

6. Best away trip (if you've done one)
今シーズン1番のアウェイ遠征(もし行った場合)

7. Best stadium in the J League
Jリーグで一番好きなスタジアムは?

8. Opposition J1 team you like the most
フロンターレ以外でJ1で1番好きなチーム

9. Opposition J1 team you like the least
J1で嫌いなチームを1つ選ぶなら

10. Team you're pleased to see come up
J1に昇格してうれしいチームを1つ選ぶなら

11. Team you're disappointed to see go down
J2に降格して欲しくなかったチームを1つ選ぶなら

12. If you could have any J League player sign for Frontale, who would it be?
Jリーグの選手でフロンターレに欲しい選手は?

13. Which former Frontale player would you most like to see us re-sign?
元フロンターレの選手で、1番フロンターレに戻ってきてほしいのは誰ですか?

14. Favourite Frontale song/player song
1番好きなフロンターレ、または選手のチャント

15. Best thing about the J League
Jリーグで1番良いこと

16. Worst thing about the J League
Jリーグで1番嫌なこと

17. Any final thoughts on Oniki?
鬼木監督について、最終的な感想は?

18. And how do you feel about Hasebe being the new manager?
長谷部さんが監督になることについて、どう思いますか?

19. Trophy you would like to win the most next year
来シーズン1番欲しいタイトル

20. What’s your prediction for next season?
来年の予想

21. How did you feel about VAR in 2024? And any thoughts on J League referees?
2024年を通してVARについてどう思いましたか?
また、Jリーグの審判について何か感想はありますか?

22. Any other comments
その他コメント
 

Sunday, 29 December 2024

2024 season ref stats

 

Here are the referee stats for the 2024 season. I left out stats from games where we had a guest referee from a different country as the whole point of these posts is really just to stoke up some resentment for next season. And before anyone says anything, I know that this is totally subjective as all these stats are just from a Frontale point of view. But that’s kind of the point anyway, isn’t it? Considering our season was pretty bad, it’s astonishing that we have five refs with whom we have a perfect record. Out of those five, I guess Nakamura is the best ref for us as he’s been in charge of three games and we got nine points from them. This was a bit of a surprise as last year I thought Nakamura was perhaps the best ref around but this year I felt a lot less positive about him. Although I guess the proof is in the pudding. Nishimura comes in second as we had two games with him with a perfect record. An honorable mention goes to Kasahara for sending off Vissel Kobe’s Thuler for booting the ball at the linesman. The truth about that incident will probably never become widely appreciated as plenty of people in the stadium didn’t even notice it, and it doesn’t really show on the coverage. I’m very much not a Kasahara fan, but he was absolutely spot on on this occasion. At the other end of the spectrum, we have three refs from whose games we took no points. They were Tanimoto, Iida and Fukushima. Out of these three Iida gets the award as we had two games with him, conceded eight goals and lost both times. When it comes to cards, Nishimura is best for us again with two games and no cards for us. At the other end is Kimura, who gave us eight yellows and one red in three games, all of which we drew. So speaking from a cards and points point of view, I suppose if I had to give one ref a high five, astonishingly it would be Nishimura. And if I had to give one a kick in the backside, it would be Iida, which does match quite well with my feelings on him before I compiled these stats. However, I guess none of this takes into account some of the truly terrible refereeing displays we’ve seen this year. Would be nice if that could change next year, but that would be a miracle I reckon. So here are the Frontale Rabbit ref awards and the full stats.

More games with you please -

SENDACHI
NISHIMURA
NAKAMURA
NAGAMINE
KAWAMATA

No more games with you please -

TANIMOTO
IIDA
FUKUSHIMA

Card Crazy -

KIMURA

Lets it go -

NISHIMURA

High five for… -

NISHIMURA

Kick up the backside for… -

IIDA


G - Games refereed

W - Wins

D - Draws

L - Losses

Y - Yellow Cards
YY - 2 yellows to player in one game

R - Red Cards

AVC - Average number of cards per game (Y = 1, YY =3 red = 4)

