Gamba Osaka 2 - 1 Kawasaki Frontale
What a crushingly predictable result this was. Recently we’re always terrible away at Gamba so in a season where we’re always at the most one game away from shitting the bed, it was absolutely nailed on that we’d lose this game. It’s a shame though that we seem to have to lose in such frustrating and irritating ways. A little bit of hope when we scored against the run of play and took the lead! And then absolute resignation to what was going to happen as we conceded right at the end of the first half after giving the ball away cheaply. I honestly can’t believe we’re so high up in the table. I can’t believe we’ve scored so many goals. Because it seems that at least once every ten days we put it an absolute turd of a performance. To be fair, this was far from being the worst of our recent ones. That honour surely must go to either Verdy away or the Sagamihara game, but even after we scored I felt it was unlikely we’d score again and when you gift the opposition at least one goal a game, you’re never going to win if you only score once. And once again, (how many times is it now? Maybe I should check), we scored first and then fucked it up. As we now have three weeks off, (nice work J League schedulers. Glad we played a game every three days for the first few months of the season), I want to get this out of the way so I can concentrate on other less obvious ways of making myself miserable.
Us -
Was nice to see Kobayashi score. Was nice to see Erison back on the pitch. Wasn’t so nice to see us still press on with the same pointless shit we’ve been playing for the last few years. There really isn’t much discernible difference between some of our recent matches and ‘peak’ Oniki Frontale. People might point to the fact that we get it forward a bit quicker these days, but that only really means we lose the ball from hoofing it after lots of pointless passing rather than lose it from a short pass after doing the pointless passing. With Erison back on the pitch we looked a little more likely to score, but the fact is we spent 80 minutes of the game failing to do so. I feel like maybe I’m being a bit harsh as we had twice as many shots on target as Gamba did but crucially they scored twice as many goals as we did. It’s difficult to speak with much certainty on a lot of this match as my view from the eaves of the stand was massively blocked by a big flag rendering the whole experience even more frustrating. It did look a bit like Yamaguchi didn’t cover himself in glory though. For the second goal the ball was hit straight at him and he still contrived to let it go in through him. Our centre backs for this game were Maruyama and Sasaki. So now the guy who’s maybe our best full back is one of our first choice centre backs and his biggest contribution there was perhaps his assist for Gamba’s first goal. According to Hasebe having Tsuchiya and Kamihashi on the bench shows that they’re both ready to step up and are good players but I don’t think they were ever going to be used in this game. Not sure what’s happened to Jesiel. Perhaps he’s being used sparingly. Seems like we have quite a few members of our squad who can’t be expected to play every game. Having two centre backs who you almost certainly aren’t going to use on the bench probably speaks volumes about our squad depth. Looking at the bench, it was no surprise to see the changes that were made. In fact you probably could have bet your life savings on them before the game started. More on this in a little Hasebe moan section later. Looking at who we could bring on and who we did bring on, of course Erison could make a difference. Ienaga on his day could too, but those days are becoming increasingly rare. Miyagi still seems to be suffering from the problem he’s had since… well maybe always. He looks like he might be able to do something but rarely does. And the fact that one of our ‘game changing’ subs spent the last few years bouncing around J2 not doing much is a bit of a worry too. But who else is there? No one really. I can’t think of anyone in the squad who right now makes me think I’d like to see more of them. We’ve lost two of last year’s starting 11. We’ve brought in… a player from a university who presumably won’t be getting anywhere near the squad for at least a year. So we don’t have players? Hmmm. Well we do, but they’re plying like donkeys. So whose fault is that? Hmmmm. I’m sorry Hasebe but the honeymoon is over. Same formation as last year. Same tactics as last year with an occasional hoof added. Same subs, like for like every time, with no obvious desire to change anything and the apparent belief that sooner or later everything will work out just fine. He needs to do something fast. Some might say we don’t have the players to play a different formation but I’d suggest that in recent games we don’t have the players to play the formation we’re playing at the moment. There would be a case for saying that this was one of our better recent games. AND WE FUCKING LOST! Best not think about that too long unless you want to get quite depressed. I don’t expect us to win every game. But it’s probably not too much to ask that every game isn’t the same crushingly dull and pointless stuff. Modern football seems to be all about possession and we’ve gone down this route a lot in recent years. But the fact is, recently, more often than not we don’t even have the pointless possession to hang on to anymore. As I said, before the game I knew this was a nailed on defeat so maybe I shouldn’t be so upset about it. But it just all seems so fucking pointless. As soon as we scored I knew there was no chance of us scoring again. Perhaps we just need a change in our fortunes, but right now we look dodgy up front, dodgy at the back and non-existent in the middle. Oh well, at least due to Kobayashi’s goal the club was able to put a clip up online of the goal and everyone could get excited and emotional that he scored whilst ignoring the fact that we lost again and we look shit. Wonderful stuff! I know the club is looking for someone to do English language stuff at the moment. Do you think I should send in my application? I don’t want to criticise Hasebe too much but he’s got to do something as we look more like relegation candidates right now. Change something in our tactics or somehow instill a bit of belief in the players. I know I’m legendarily pessimistic, but I think the players must be feeling similarly right now. Hasebe, it’s time for you to step up and use this little break to make your mark, in whichever way you want, but please let us see Hasebe Frontale in the next game, rather than a very slightly tweaked to no discernible advantage 2023 or 2024 Frontale.
