Kawasaki Frontale 1 - 2 FC Tokyo
I normally try to write a nice introduction paragraph to these blog posts but this game was so awful I’ll just go with mostly repeating the same word over and over again. Shit shit shit shit shit shit shitty shit shit shit shit shit shit. Shitty shit shit shit shit shit shitty shit shit shit shit shit shit, shitty shit shit shit shit shite shit shitty shit. Shit shit shit shit shit? Shitty, shit shit shit shite shit. Shit! And you can quote me on that. Shit.
1st half -
Appalling first half with the usual suspects doing the usual things. Or rather not doing them. Miura started better but both goals came from moves down his side. Wakizaka mostly absent again. Presumably Hasebe will change back to the previous starting line up with his first subs (he didn’t. But there was a similar lack of inspiration in the changes he did make). The Ito-not-defending criticism seems to have meant that he’s now playing behind Miura and in defensive midfield. One shot! One fucking shot! (Actually it was two as I forgot the free kick, but I think the point still stands).
2nd half -
A slight improvement, maybe, but that’s basically saying we were totally shit as opposed to unbelievably, staggeringly shit. Like in the first half, massively out shot. No changes at half time was a surprise (and almost certainly a mistake). When the changes did come, they were the deeply uninspiring swapping of the whole of the front three with not even a hint of trying something different and instead retaining the tactics that had failed for the whole of the first half and pretty much all of the JEF game. Astonishing that Miura and Wakizaka played the whole game. I feel like I am being gaslit. Whilst I’m not going as far as some and saying Hasebe out, he has to take full responsibility for this absolute turd of a performance. Reading an auto translation of Hasebe’s post match comments, it seems that he didn’t think the game was as bad as I did. One of us is clearly out of our mind.
Good day -
I mean come on. Good day for Tokyo I guess. I think they played well. I think so, but to be honest it’s tricky to say as we were so accommodating. Can’t really say anything positive in any way about us. Maybe good day for people who like seeing misplaced passes from the club captain and for people who like to see tackles, as every time we had the ball in some space, we immediately stopped, checked back and headed for the nearest opposition player to let them have a go at getting the ball off of us. And I suppose it was a good day for Yamahara as he got his first goal for us and it was a nice one. But it still infuriates me that the club have been hyping it up on social media apparently oblivious to the fact that we got absolutely destroyed in the this game.
Bad day -
Bad day for anyone who has any connection to Frontale. Bad day for me especially as I was quite hungover for this match. Can you imagine how bad that must have been? It would have been terrible even if I was feeling well, but the unbelievable dragging time, combined with the bright sun in my eyes and the constant dull headache wasn’t the combination I was hoping for. And as you can maybe tell from the irritated tone of this blog post, I’ve only gone and put myself in the same situation today after hitting the commiseration beers a bit too heavily considering the state I was in. At least I’ve avoided the sunburn today as I’ve stayed home and stewed in my own misery instead of going out.
Any other business -
- I think one of the most significant aspects of this game, and the two previous games, was the unbelievable amount of shots we were letting the opposition have. It was 27 to 13 in the first game, 22 to 17 in the second game and 22 to fucking 7 in this match. I can’t even begin to imagine how many goals we would have conceded if we’d had last season’s patched together back line in place. And it’s no surprise the opposition are getting so many shots as we seem to be approaching every match like a defending practice training session where after we thwart an attack we pass the ball forward and back to the apposition to give them another go. To be fair to some of the players, we probably could have got another clean sheet in this match in spite of the numerous opportunities they had if FC Tokyo hadn’t been so cheeky as to make sure their attacks went down the side where there was someone who couldn’t be bothered to do anything apart from half-hearted, actually that’s too generous, one-tenth-hearted attempts to stroll back into position, usually long after the ball was in the back of the net. Of course we don’t want to be facing so many chances, but if you want to be slightly positive you could say it’s a miracle we haven’t got battered every game. We have a goal keeper who’s trying his best, two centre backs, a right back and a couple of defensive midfielders who are trying to stem the tide, but ahead of them it basically seems to be a bunch of mannequins who the ball is just bouncing off of. On the rare occasions we did manage to get into their half without passing the ball directly the them, it was either a case of Erison (or later on Romanic) competing for the ball and then having no-one to help them out in any way, or a case of us making a quick break and with the goal beckoning deciding to slow things down and play the ball backwards. Even with a minute left in the game we were still patiently passing the ball around at the back. Absolutely fucking useless. And absolutely no sign of any other options or ideas. Just plugging away with the same formation that we’ve been playing for years, now being done to dramatically diminishing returns.
