Kawasaki Frontale 5 - 3 Kashiwa Reysol
Football is back! And I was quite excited about it. I was on the J Talk podcast earlier this week and thought that maybe I might have jinxed our whole season by showing some kind of optimism. I’d predicted us winning 4-1 to various people last week, so was happy to score even more goals than my crazy jinxy prediction. I definitely couldn’t have predicted we’d still be so shaky at the back though. But maybe we should instead focus on Kashiwa being quite good at attacking. I’m working out how to go forward with this blog so I’m trying out some new headings. We’ll see how they go in the future. First attempt today.
1st half
We were unstoppable, their defence was awful! Well for a bit anyway and then they come into it a bit. Lots of players looked bright. Still looked a bit shaky at the back but nowhere near as shaky as last season. They had plenty of useless possession. Has Oniki taken over at Kashiwa? Goals! Excitement! Slight peril…
2nd half
Bit of a heart in mouth half as we rode our luck. Given the scoreline though I guess we can still call it a thumping, right? Possession stat seemed pretty reflective of the game, but then again, Kashiwa continued with the Oniki style pass for the sake of passing. We took our chances. It was delightful. Lots of joy but with a large portion of heart in the mouth terror that we were going to mess up what started as a very comfortable lead.
Good day...
...for some of the new signings. I was most excited about our defensive reinforcements but we still conceded loads. Brodersen can catch the ball and I think that saved us a few goals as I could clearly imagine Yamaguchi palming it off to an opposition attacker in the same situation. (A major way we conceded goals last year). Taniguchi seemed composed and an improvement. But I should mention again that we did still concede loads of goals. Matsunagane seemed to stand out more, even before he scored. Amazing that he came from playing right back at Fukushima intermittently and straight into the side at centre back. Obviously this was due to injuries, but… maybe he has a future there. Bravo! Konno and Yamahara were linking up really well in the first half and looked lively. Much more excited about them than I expected to be. Oh, and Erison scored the fastest ever Frontale hattrick. Great stuff.
Bad day...
Yamamoto stood out as someone who seemed very rusty. Wakizaka too, but he took the edge of it by scoring a nerves-easing goal late on. Miura had his ups and downs. I don’t want to watch the highlights, but I’ve heard that their goals did seem to come down his side. Maybe he’s still dreaming of Sweden. (This section isn’t necessarily just for our players, but on this occasion seems to be focused on them…).
Bad day...
Yamamoto stood out as someone who seemed very rusty. Wakizaka too, but he took the edge of it by scoring a nerves-easing goal late on. Miura had his ups and downs. I don’t want to watch the highlights, but I’ve heard that their goals did seem to come down his side. Maybe he’s still dreaming of Sweden. (This section isn’t necessarily just for our players, but on this occasion seems to be focused on them…).
Maybe a bad day also for people who like calm situations and steady defending. There wasn't much of either on display.
Any other business
- I enjoyed the weather trolling the league's ridiculous decision to shift the season to match the European one. I don’t really understand why they thought they needed to do it. I know they are planning a mid-season break, (and who doesn’t love a mid season break right? To break up all momentum and erm…), but if a match at the start of February in Kanto is close to being disrupted by snow, I can’t imagine how bad things will be further up north. It wasn’t as bad as I thought it might be in the stands, but I did prepare extremely thoroughly. And it definitely encouraged me to spend as little time in the stadium as possible which I imagine isn't a great thing for the clubs' finances. Massive lumps of snow occasionally falling off the top of the stand onto the people in the front row was amusing, but perhaps the amusement could have turned a bit dark if the massive lumps had been a bit more massive. Or frozen.
- It was surprising that our usual defensive crisis managed to kick in even before our first game with our big centre back signing being paired with Matsunagane, a relatively inexperienced right back. I’ve mentioned this kind of stuff above, but only having Hayashi (in the youth team last year) on the bench when it came to centre backs is a bit of a worry. I’m guessing everyone else is injured. But I suppose the only way is up from here, right? And even with our makeshift defence, we managed (just about) to win.
- Seems like Kashiwa away always cover up the ’STUPID’ part of the ‘WE’RE KASHIWA STUPID’ banner. I don’t blame them. Maybe they could work on that other ‘Play Dirty Go Hard’ flag next. Thank they probably need to cover the last three of those four words though. Or maybe get someone to proof read them before they order any new stuff.
WOW!
(Maybe this section should actually be called WOTW, and I’ll leave it to you to work out what the letters stand for. I’ll give you a clue though and say that the O, missing T and W are ‘of the week’).
IKEUCHI Akihiko -
In the first half, I was a bit worried that I wouldn’t have anyone to give this to, but don’t worry the ref Ikeuchi wasn’t going to stand for that. He’s been responsible for so many awful decisions in the past, that it’s difficult to remember the details anymore. Some of those decisions resulted in him being demoted to J2 duty for a while. But clearly the league feels like he’s done his time and further equally idiotic judgements won’t matter. To be fair, I don’t think he was that much of a disaster or indeed a W in this match, but I did get quite annoyed with his apparent belief that any non-Japanese player with a serious face and a short haircut was definitely a tough guy cheat and would get nothing. Romanic was absolutely robbed by him on a few occasions. I don’t know what would have to happen to him for him to have got a free kick from Ikeuchi. Perhaps the only option would be if he was fouled by another foreign short haired serious faced player. It was kind of disgusting, but thankfully it didn’t matter in the end. Also seemed like he was absolutely blind to foul throws too. But then that’s not only down to him, I guess. Ikeuchi was shite, but not as shite as he has been in the past. High praise! So maybe not appropriate for this occasion, but his treatment of Romanic means that he definitely is the WOW. (For your information, the first W does not stand for winner, or wonder).