AVP - Average points for us per game

FUKUSHIMA
G 1 W 0 D 0 L 1 GF 1 GA 3 Y 1 YY 0 R 0
AVC 1 AVP 0

IIDA
G 2 W 0 D 0 L 2 GF 5 GA 8 Y 4 YY 0 R 0
AVC 2 AVP 0

IKEUCHI
G 4 W 2 D 1 L 1 GF 5 GA 4 Y 6 YY 0 R 0
AVC 1.5 AVP 1.75

IMAMURA
G 2 W 1 D 1 L 0 GF 5 GA 2 Y 3 YY 0 R 0
AVC 1.5 AVP 2

KASAHARA
G 5 W 1 D 3 L 1 GF 8 GA 8 Y 4 YY 0 R 0
AVC 0.66 AVP 1.2

KAWAMATA
G 1 W 1 D 0 L 0 GF 3 GA 0 Y 2 YY 0 R 0
AVC 2 AVP 3

KIMURA
G 3 W 0 D 3 L 0 GF 2 GA 2 Y 8 YY 0 R 1
AVC 4 AVP 1

KOYA
G 2 W 1 D 0 L 1 GF 2 GA 3 Y 1 YY 0 R 0
AVC 0.5 AVP 1.5

MIKURIYA
G 3 W 1 D 1 L 1 GF 4 GA 4 Y 4 YY 0 R 0
AVC 1.33 AVP 1.33

NAGAMINE
G 1 W 1 D 0 L 0 GF 3 GA 2 Y 0 YY 0 R 0
AVC 0 AVP 3

NAKAMURA
G 3 W 3 D 0 L 0 GF 10 GA 4 Y 4 YY 1 R 0
AVC 1.33 AVP 3

NISHIMURA
G 2 W 2 D 0 L 0 GF 5 GA 0 Y 0 YY 0 R 0
AVC 0 AVP 3

OKABE
G 2 W 0 D 1 L 1 GF 3 GA 5 Y 5 YY 0 R 0
AVC 2.5 AVP 0.5

SENDACHI
G 1 W 1 D 0 L 0 GF 3 GA 1 Y 1 YY 0 R 0
AVC 1 AVP 3

SHIMIZU
G 2 W 0 D 2 L 0 GF 2 GA 2 Y 4 YY 0 R 0
AVC 2 AVP 1

TANIMOTO
G 1 W 0 D 0 L 1 GF 1 GA 3 Y 1 YY 0 R 0
AVC 1 AVP 0

UEDA
G 2 W 1 D 1 L 0 GF 4 GA 1 Y 1 YY 0 R 0
AVC 0.5 AVP 2

YAMAMOTO
G 3 W 1 D 0 L 2 GF 2 GA 5 Y 5 YY 0 R 0
AVC 1.66 AVP 1

YAMASHITA
G 2 W 1 D 1 L 0 GF 6 GA 5 Y 4 YY 0 R 0
AVC 2 AVP 2

Totals
G 42 W 17 D 14 L 11 GF 74 GA 62 Y 58 YY 1 R 1

AVC 1.55 AVP 1.55

*2023 TOTALS FOR YOUR REFERENCE*
G 45 W 20 D 12 L 13 Y 49 R 7
AVC 1.55 AVP 1.6

*2022 TOTALS FOR YOUR REFERENCE*
G 38 W 21 D 8 L 9 Y 38 R 3
AVC 1.23 AVP 1.86

*2021 TOTALS FOR YOUR REFERENCE*
G 46 W 31 D 13 L 2 Y 21 R 0
AVC 0.45 AVP 2.3

So clearly the decline has continued for us...

Tuesday, 10 December 2024

Vs Avispa Fukuoka (home) 8/12/24 J League match 38


Kawasaki Frontale 3 - 1 Avispa Fukuoka 

Well, this was a game that was very much relegated to the shadows by everything that surrounded it. Not saying it was a bad match, it was actually pretty entertaining, but both teams had nothing to play for and were both losing long serving managers and presumably some players after the game. I would imagine that this blog post will become irrelevant quite quickly, as presumably now that the season is over, we’ll start getting all kinds of rumours flying around. I’ll deal with that in a paragraph later and give my predictions which will almost certainly be proved wrong immediately. First let’s briefly deal with the match.