- In the last post I brought up Hasebe’s tactical adjustment screwdriver. Against Kashiwa he’d tuned things a bit too far towards the attacking and forget about defending end of the scale. Against JEF he adjusted too far the other way and removed any hope of attacking. In this match, he couldn’t quite decide what to do and in his twiddling back and forth accidentally broke both the screw and the screwdriver. All out attack is one kind of approach. As is backs-against-the-wall full hearted defending. Both perhaps have their merits. In this match we abandoned both of them and went for shocking defending and almost no attacking. Hasebe definitely tweaked things a bit from the Chiba game where online geniuses were commenting that Ito wasn’t defending enough, perhaps ignoring the fact that he really is supposed to focus more on the whole attacking thing given that he’s playing up front. It was clear that Hasebe had told the wingers to sit back and join in with the defence a bit more. When Miura actually could be bothered to move his lazy arse he was more often than not ahead of Ito who seemed to have been cowed into sitting in front of the centre backs at times. This probably didn’t really help us keep the ball when we got out of our own half. When Marcinho came on he was doing the same thing, and let’s be honest, we don’t really want Marcinho defending with his straight-red-cards-for-shocking-tackles record. It’s possibly significant that both of these players were playing in front of Miura so maybe they felt like they had to try to cover for some of his absolutely-don’t-give-a-shit moments.
- Hasebe has some work to do now. Our next match is Mito at home, on paper one of our easier fixtures. He needs to make some changes. Will have have the guts to drop Miura. I don’t think so. Wakizaka will almost certainly not get dropped. I wouldn’t be surprised if he goes back to the starting line up he used for the first two games. I think the scariest thing is that he’s used pretty much the same players for every match. Ozeki was strongly linked with a move overseas before the start of the season but he has hardly got a look in. Kanda is… nobody knows. But I guess we’ve been playing with the same formation where whoever plays up front just looks completely isolated so we have to presume that if he plays there the same thing will happen to him too. I know we had quite a lot of people who weren’t training recently due to a variety of reasons. I really hope that those reasons sort themselves out soon. Hasebe says he’s picking the team based on the form players are showing so if that’s true, presumably he’ll be dropping Miura and Wakizaka, right? And I don’t think Yamamoto, who Hasebe dropped due to him playing terribly this year but then turned to as his great hope from the bench, should be playing either at the moment. I know this won’t happen, but even if we only have the same group of players available for the next match and we stick to the same formation, (which it seems we most likely will do, after all, if it ain’t broke… oh actually it is totally fucking broken…), we can definitely put out a starting line up that is much more likely to get the job done. Uremovic should be playing, I reckon. Move Matsunagane to right back (or put Noda there), play Yamahara at left back, Kawahara and Tachibanada in front of them and Ozeki ahead of them. And it probably doesn’t matter which three play up front, but maybe tell them to try to score a goal instead of get a world record for consecutive passes in a non-threatening area. I know Ito wants to play on the left, but it’s definitely the case that him playing on the right last year was a lot more effective than he’s been so far this year. And don’t forget all the exciting young players we have. Hasebe apparently has forgotten them. He’s got to do something after we finally got exactly what we deserved for two or maybe even three games where we have got totally battered.
WOW!
Skipping this again as the main contenders I can think of are employed by our club and that wasn’t really the aim for this section. Ref was cack again, but that’s just par for the course.
Next up Mito. Come on Hasebe, do something please. Maybe we can keep the opposition shot count under 20 this time? Is that too much to ask?
1st half -
Appalling first half with the usual suspects doing the usual things. Or rather not doing them. Miura started better but both goals came from moves down his side. Wakizaka mostly absent again. Presumably Hasebe will change back to the previous starting line up with his first subs (he didn’t. But there was a similar lack of inspiration in the changes he did make). The Ito-not-defending criticism seems to have meant that he’s now playing behind Miura and in defensive midfield. One shot! One fucking shot! (Actually it was two as I forgot the free kick, but I think the point still stands).