So, how did you like the new format? It seems to have gone on for about the same amount of time as it always does, so I might need to tweak that slightly. But you know, once I get going on moaning about a ref I can’t really stop myself. Next up, JEF Chiba away next weekend. I’ve got my ticket. The first game has gone well. Long may that continue!
Team
Any other business
- I enjoyed the weather trolling the league's ridiculous decision to shift the season to match the European one. I don’t really understand why they thought they needed to do it. I know they are planning a mid-season break, (and who doesn’t love a mid season break right? To break up all momentum and erm…), but if a match at the start of February in Kanto is close to being disrupted by snow, I can’t imagine how bad things will be further up north. It wasn’t as bad as I thought it might be in the stands, but I did prepare extremely thoroughly. And it definitely encouraged me to spend as little time in the stadium as possible which I imagine isn't a great thing for the clubs' finances. Massive lumps of snow occasionally falling off the top of the stand onto the people in the front row was amusing, but perhaps the amusement could have turned a bit dark if the massive lumps had been a bit more massive. Or frozen.
- It was surprising that our usual defensive crisis managed to kick in even before our first game with our big centre back signing being paired with Matsunagane, a relatively inexperienced right back. I’ve mentioned this kind of stuff above, but only having Hayashi (in the youth team last year) on the bench when it came to centre backs is a bit of a worry. I’m guessing everyone else is injured. But I suppose the only way is up from here, right? And even with our makeshift defence, we managed (just about) to win.
- Seems like Kashiwa away always cover up the ’STUPID’ part of the ‘WE’RE KASHIWA STUPID’ banner. I don’t blame them. Maybe they could work on that other ‘Play Dirty Go Hard’ flag next. Thank they probably need to cover the last three of those four words though. Or maybe get someone to proof read them before they order any new stuff.
WOW!
(Maybe this section should actually be called WOTW, and I’ll leave it to you to work out what the letters stand for. I’ll give you a clue though and say that the O, missing T and W are ‘of the week’).
IKEUCHI Akihiko -
In the first half, I was a bit worried that I wouldn’t have anyone to give this to, but don’t worry the ref Ikeuchi wasn’t going to stand for that. He’s been responsible for so many awful decisions in the past, that it’s difficult to remember the details anymore. Some of those decisions resulted in him being demoted to J2 duty for a while. But clearly the league feels like he’s done his time and further equally idiotic judgements won’t matter. To be fair, I don’t think he was that much of a disaster or indeed a W in this match, but I did get quite annoyed with his apparent belief that any non-Japanese player with a serious face and a short haircut was definitely a tough guy cheat and would get nothing. Romanic was absolutely robbed by him on a few occasions. I don’t know what would have to happen to him for him to have got a free kick from Ikeuchi. Perhaps the only option would be if he was fouled by another foreign short haired serious faced player. It was kind of disgusting, but thankfully it didn’t matter in the end. Also seemed like he was absolutely blind to foul throws too. But then that’s not only down to him, I guess. Ikeuchi was shite, but not as shite as he has been in the past. High praise! So maybe not appropriate for this occasion, but his treatment of Romanic means that he definitely is the WOW. (For your information, the first W does not stand for winner, or wonder).
So, how did you like the new format? It seems to have gone on for about the same amount of time as it always does, so I might need to tweak that slightly. But you know, once I get going on moaning about a ref I can’t really stop myself. Next up, JEF Chiba away next weekend. I’ve got my ticket. The first game has gone well. Long may that continue!
Team
GK 49. Svend BRODERSEN
DF 29. YAMAHARA Reon
DF 2. MATSUNAGANE Yuto
DF 3. TANIGUCHI Hiroto
DF 13. MIURA Sota
MF 19. KAWAHARA So
MF 6. YAMAMOTO Yuki
MF 18. KONNO Kazuya
MF 14. WAKIZAKA Yasuto
MF 17. ITO Tatsuya
FW 9. ERISON
Subs
GK 1. YAMAGUCHI Louis
MF 8. TACHIBANADA Kento (on for YAMAMOTO 69')
MF 16. OZEKI Yuto (on for KONNO 74')
FW 23. MARCINHO (on for ITO 59')
FW 24. MIYAGI Ten
DF 30. NODA Hiroto (on for MIURA 74')
DF 32. HAYASHI Shunsuke
MF 41. IENAGA Akihiro
FW 91. Lazar ROMANIC (on for ERISON 69')
Man of the match
There’s no way you can’t give this to someone who gets a hattrick, but maybe you can also give it jointly to someone else too so …
ERISON and MATSUNAGANE Yuto - The former scoring goals for fun and looking more dangerous than ever before in a Frontale shirt. The latter getting an absolutely out of the blue start, out of position and doing a really good job. Weird to say that when we conceded three goals, (and I haven’t checked the replays), but if we concede three and score five (one of them from Matsunagane) every week, I don’t think anyone’s going to complain too much!
Goals
ERISON (Frontale) 6' PEN 1-0
ERISON (Frontale) 11' 2-0
ERISON (Frontale) 25' 3-0
HOSOYA (Kashiwa) 38' 3-1
SEGAWA (Kashiwa) 60' 3-2
MATSUNAGANE (Frontale) 68' 4-2
YAMAUCHI (Kashiwa) 81' 4-3
WAKIZAKA (Frontale) 90+4' 5-3
HOSOYA (Kashiwa) 38' 3-1
SEGAWA (Kashiwa) 60' 3-2
MATSUNAGANE (Frontale) 68' 4-2
YAMAUCHI (Kashiwa) 81' 4-3
WAKIZAKA (Frontale) 90+4' 5-3
Highlights