It didn’t completely feel like a 3-1 win for us. Avispa had quite a few dangerous chances but didn’t seem to be able to finish them or were denied by yet another great Sung-Ryong display. I guess it’s simply a fact that we took more of our chances than they did. When I looked back at the stats I was kind of surprised to see how many shots we had. There really has been a big turnaround recently. This has coincided with a few things I feel. Firstly and most importantly, we finally changed our formation and tactics. Since then we’ve done significantly better. Particularly so since Oniki stopped changing back to his old favoured formation after getting a win using the new formation. Secondly, there definitely has been a pick up in results and performances since Oniki’s departure was announced. It’s a shame that he didn’t address the first point earlier and then we might not have needed to come to the second point. (I’d say it should have been done at least a year ago and probably longer. I feel that I should say here that my problem wasn’t with Oniki, it was with his apparent inability to change anything. Him finally having done that and us playing really well has probably presented plenty of people with some conflicting emotions). Thirdly, and possibly connected but probably only tangentially, is that since Wakizaka got injured we’ve done a lot better. I feel bad about saying this as it sounds like I’m blaming him. The truth is that with him in the team I think Oniki felt he had to play a certain way and that way just didn’t work. We scored three times in this match and all of them were fun goals. Their keeper made an absolute howler for the second. For the third I really enjoyed Ienaga in acres of space, controlling the ball, looking around to see he had loads of space and then instead of doing what everyone in the stadium expected him to do (dwell on the ball, slow things down, wait for someone to arrive who he could hold off), he instead whipped the ball in immediately and we scored. Lovely! What else should I put in this section? Sendachi was the ref and there was someone even more obscure doing the VAR. I guess it demonstrated quite how much the barrel was being scraped. You probably could make a case for this being the least important game of the day, so fair enough I guess. I thought Sendachi was at best average, but average is something of a compliment from me when referring to refs. He definitely could have booked a few more players I think. Particularly Wellington, who must be the most forgetful player in the league. Forgetful in the way that he’s always leaving things behind, like elbows or raised boots, long after the ball has gone. Poor guy, we all get a bit forgetful when we’re older, I guess. Finally, I’d like to ponder on why Marcinho seemed determined to try to hit at least 90% of his shots, passes or crosses with the outside of his boot. Perhaps he has succumbed to gout and his big toe was too painful to consider getting anywhere near the ball. The first couple of times he did it, it delighted me, the second couple of times were a bit frustrating, but then after that I just got used to it and accepted that was the way things were going to be.


After the game we had our end of season ceremony. Definitely wasn’t as much fun as it has been in the past. There were lots of tears from fans, players and managers. The first three quarters of this season were pretty terrible, so in a way it’s a miracle that we ended up in eighth, exactly as we did last year. Of course this year there are two more teams in the league so you could say this year was actually an improvement. It certainly didn’t feel like it was. For me it was just a season full of missed opportunities and I’m glad it’s over. I’m pleased Oniki finally did something and could leave on a semi-high. We’ve been scoring goals for fun recently and our ACL campaign is going ok, so at least we can end the season with a bit of a smile. One person who probably won’t be smiling though is the chairman, the announcement of his name before his speech resulting in the most lukewarm of applause from a significantly small proportion of the crowd. When he spoke about being moved by Oniki leaving he got massively heckled, with booing, shouting, whistling and feedback from the megaphones. It was deliciously uncomfortable. I haven’t liked him much since I saw his comment about Chanathip leaving, where he expressed his surprise that Chana didn’t want to stay watching games from the stand and his belief that if he let a bit more of his career dwindle away he’d surely get his chance soon. I felt this showed he was quite out of touch with football and probably didn’t know what he was doing. There has also been an exodus of staff in all positions since he took over, so something clearly isn’t going right behind the scenes. It’s a shame as the positive club culture seems to be being eroded slightly. Hopefully the heckling will cause some reflection on his part. Or maybe he’ll ask someone to explain why he got heckled as presumably he won’t understand it himself. At least if the message is conveyed, there is more of a chance of it being acted on. Of course us fans don’t know what goes on behind the scenes and there is no guarantee that any information we get is in any way accurate. At the same time, the number of staff leaving speaks volumes.


Talking of leaving, we know Oniki is going. Who else might follow him? Kurumaya is rumoured to be going. Segawa too. Ze Ricardo had gone missing until he turned up after the game yesterday. At that stage it even took me a little while to work out who he was so complete has his exile been. There are always rumours about Ienaga after every season. You might imagine he might want to go somewhere else with a new manager coming in. Takai will probably leave to go overseas. Sasaki has been linked with someone I think. I should stress that probably most of this is nonsense, but it wouldn’t be a great surprise to see a significant turnover at the end of the season. I hope that the new manager, (if that decision has been made already, which it presumably has, hopefully has…), is having some say in these decisions. I think we’ve had too many transfer decisions made recently without the input of the person who picks the team. Also Wakizaka was very emotional during his captain’s speech. At the same time he talked about fighting on in the ACL. Regular readers will remember me saying his emotional speech at the end of last season made me think he was leaving, so with that in mind, perhaps he won’t be going anywhere. But he was really choked up at points in his speech. There are a hell of a lot of things that need to be sorted out before next season. And don’t forget, thanks to the ACL, next season starts in early February. I could probably list loads more players here. but it seems kind of pointless as if instead of speculating, we just hang on a bit, we’ll all know what’s happening. it’s definitely going to be interesting though.