2nd half -
A slight improvement, maybe, but that’s basically saying we were totally shit as opposed to unbelievably, staggeringly shit. Like in the first half, massively out shot. No changes at half time was a surprise (and almost certainly a mistake). When the changes did come, they were the deeply uninspiring swapping of the whole of the front three with not even a hint of trying something different and instead retaining the tactics that had failed for the whole of the first half and pretty much all of the JEF game. Astonishing that Miura and Wakizaka played the whole game. I feel like I am being gaslit. Whilst I’m not going as far as some and saying Hasebe out, he has to take full responsibility for this absolute turd of a performance. Reading an auto translation of Hasebe’s post match comments, it seems that he didn’t think the game was as bad as I did. One of us is clearly out of our mind.
Good day -
I mean come on. Good day for Tokyo I guess. I think they played well. I think so, but to be honest it’s tricky to say as we were so accommodating. Can’t really say anything positive in any way about us. Maybe good day for people who like seeing misplaced passes from the club captain and for people who like to see tackles, as every time we had the ball in some space, we immediately stopped, checked back and headed for the nearest opposition player to let them have a go at getting the ball off of us. And I suppose it was a good day for Yamahara as he got his first goal for us and it was a nice one. But it still infuriates me that the club have been hyping it up on social media apparently oblivious to the fact that we got absolutely destroyed in the this game.
Bad day -
Bad day for anyone who has any connection to Frontale. Bad day for me especially as I was quite hungover for this match. Can you imagine how bad that must have been? It would have been terrible even if I was feeling well, but the unbelievable dragging time, combined with the bright sun in my eyes and the constant dull headache wasn’t the combination I was hoping for. And as you can maybe tell from the irritated tone of this blog post, I’ve only gone and put myself in the same situation today after hitting the commiseration beers a bit too heavily considering the state I was in. At least I’ve avoided the sunburn today as I’ve stayed home and stewed in my own misery instead of going out.
Any other business -
- I think one of the most significant aspects of this game, and the two previous games, was the unbelievable amount of shots we were letting the opposition have. It was 27 to 13 in the first game, 22 to 17 in the second game and 22 to fucking 7 in this match. I can’t even begin to imagine how many goals we would have conceded if we’d had last season’s patched together back line in place. And it’s no surprise the opposition are getting so many shots as we seem to be approaching every match like a defending practice training session where after we thwart an attack we pass the ball forward and back to the apposition to give them another go. To be fair to some of the players, we probably could have got another clean sheet in this match in spite of the numerous opportunities they had if FC Tokyo hadn’t been so cheeky as to make sure their attacks went down the side where there was someone who couldn’t be bothered to do anything apart from half-hearted, actually that’s too generous, one-tenth-hearted attempts to stroll back into position, usually long after the ball was in the back of the net. Of course we don’t want to be facing so many chances, but if you want to be slightly positive you could say it’s a miracle we haven’t got battered every game. We have a goal keeper who’s trying his best, two centre backs, a right back and a couple of defensive midfielders who are trying to stem the tide, but ahead of them it basically seems to be a bunch of mannequins who the ball is just bouncing off of. On the rare occasions we did manage to get into their half without passing the ball directly the them, it was either a case of Erison (or later on Romanic) competing for the ball and then having no-one to help them out in any way, or a case of us making a quick break and with the goal beckoning deciding to slow things down and play the ball backwards. Even with a minute left in the game we were still patiently passing the ball around at the back. Absolutely fucking useless. And absolutely no sign of any other options or ideas. Just plugging away with the same formation that we’ve been playing for years, now being done to dramatically diminishing returns.
