Well that was pretty shit, wasn’t it? I missed the first half as I was at work and just about made it home for the start of the second and… nothing happened. Well, apart from us gifting the opposition a goal and handed ourselves a defeat for the second time in five days. Apparently we had a shot. I can’t remember it. We had no shots on target in the whole game. But a lovely title winning 64% possession. I never like to comment much after watching a game online as I don’t think I have anything worth adding, This is probably even more true when you consider I missed the first half. It seems that I’ve cursed Miura by saying he’s been great this season. I don’t think a single one of his crosses made it past the first defender. I’m not very confident about the second leg. Actually, how do you dial that down one notch? What’s one level lower than ‘not very confident’? Maybe, ‘we’re fucked’? Let’s end with two statements of contrasting levels of optimism. Seeing as our first choice team and second choice team have both been shite for the last week, let’s be optimistic and say that the perfect mix of the two will be the one that works well and can win us the second leg. Guess Hasebe just has to find that mix but doesn’t have a lot of time to do it. And then on the other side of the optimism coin, let’s point to the fact that we had less shots in this game than we did in the one against the same opposition when we played for 85 minutes with 10 men. So choose which way you fancy going when it comes to optimism, and I’ll see you back here after the second leg next Wednesday.
(Oh, are you wondering about our goal that VAR ruled out? I haven't even bothered watching a replay and can't imagine I will).
Team
GK 98. YAMAGUCHI Louis DF 31. VAN WERMESKERKEN Sai DF 2. TAKAI Kota DF 35. MARUYAMA Yuichi DF 13. MIURA Sota MF 19. KAWAHARA So MF 77. YAMAMOTO Yuki MF 37. ITO Tatsuya MF 14. WAKIZAKA Yasuto MF 23. MARCINHO (Yellow card 43') FW 20. YAMADA Shin
Subs
GK 1. JUNG Sung-Ryong GK 21. ANDO Shunsuke DF 5. SASAKI Asahi (Yellow card 90+3') (on for VAN WERMESKERKEN 59') DF 7. KURUMAYA Shintaro MF 8. TACHIBANADA Kento FW 9. ERISON (on for YAMADA 80') DF 15. TANABE Shuto MF 16. OZEKI Yuto (on for YAMAMOTO 85') FW 24. MIYAGI Ten FW 30. SEGAWA Yusuke (on for ITO 80') FW 32. KANDA Soma FW 41. IENAGA Akihiro (on for MARCINHO 46')
Oh blimey. Back to Earth with a bang after the highs… ermmm…. after the excitement… ermmm… after the relief (that’ll do) of Wednesday’s game. This was an awful match ruined by a useless referee which should have been a 0-0 with both teams being docked points for being shit. Maybe the absolute worst preparation possible for Wednesday’s ACL away game. Or perhaps it will prove to be the kick up the backside we need. After a promising start to the season we’re back to being pretty dodgy. Some things never change. Whoever the manager is, whoever the players are, we always struggle against Kyoto. If the poor game wasn’t bad enough, there were also some absolutely idiotic comments on the Frontale J League forum to irritate me. But I’ll try to spare everyone’s discomfort and get this out of the way with as little pain and effort as possible.