Finally, I guess we need to talk about Oniki. Without a doubt, he’s a Frontale legend. I wish things had gone a bit differently in the last few years, but of course I’d say that. In his speech he talked about how good it was that our fans don’t boo the players and I have to agree with him. There have been a lot of frustrating times this year and there has been hardly any booing of our players. I have never done it. The closest I got was shouting ‘fucking shit’ at the final whistle away at Sagan Tosu and then just crossing my arms and staying quiet. On reflection, perhaps that was a bit over dramatic but at the same time, I think it was a fair assessment of what could have been our worst performance this year. The culture of our club suits someone like Oniki, who it seems was well loved by everyone around the club. I wish I could have loved him a bit more, but at times, it did feel like he was doing things to intentionally and specifically annoy me. If players who haven’t even been picked that much by him still find it sad that he’s leaving that really says something. We’ll see how long the good feeling lasts if he goes to Kashima as expected and of they then hammer us. We all would have liked it to end with a title, but I guess things don’t always work out how we’d like them to. And we have already had our fair share of fairytale endings throughout his tenure. There’s definitely something slightly amusing about the fact that Kashima finished above us, and hammered us in our last meeting but still our manager is probably joining them. Something equally funny about the same situation potentially happening with Avispa’s manager joining us. They finished below us and we’ve just whacked them. It feels a bit like there is a bit of a dearth of options available right now and instead of anything revolutionary happening about a third of J League teams are just going to swap around their managers and see what happens. Hasebe potentially joining us isn’t massively inspiring, but of course I’m not going to write him off before he’s even been confirmed, let alone taken charge of a game. Hopefully we’ll have some idea of what’s happening soon and then when can start speculating about something else instead.

So another season is done and what exciting things have we got to look forward to next year? Three teams are coming to J1 and they are Shimizu (again), Yokohama FC (again) and Okayama (oh, that’s a new one!). The plus of having a new ground to visit next year in Okayama is slightly undermined by the fact that two really good away days have gone. Please come back soon Sapporo and Tosu! Also, watching the playoff final, Okayama’s ground looked a bit dodgy, but apparently it’s walkable from the station and Okayama is a great place to do some day trips from. Just you wait, it will end up being on a Wednesday evening or something. In the next few weeks, I’ll do my usual end of season posts. I might skip the player stats one this time as it’s a major pain in the arse to do. Or perhaps I’ll just grab the stats from another site and do it. I’m about to go away for my Christmas holiday so perhaps I’ll have plenty of free time to do these things. At the same time though, I might decide it’s more fun to not bother. I’m also considering starting a Substack as it might be an easier way for people to get these posts now I’m not on Twitter. Anyway, if I’m not back on here before, I hope everyone has a happy Christmas and a happy New Year. And let’s hope for an exciting and successful new Frontale era starting soon.
 

 
Team

GK 1.
JUNG Sung-Ryong
(Yellow card 78')
DF 5. SASAKI Asahi
DF 2. TAKAI Kota
DF 35. MARUYAMA Yuichi
DF 13. MIURA Sota
MF 8. TACHIBANADA Kento
MF 77. YAMAMOTO Yuki
MF 41. IENAGA Akihiro
MF 23. MARCINHO
FW 11. KOBAYASHI Yu
FW 20. YAMADA Shin
 
Subs

GK 98. YAMAGUCHI Louis

DF 4. JESIEL
FW 9. ERISON (on for KOBAYASHI 75')

FW 17. TONO Daiya
(on for MARCINHO 64')
MF 19. KAWAHARA So (on for YAMAMOTO 64')
DF 31. VAN WERMESKERKEN Sai 
FW 32. KANDA Soma (on for YAMADA 90+1')

Goals

IENAGA (Frontale) 8' 1-0
KOBAYASHI (Frontale) 27' 2-0

MARCINHO (Frontale) 48' 3-0
MATSUOKA (Avispa) 51' 3-1


Highlights

Friday, 6 December 2024

Vs Shandong Taishan (home) 4/12/24 ACL 2024/25 game 6

 