- In the last post I brought up Hasebe’s tactical adjustment screwdriver. Against Kashiwa he’d tuned things a bit too far towards the attacking and forget about defending end of the scale. Against JEF he adjusted too far the other way and removed any hope of attacking. In this match, he couldn’t quite decide what to do and in his twiddling back and forth accidentally broke both the screw and the screwdriver. All out attack is one kind of approach. As is backs-against-the-wall full hearted defending. Both perhaps have their merits. In this match we abandoned both of them and went for shocking defending and almost no attacking. Hasebe definitely tweaked things a bit from the Chiba game where online geniuses were commenting that Ito wasn’t defending enough, perhaps ignoring the fact that he really is supposed to focus more on the whole attacking thing given that he’s playing up front. It was clear that Hasebe had told the wingers to sit back and join in with the defence a bit more. When Miura actually could be bothered to move his lazy arse he was more often than not ahead of Ito who seemed to have been cowed into sitting in front of the centre backs at times. This probably didn’t really help us keep the ball when we got out of our own half. When Marcinho came on he was doing the same thing, and let’s be honest, we don’t really want Marcinho defending with his straight-red-cards-for-shocking-tackles record. It’s possibly significant that both of these players were playing in front of Miura so maybe they felt like they had to try to cover for some of his absolutely-don’t-give-a-shit moments.
- Hasebe has some work to do now. Our next match is Mito at home, on paper one of our easier fixtures. He needs to make some changes. Will have have the guts to drop Miura. I don’t think so. Wakizaka will almost certainly not get dropped. I wouldn’t be surprised if he goes back to the starting line up he used for the first two games. I think the scariest thing is that he’s used pretty much the same players for every match. Ozeki was strongly linked with a move overseas before the start of the season but he has hardly got a look in. Kanda is… nobody knows. But I guess we’ve been playing with the same formation where whoever plays up front just looks completely isolated so we have to presume that if he plays there the same thing will happen to him too. I know we had quite a lot of people who weren’t training recently due to a variety of reasons. I really hope that those reasons sort themselves out soon. Hasebe says he’s picking the team based on the form players are showing so if that’s true, presumably he’ll be dropping Miura and Wakizaka, right? And I don’t think Yamamoto, who Hasebe dropped due to him playing terribly this year but then turned to as his great hope from the bench, should be playing either at the moment. I know this won’t happen, but even if we only have the same group of players available for the next match and we stick to the same formation, (which it seems we most likely will do, after all, if it ain’t broke… oh actually it is totally fucking broken…), we can definitely put out a starting line up that is much more likely to get the job done. Uremovic should be playing, I reckon. Move Matsunagane to right back (or put Noda there), play Yamahara at left back, Kawahara and Tachibanada in front of them and Ozeki ahead of them. And it probably doesn’t matter which three play up front, but maybe tell them to try to score a goal instead of get a world record for consecutive passes in a non-threatening area. I know Ito wants to play on the left, but it’s definitely the case that him playing on the right last year was a lot more effective than he’s been so far this year. And don’t forget all the exciting young players we have. Hasebe apparently has forgotten them. He’s got to do something after we finally got exactly what we deserved for two or maybe even three games where we have got totally battered.
WOW!
Skipping this again as the main contenders I can think of are employed by our club and that wasn’t really the aim for this section. Ref was cack again, but that’s just par for the course.
Next up Mito. Come on Hasebe, do something please. Maybe we can keep the opposition shot count under 20 this time? Is that too much to ask?
Team
GK 49. Svend BRODERSEN
DF 29. YAMAHARA Reon
DF 2. MATSUNAGANE Yuto
DF 3. TANIGUCHI Hiroto (Yellow card 90')
DF 13. MIURA Sota
MF 19. KAWAHARA So
MF 8. TACHIBANADA Kento
MF 41. IENAGA Akihiro
MF 14. WAKIZAKA Yasuto (Yellow card 59')
MF 17. ITO Tatsuya
FW 9. ERISON
Subs
GK 21. HAYASAKA Yuki
MF 6. YAMAMOTO Yuki (on for KAWAHARA 73')
MF 16. OZEKI Yuto (on for TACHIBANADA 88')
MF 18. KONNO Kazuya (on for IENAGA 56')
DF 22. Filip UREMOVIC
FW 23. MARCINHO (on for ITO 56')
FW 24. MIYAGI Ten
DF 30. NODA Hiroto
FW 91. Lazar ROMANIC (on for ERISON 56')
Man of the match
Goals
MARCELO RYAN (FC Tokyo) 18' 0-1
YAMAHARA (Frontale) 31' 1-1
MUROYA (FC Tokyo) 37' 1-2
Highlights