Them -
Gamba controlled long periods of the game, had much more possession than us and more shots. But still I feel like they didn’t really deserve to win. (Heheheh, naturally). I think an utterly boring goalless draw would have been a fair result. If we weren’t so bad at shooting and didn’t give away goals so freely I don’t think they would have won. Hummet seems like a bit of a prick. Happy to dish it out but flopping to the floor as soon as anyone comes close to him. Can’t really say much else about them though. Well apart from the fact that Poyatos is a whiny little bitch. He lost his mind when we took a throw before they could do their subs. Stamping his feet at the fourth official and having a right strop. Presumably they must have been absolutely urgent changes. Although not urgent enough to do the next time the ball went out as he delayed them. Considering we were never going to score for most of the match, there was a lot of time wasting from Gamba. Even from the ball boys. This kind of thing really annoys when it’s the opposition doing it, but probably is quite amusing when it’s your team dishing it out. Oh, and I wrote something about the large amount of those old Japanese flags with racist connotations behind the goal but have deleted it because it just looks like sour grapes and plenty of other teams do the same thing. But in case you were in any doubt, fuck those guys who wave those flags. (By the way, please do check previous posts on Gamba away for my usual rant about them moving us up to the top floor. That still pisses me off, as you probably can tell).
Ref -
Nakamura again, and as has been the case since he got ref of the year, he was awful. Absolutely card shy and just a general wanker. I mean, I guess this is true, but I could hardly see anything because of that sodding flag and the fact that I was so high above the pitch that I could probably have touched a cloud if they’d removed the roof of the stadium.
So another shite result which threatened to spoil the nice trip we had planned around the utterly futile 90 minutes of football. (As an aside, we went to Shiga on Monday to watch Grulla Morioka in the JFL. I can confirm that VAR has indeed ruined football as when Grulla scored their somewhat surprising first goal I wasn’t properly excited, thinking that presumably there was going to be a VAR check. Of course there wasn’t going to be one as there is no VAR outside of the top flight in Japan. But so accustomed have I become to the enjoyment-sapping influence of VAR that even when it definitely won’t be happening I still take it into consideration. Of course I’m not saying that there aren’t more correct decisions due to its influence. The problem is the referees are generally useless and totally inconsistent within matches and even more so from ref to ref. It’s a bit like having your partner’s parents visit your flat and painstakingly cleaning the kitchen to a sparkle but at the same time emptying the contents of the bin all over the living room. I know people say that if you delay the gratification sometimes the reward is heightened. Don’t think this really works when it comes to VAR though does it? The thrill is cut short and then if you’re lucky you get a feeling of light relief afterwards. Absolutely exhilarating. Anyway, clearly the horse has already bolted when it comes to VAR so there’s not much point talking about it. But if you were in any doubt, I still hate it). Three weeks off will hopefully bring either a rethink or some reinforcements or hopefully both. Please, please, please let it at least bring something other than just a break from the utter tedium of our football. As I said above, it’s a miracle we’re so high up in the table and have scored so many goals. It really doesn’t feel like we have. When the (possible) tedium recommences it will be at home against Avispa Fukuoka, which presumably will be a game Hasebe is quite up for winning. With that in mind he’ll probably go with the same team, formation and tactics. Sooner or later it will all come good, right? Just need to be patient and try not to expire from the tedium beforehand.
GK 98. YAMAGUCHI Louis
DF 31. VAN WERMESKERKEN Sai
DF 5. SASAKI Asahi
DF 35. MARUYAMA Yuichi
DF 13. MIURA Sota
MF 19. KAWAHARA So
MF 6. YAMAMOTO Yuki
MF 14. WAKIZAKA Yasuto
MF 17. ITO Tatsuya
FW 11. KOBAYASHI Yu
FW 23. MARCINHO
Subs
GK 21. ANDO Shunsuke
MF 8. TACHIBANADA Kento (on for KAWAHARA 79')
FW 9. ERISON (on for KOBAYASHI 46')
MF 16. OZEKI Yuto (on for WAKIZAKA 79')
FW 24. MIYAGI Ten (on for MARCINHO 70')
DF 27. KAMIHASHI Ryota
FW 38. KANDA Soma
FW 41. IENAGA Akihiro (on for ITO 71')
My Frontale Fan Of The Match
Massive flag in its full view blocking glory!
Goals
KOBAYASHI (Frontale) 9' 0-1
KURATA (Gamba) 45+3' 1-1
HUMMET (Gamba) 57' 2-1
Highlights
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