Kawasaki Frontale 4 - 0 Shandong Taishan

Our bizarre end of season form continues! After limping through most of the year unable for the most part to even make shooting chances, let alone hit the target, we’re now a goal crazy side playing exciting football! What’s happened? I think it’s great that the Oniki era can end like this rather than with a bit of a sour taste in the mouth. The handbrake is well and truly off now. The only slight regret is that we didn’t try this a bit earlier in the season / a bit earlier in the last four years. We’ve really stagnated recently and there seemed to be a lack of awareness of this, let alone any idea of how to change it. But 4-4-2 came to the rescue and football is fun again. This was a kind of weird selection. Not only has Oniki realised that he can play a formation other than 4-3-3 it also seems that he’s realised that rotation is a good thing when you have a busy schedule. Although it’s a bit tough to work out exactly what his preferred starting 11 is, it’s clear to say that in recent times he’s been a lot more prepared to change players and this seems to have really worked in our favour too. I wonder if I’m right in thinking that this recent run of decent form has coincided with us actually playing players in their preferred positions too. Truly these are magical days. One game left for Oniki now and somehow he might have managed to convince the Oniki out brigade, (of which I was a fully paid up member), that due to his new found freedom loving side, perhaps our descent into true shitness wasn’t as inevitable as we thought. But this is probably a lot to do with the end of term feeling. Everyone’s having a good time and whilst there’s not much studying going on, we are all learning something even if we’re not sure exactly what it is.


Some might say we owed Shandong a spanking after they dumped us out of the ACL earlier this year. Others might quite accurately say that it’s more accurate to say that we contributed a fair bit to dumping ourselves out. That disastrous Wakizaka short corner that led to a goal for them still haunts me. Perhaps we were lucky to play them a few weeks after their domestic season finished. Training when most players in your league have their feet up can’t be the best for morale and that probably isn’t the best way to prepare for a game. As presumably we’ll find out when we have to play two important ACL games as part of our preseason activities next year. Aside from a couple of dodgy moments, this Shandong team didn’t seem to be as scary as the previous one which was very good at taking their chances. Saying that, if Sung-Ryong hadn’t made an amazing double save with us just one goal up the game could have turned out quite differently. But thankfully he did, and even though he let in four against Verdy, (not really his fault I think), he seems to be in sparkling form recently. Also doing really well for us were Kawahara who had one of his best games for us and Erison, who despite not scoring, was just unplayable, working really hard. Would have loved him to have got a goal and he looked quite frustrated when he was subbed. But he did really well I thought. Other highlights from a Frontale point of view included some pitch time for Kanda again. This time he only assisted rather than scored but blimey he’s started well with a goal and assist in what is probably only 15 minutes on the pitch so far.


Also we all got a free Frontale bobble hat. That was a major highlight for me. Slightly confusing for me was the fact that we decided to try to create some National Stadium type atmosphere by bringing in some pyro. I’ve long said how naff it is, particularly during daytime games, but I have to say after an initial cringe when I first saw it, it was kind of fun when they moved it behind the goal and set it off every time we scored. Each goal’s celebration was accompanied by a little giggle at the massive sparklers going off. In future I’d like to see them extend its use. Set them off for every sliding tackle or something like that. Why not have a little splutter every time the ref blows his whistle? Get them going every time a linesman raises his flag? I guess it helped that we won, as otherwise it might have looked a bit like us trying to put a gloss on what might have been a dodgy performance. I’m not sure we need them for every game. In fact I’d be a bit embarrassed if we had them for every game. But it was quite amusing, in the same way that I can enjoy the annual YMCA or the game when they drive stuff around the running track for some obscure reason. I guess I have to remember that not everyone in the stadium is a cynical old bugger, in fact most people aren’t, and I’m just going to embrace the fun. Oh, and no mention of Frontale highlights would be complete without talking about Yamamoto’s great free kick. Bravo!


I’m just going to lump everything else together in this paragraph. In the usual ACL style, there was something a bit off about the hoardings in this game. I think I’ve previously spoken about ACL related things just not quite feeling very authentic. It’s as if they don’t know what football really is and have asked AI to write the script for the pregame presentation. On this occasion the weird thing that stood out was some of the advertising hoardings which looked like they’d be transplanted from a computer game with no commercial contracts. I’m not sure if ‘Fantasy Football - create your squad’, ‘Ace’, ‘Tecno’ and the straight to the point ‘€ Football’ are adverts for real things or were just made up in a hurry as the deadline rapidly approached. But they did help contribute to the slightly weird atmosphere. Add to this the Shandong fans, who seemed to have mostly arrived in identical fluorescent orange jackets, transforming the away end into something that looked like a road sweepers union meeting. It wasn’t everyone, and given that when our fourth goal went it, most of the orange jackets walked out, I wonder if it was some kind of freebie thing offered to Chinese people living in Japan, or a bunch of club officials, or some paid help. Whichever way. It did make the away end look pretty good. After the game walking back to the station there were some Shandong fans and having no knowledge of what they were saying, I’m going to take a leap and say that they seemed like a nice bunch.