Us -
First of all credit to Hasebe for the rotation. I think it was the right thing to do and definitely shows a break from the past. With a big game coming up on Wednesday and six games in the first 19 days of the season, (I knew the schedule was bad, but when I counted the days I realised quite how stupid it was), it’s clear that we shouldn’t be using the same players for all the matches. (I would mention what Oniki would have done here but I think we should probably move on and stop talking about him). Even disregarding the upcoming game I thought we still should rotate a bit as people are clearly dipping from their best already. Also I thought that Erison deserved a start up front after scoring the winner against Avispa. So, so far this is quite positive isn’t it? Probably though the player who is most out of sorts this year is Tachibanada, and for some reason he was kept in the team. Poor Tachibanada. Ever since he was made captain a few years ago, (presumably to try to stop him from leaving), his performances have dived off a cliff. And in this game he made another awful mistake, basically playing a perfect through ball for a Kyoto attack. Apparently he was trying to pass the ball back to Sung-Ryong. It was nowhere near getting there. I feel really bad for SR as he hasn’t played any games this year and then his potential clean sheet was lost due to circumstances completely out of his control. He’d made some good saves in the game but had no chance with the goal. Fair play to Hasebe for not taking the psychopath path and removing Tachibanada in the next set of subs, but it’s probably a good thing he took him off later. I don’t think he should be starting as long as he’s in the terrible form he is. He hadn’t had a very good game before his clanger anyway. It seems again that Tachibanada plus one other defensive midfielder approach is not a good idea. I don’t think two defensive midfielders work for us at all to be honest, and we played best this year when we had one player there with two in front, where the player staying back occasionally went forward and one of his teammates stepped in to cover. I’m thinking of Kawahara there with Yamamoto in front. In this match the midfield was a bit of a waste of time. Nothing happened there. Two players sitting next to each other doesn’t help us attack. And Yamauchi ahead doesn’t really seem the answer there either. I know I keep saying it, but I’d like to see Ienaga there if we’re not using Wakizaka. But anyway, there’s not much else to mention about us in this game as we were a bit rubbish. Even though we had 14 shots I don’t think we’d have scored yet if we were still playing. Erison did a good job up front winning the ball but had no support really. Verhon and Ito (on the left in his preferred position) didn’t do much. The fact is we never looked like getting anything other than a 0-0 out of this game. And in that way, not much has changed since last year. Some final conclusions for this part regarding Hasebe’s first choice players. I think it’s now clear he prefers Yamaguchi over SR. I think both have been let down by their teammates so can’t really say who should be there. I think it’s also becoming apparent that Hasebe probably favours Ienaga when fit on the right and Yamada up front. So some might say that he didn’t take this game seriously enough with his rotation. Presumably the same people would also criticise him for his team selections in the ACL saying he’s not taking that seriously either. I think the pecking order is becoming clear, but the fact is even when the first choice players were brought on in this match, we didn’t look any better. It was exactly the same really. So I think we have other more pressing issues to sort out. It’s still early on in what most of us probably thought would be a season of transition. And Hasebe has had a stupidly busy fixture list since he got his feet under the managers desk. The players left for the airport directly after this game so the intensity continues. Perhaps changes will come when he has a bit more time. I think the disappointing thing is that we’ve dropped off so far from the first few games of the year. However, maybe they were false dawns and we need to wait a while. I hope something is coming though, as the last three matches have been extremely reminiscent of last year. Them -
Ah, Kyoto! When you hear the word Kyoto, what do you think of? Beautiful temples? Geisha? Tea ceremonies? Zen gardens? Bamboo forests? Or dull clogging anti-football? For me it’s becoming the latter. Kyoto came into this game with one plan and that was to boot us all over the pitch in an emulation of their managers legendary power harassment training style. Actually trivia fans, this was our second match in a row where we came up against teams managed by people who’d previously been dismissed for power harassment. Lovely! It’s a bit unfair to say they only had one game plan though as they rolled out a second one later on in the match after we’d gifted them a goal. That second plan was to relentlessly time waste, rolling around on the floor, dwelling endlessly on goal kicks and particularly annoyingly, changing a sub at the last minute after the player initially chosen to be subbed had dawdled, (hang on, dawdling isn’t right. It sounds much too fast and purposeful), to the edge of the pitch before the sub was switched to the player who was standing at the exact spot on the pitch that was as far as possible from any sideline. In Raphael Elias, it’s kind of strange to see a player with such a distinctively soulful moustache taking part in such clogger tactics. Almost as if you went to a Lionel Richie concert expecting some smooth pop and found out that he is now doing a side project that blends the dumbest mosh pit hardcore with power electronics. This is all just sour grapes anyway. They had the game plan that we knew they would have and once again we couldn’t deal with it. Their fans had traveled in numbers to support them. Double digit numbers admittedly, but in numbers all the same. And when the final whistle came all 57 of those away fans were justifiably proud of the battling (mainly kicking…) performance they’d put in. If we hadn’t gifted them a goal, perhaps they still would have won as they had as many shots on target as we did. But blimey, this was an ugly game where the real winner absolutely fundamentally was not football.
Ref -
It seems that the pool of golden boy refs is getting smaller every year due to retirements, but the J League’s current chosen one Yamamoto Yudai was back in town. Here are some words from previous posts on games he’s had with us:
‘Yamamoto is a useless attention seeking waste of space of a ref’
‘myriad of mistakes [from] my most disliked ref of the season so far’
‘Yamamoto, whose every action managed to irritate me in this game.’