When our players went over to thank their fans at the end of the game there was an initial moment of shock as something was thrown from the crowd towards them. The shock died off as the towel which had been thrown flew about as well as you’d expect one of those towels to fly and dropped limply to the floor. When a steward tried to return the towel to the fan, it seemed like they communicated that it was in fact a gift for our team and we got to keep it. Kind of strange, but I did quite like it. Sometimes the ACL does bring up nice little things like this. I’ve seen fans swapping towels on a few occasions so this seemed like another thing that should make everyone feel a bit better. Particularly considering it’s a Japanese team and a Chinese team, two countries who don’t always seem to like each other that much. At least from a governmental perspective. One last part of Shandong praise. I think their kit is pretty damn snazzy. That fluorescent orange with the red shorts goes really well. Do I need to mention the officials? I think they were normal kind of ACL officials, ie. pretty useless. There were some dubious decisions but nothing got me particularly annoyed which in a way is the highest of high praise. But then again that could have been because the game was going our way. I’m sure I’ll be back moaning about refs very soon.


Next up, the final Oniki game, a home league match against Avispa. Segawa almost certainly won’t be involved as his injury looked pretty bad. But I hope it isn’t as bad as it seemed. It would be nice if we could see out Oniki’s time with a win, particularly as his successor could be in the opposition dugout. It wasn’t a great look for Oniki, who was being strongly linked with Kashima, to do atrociously in our game against them. I’m not going to complain too much if Hasebe does similarly on Sunday. After that, a nice break, but I guess I’ll be writing end of season posts and doing the survey as usual. I suspect the responses could be more interesting than usual this year.

Team

GK 1. JUNG Sung-Ryong
DF 31. VAN WERMESKERKEN Sai
DF 4. JESIEL (Yellow card 60')
DF 35. MARUYAMA Yuichi
DF 13. MIURA Sota
MF 19. KAWAHARA So
MF 77. YAMAMOTO Yuki (Yellow card 24)
MF 30. SEGAWA Yusuke
MF 23. MARCINHO
FW 11. KOBAYASHI Yu (Yellow card 33')g
FW 9. ERISON

Subs

GK 22. HAYASAKA Yuki
GK 98. YAMAGUCHI Louis
DF 2. TAKAI Kota
DF 5. SASAKI Asahi
DF 7. KURUMAYA Shintaro
MF 8. TACHIBANADA Kento (on for YAMAMOTO 68')
DF 15. TANABE Shuto
MF 17. TONO Daiya (on for SEGAWA 49')
FW 20. YAMADA Shin (on for KOBAYASHI 68')
MF 26. YAMAUCHI Hinata
FW 32. KANDA Soma (on for ERISON 84')
FW 41. IENAGA Akihiro (on for MARCINHO 68')

My Frontale Man Of The Match

I dunno, maybe I got a bit distracted by the sparklers. I'm not sure who to give this to. Could have been Yamamoto or Kawahara. Or Sung-Ryong again for that important double save. But for his general performance plus one magic moment, it will go to...

ERISON - there can't be many people who weren't very excited when Erison won the ball in our right back position and dribbled the whole way up the pitch, shrugging off or beating player after player. It was amazing. I can't remember if this was the same attack where he did that weird overhead flick thing, but I'm guessing it probably was. Great stuff!


Goals


MARCINHO (Frontale) 3' 1-0
YAMAMOTO (Frontale) 41' 2-0
JESIEL (Frontale) 65' 3-0
YAMADA (Frontale) 90' 4-0

Highlights

Tuesday, 3 December 2024

Vs Tokyo Verdy (away) 30/11/24 J League match 37

 


Tokyo Verdy 4 - 5 Kawasaki Frontale

There’s a strange kind of symmetry in the fact that as Oniki’s tenure comes to an end, we seem to have gone back to playing the kind of football that we were before he took over. To be honest, it’s a very welcome thing for me. I always had a soft spot for the Kazama approach of relentless attacking, whilst at the same time perhaps being not so keen on the part that included kamikaze defending. But one thing that you can’t deny is that as a combination, these two things make for exciting matches. And this ticked all the boxes when it came to excitement. Throw away a two goal lead - check, in fact check that one twice. Late, late winner - check. Absolutely hopeless refereeing to get everyone riled up - CHECK!!! This game had it all. Well maybe everything apart from competent defending. But blimey, it was a fun match! I’m not going to hang around with this as we’ve got another game coming up on Wednesday and I’m slightly under the cosh to get this blog post up before then. So here we go under the usual old headings.


Us -


We are playing fun football again! 4-4-2 seems to be the way Oniki is going to go till the end with us now, (watch him change it for the ACL game, and if he does, watch us do terribly with his old favourite formation). I’m all in favour. We made a lot of chances in this game and scored a lot of goals. Yamada getting a hat trick was a lot of fun. I remain deeply unconvinced and a bit irritated by his penalty run up though. I wouldn’t mind a change in that law to be honest. Surely nobody wants to see that jogging on the spot thing, do they? Yamada is now third in the league’s top scorer chart. Would love to see him overtake Anderson Lopes in the final game but that would mean him scoring five times against Avispa, a team whose manager is strongly rumoured to be joining us next year. I was asked about my player of the season nominations a couple of days before the game and got it down to a shortlist of three, Sung-Ryong, Sasaki and Yamada. At the time I added that I didn’t think Yamada should get it as I have a bit of a problem with some of the great opportunities we’ve missed through his unwillingness to pass sometimes. At the same time it would be a bit weird to give it to anyone connected to stopping us conceding goals as we’ve been doing that for fun this year. I think after this match, Yamada is probably going to get it though. You can’t deny the fact that he does the job when it comes to scoring. I think he’s perhaps had a bit more of a chance to score than other strikers as Oniki seems quite unwilling to leave him out of the team or substitute him. But he’s had a really good year, so well done to him. It’s a good thing he scored a late winner too, as at the start of the second half he went almost directly from missing a sitter to assisting Verdy for a goal, laying the ball off perfectly for their player to slot home. But I shouldn’t moan. He certainly wasn’t the only player to gift them a goal. And as I said, I don’t mind conceding four so much if we score five. It certainly makes a change from the extremely mind-numbing stuff we’ve seen for large parts of this year. Would be nice in the future if we didn’t concede from almost every one of their set pieces though. But you know, beggars can’t be choosers.


Them -


Verdy have had a great first season back in J1 so well done to them for that. It was a lot of fun to beat them though, particularly in the way we did it. I don’t particularly have any grudges against their players. My slight animosity is all a result of them being a former Kawasaki team. Or rather maybe that should say a team who played in Kawasaki as the general feeling was that they didn't care much about the city. After the game though I guess I have a new boo boy in their manager who spent the entire game getting furious about everything which as far as I am concerned was a bit strange for reasons I’ll go into later. There’s no doubt that he should face some kind of punishment for apparently being so angry that he wanted to fight the ref or the fourth official after his booking. For once, I think the people surrounding him actually really needed to restrain him, unlike that time when those furious Antlers fans were held back from unleashing their wildest hooligan dreams on a group of pensioner security guards by a flimsy plastic barrier that came up to just over their knees and was probably being supported and stopped from collapsing by some of their number. I don’t know if the gender of the referee was part of what provoked such a reaction. But trying to have a fight with someone whilst dressed in a suit is never really a good look, is it? Like some kind of coked-up city boy on a Friday night who’s spilled their pint and is trying to fight the staff member who's trying to clear it up. If he had been sent off, as he really should have been, would he have been banned from the post match end of season ceremony? That would have been amusing. Oh, and apparently the reason for his fury was that Yamashita had (apparently totally correctly and absolutely within her rights to do so), overruled the linesman who had signaled for a corner. But yeah, there’s not much to say here really so let’s move on to the main focus of this post.



Ref and officials -


Oh dearie me, this was an absolute stinker of a game for the officials. Back in charge again was Yamashita, fresh from her absolutely shite performance when we played Gamba at home in October. In that blog post I praised her for fighting sexism by being absolutely as bad as her male counterparts and therefore fitting in perfectly. I think she had a worse game on this occasion though. I feel like her big problem is the fact that she doesn’t have much confidence in her abilities. (Hmmm, perhaps this is a sign of her having fantastic and accurate judgement though…). Clearly she made some weird decisions, but the worst thing for me is that after she gave one thing slightly contentiously to one team, you could guarantee the next thing would go the other way to make up for it, with each subsequent decision further stretching the bounds of credibility. Perhaps some might see this as balance, but for me it seems to be more like the perfect way to annoy absolutely everyone. I guess a lack of confidence in her abilities, either from herself or from her colleagues also accounted for the interminable VAR delays in this game. It seemed like everything was getting checked, often without any clear signal that it was, the only evidence being that nothing was happening on the pitch. As I said above, I was kind of surprised that Verdy were so annoyed by her performance as I thought she ruled wildly in their favour. But I’m fully aware that this is the judgement of someone who is biased towards one team. I haven’t gone back and checked any of these incidents, (I don’t want to prove myself wrong so would rather not), but notes I made at the time suggest that her most egregious misjudgements as far as I was concerned were not giving us a second penalty in the second half, an extremely dodgy free kick given to them that lead to a goal for them, another goal for them coming from a corner they shouldn’t have had, giving them a free kick when one of their defenders ‘fouled’ their own keeper and towards the end of the match, a throw in being awarded, resulting in Erison kicking the ball away and justifiably getting booked, which Verdy thought should have been a free kick and she was happy to oblige and let them take it. At times it felt like Verdy had a VAR button that they could press every time they wanted something checked when things didn’t go their way.