‘keeps the game flowing, by always dishing out one level less of punishment than is deserved’
‘My game notes are mainly his name and ‘absolute…’, ’total…’, 'unbelievable...' or 'absolute total unbelievable...' followed by four letter expletives’
And you can pretty much just copy those for this game. You could say Tachibanada cost us the game, but I’d say Yamamoto should take at least 50% of the blame. When one team is coming to foul, a referee wanting to let the game flow whatever happens will obviously favour them. There was an absurd lack of yellow cards in this game. I know it’s a new directive from the J League to not give them out so easily but it’s clearly going to lead to teams fouling incessantly. It wasn’t only Yamamoto who was to blame though. His linesmen were equally useless. How the ref and the linesman could come to completely different decisions for something that had happened directly in front of both of them, I don’t know. I suppose the silver lining in that situation is that perhaps at least one of them was right. But wild inconsistency in decisions again. What some refs will give as a red, others don’t even think is a foul. Elbow in the back to Erison with no attempt to get the ball, not even a foul. And then as the attack continues the slightest touch from Erison on a Kyoto defender who is apparently mortally wounded by the contact, well of course, blow the whistle and give them a free kick. There definitely seems to be a tendency in the J League for refs to treat foreign players differently when it comes to physicality. If a bulky Brazilian is fouled, well clearly it must be a dive as they are so big and strong. If the same player makes a challenge, clearly it’s a foul as they are too big and strong. An offside was given against Erison who was clearly in an offside position but had stopped before the attack started and was walking back away from the goal as the attack continued on the other side of the pitch, nowhere near him. Erison was never going to get anything from Yamamoto in this game. I don’t know if it would have been the same if Yamada was playing. I presume so, given that Yamamoto likes to ‘let the game flow’. He even likes to let half time flow. When Erison was fouled at the end of the first half, he refused to let the physios on, (as I think he did in the whole of the game actually. Little did we know that Yamamoto is actually a qualified doctor who can diagnose from just a quick look), and instead blew up for half time. By the time Erison was back on his feet Yamamoto was already back inside the stand presumably high-fiving his colleagues on another classic Yamamoto performance. As much as I moaned about Kyoto’s physical anti-football style, it’s a legitimate tactic, so if they want to do that, fair enough I guess, and it was effective on this occasion (and many previous ones against us too). But the referee went so far as to not only enable it but actually actively seem to encourage it. Good riddance Yamamoto. Hope we don’t see you again this season.
So yeah, a pretty grim game. As I said above, we didn’t deserve to win. We probably didn’t deserve to draw, but equally Kyoto didn’t deserve either of those outcomes either. It was an ugly and pointless 90 minutes. We’ve had a bit of luck so far this season so maybe this was where karma came in and luck went against us. But I’m not sure we can say we were unlucky. If you never look like scoring it’s unlikely you’re going to win. It’s still early days and I think everyone would agree that we have a more important game coming on Wednesday. So if we’re not useless for that game, I guess we’d all accept the lessons we learned in this match (if indeed there were any lessons to be learnt. Maybe don’t pass the ball to their striker with your defence pushing forward? Don’t let the ref Yamamoto near a football pitch ever again? Maybe that one’s out of our hands…). It’s easy to point fingers at the opposition and the ref but the fact is we weren’t up to it in this match. Next up, two ACL games, first away and then at home against Shanghai Shenhua. Then after that we are away at Okayama. Of course the first two games are crucial, but I think the third is also pretty important as we’re starting to stutter in the league. At least it will be a new stadium to tick off! And maybe we might have got our act together a bit by then. Fingers crossed.
MF 8. TACHIBANADA Kento MF 28. PATRICK VERHON MF 26. YAMAUCHI Hinata MF 17. ITO Tatsuya FW 9. ERISON
Subs
GK 98. YAMAGUCHI Louis DF 2. TAKAI Kota (on for CESAR HAYDAR 46') MF 14. WAKIZAKA Yasuto (on for YAMAUCHI 57') FW 20. YAMADA Shin (on for TACHIBANADA 77') FW 23. MARCINHO (on for ITO 57') FW 24. MIYAGI Ten
DF 31. VAN WERMESKERKEN Sai FW 41. IENAGA Akihiro (on for PATRICK VERHON 57') MF 6. YAMAMOTO Yuki
My Frontale Man Of The Match
Despite this game being a massive steaming turd of a match, I feel I have to recognise a couple of players.
ERISON
& TANABE Shuto - the former did a very different job up front that
we get from Yamada, winning the ball and looking to lay it off to
others. Sadly this didn’t work in this game but maybe we could try
playing both of them together as that seems to be the screamingly
obvious option right now. And Tanabe, who was insanely criticised online
had a really solid game I thought. Of course he’s going to struggle to
get past Miura who’s been perhaps our best player so far this year, but
I’m really happy Tanabe seems to be progressing.