And there was a definite officiation through consultation feeling, with almost every decision being greeted by a long chat with whinging players (from both teams). I guess the problem is that Yamashita let everyone get away with this kind of thing and did herself no favours when it came to getting respect for future decisions. Don’t get me wrong though, it wasn’t all down to her. The linesman closest to our fans missed the ball clearly leaving the pitch on three occasions. Not sure what he was looking at when it happened THREE TIMES. But it was so blatantly off the pitch that it was shocking the first time it happened, truly unbelievable the second time, and then the third time, well, I guess we were probably half expecting it by then. I guess we all want consistency and the one thing we get almost complete consistency in is the fact that every week, more often than not, every single one of the officials is absolute dogshit and absolutely not up to the job. Bravo!


So, one game left in the league and one ACL game left this year. It’s kind of shocking that in a season in which we’ve had games where the Loch Ness monster and Bigfoot doing the pregame penalty thing looked to be more likely thing to happen than us score a goal, we are now the second highest scorers in the league. Of course we knew the defensive situation was going to be a bit dodgy, (as it has been for a while because of our refusal to sign any defenders. To be fair, this year looked like it might be a bit better than usual, but ermmm, that didn’t quite work out did it?), but it’s a shame that Oniki’s insistence on sticking with 4-3-3 way past the time he should have abandoned it meant that we were so blunt up front for long periods of the year. I always knew we had the players to play exciting football which made it all the more frustrating when we seemed intent on breaking the world record for passes completed without taking a shot or even threatening to do so. Perhaps a decent ACL run can save this season (or next season, the split season thing is a bit of a mess isn’t it?). Guess we’ll have more of an idea about that after Wednesday’s game at home against Shandong. We owe them a pasting after they cruelly knocked us out of the previous ACL earlier this year when we decided to not bother turning up for the second leg. The cheek of them, eh? Even though I’ve long been calling for his replacement, it would be nice if Oniki could finish with some decent results, wouldn’t it? So no 4-3-3 please Toru and instead keep the sharp attacking going and as long as we score more goals than the opposition we won’t mind conceding a few. Let’s hope it’s a fun evening.


 
Team

GK 1.
JUNG Sung-Ryong
DF 31. VAN WERMESKERKEN Sai 
DF 2. TAKAI Kota
DF 5. SASAKI Asahi
(Yellow card 11')
DF 13. MIURA Sota
MF 8. TACHIBANADA Kento
MF 77. YAMAMOTO Yuki
MF 41. IENAGA Akihiro
MF 23. MARCINHO
FW 17. TONO Daiya
FW 20. YAMADA Shin
 
Subs

GK 98. YAMAGUCHI Louis

DF 4. JESIEL (on for SASAKI 57')
FW 9. ERISON (Yellow card 90+6') (on for TONO 82')
FW 11. KOBAYASHI Yu
MF 19. KAWAHARA So
(on for YAMAMOTO 57')
FW 26. YAMAUCHI Hinata (on for MARCINHO 77')
FW 30. SEGAWA Yusuke (on for IENAGA 77')

My Frontale Man Of The Match

This game was a bit too nuts for me to be able to think about this clearly.




Goals

YAMADA (Frontale) 16' PEN 0-1
YAMADA (Frontale) 22' 0-2
MIKI (Verdy) 42' 1-2
TANIGUCHI (Verdy) 49' 2-2
VAN WERMESKERKEN (Frontale) 57' 2-3
MARCINHO (Frontale) 65' 2-4
TANIGUCHI (Verdy) 71' 3-4
TANIGUCHI (Verdy) 83' 4-4
YAMADA (Frontale) 90+4' 4-5

Highlights