Machida Zelvia 1 - 1 Kawasaki Frontale
(Machida win 3 - 1 on penalties)
With most of the league off on an international break, maybe all eyes were on this massive game being played in a stadium with a cauldron like atmosphere. Hmmmm. It’s impressive that we’ve arrived in a nothing to play for situation before we’ve even got half way through the league. Maybe this will give us an opportunity to try some new things. Well, we definitely will have the opportunity, but whether we will or not is another question. There was a certain amount of experimentation with this line up, but it’s difficult to say whether that was enforced or whether Hasebe was finally cutting loose. Probably the former, but to give the boss the benifit of the doubt, which seems to be something that not many are willing to do anymore, I think he at least tried something interesting in this match which kind of worked for a while. I’m slightly surprised by my fairly laid back feeling after this match. After all Machida are a truly scummy club and I would have loved to have beaten them. At the same time, results are pretty insignificant now, given that Kashima already have double the points we do after only 45% of the season being completed. So maybe you might be surprised to see me reasonably positive after this match. But don't forget, it was a draw. Don’t believe the people who tell you Machida won. 🙂
Good day -
Kind of good day for Hasebe as he got fully into the spirit of things and tried to fake out Machida with our team announcement. Miyagi was listed as a defender, presumably making everyone think that it was going be a 3-4-2-1 formation. Instead Miyagi played up front with Erison in a 4-4-2. (Although Flashscore disagrees with this and said it was a 3-4-2-1. As did DAZN). As far as I'm concerned though, Hasebe still seems to be terrified of playing a back three. This may be something to do with injuries though. Maybe. It’s feels weird to say Hasebe’s changes to the starting line up were good as the first half of this game, whilst feeling like an improvement on the debacle of the previous week, ended up with the same score and even less goal threat from us. The second half though was a different matter. We really had them rocking and could have, maybe should have won. Clearly we have good players, but the morale is really suffering at the moment, so hopefully the second half gave us a boost in that respect. It’s a bit of a shame that we had to have the penalties at the end though as that may have set things back again slightly. There were a few players who had a good game I thought, but I’ll save that for the man of the match section.
Bad day -
Kind of bad day for Hasebe. Bet you didn’t see that coming, did you? We still can’t win. The first half saw us have two shots, both off target and we could easily have been 2-0 down. I saw some criticism of his tactics when he replaced two reliable, (touch wood), penalty takers late on with some players who probably couldn’t be trusted so much, but I think I’ll give him the benefit of the doubt and say that I was pleased that he made the changes as it meant we were really trying to win the game in the 90 minutes and could have done. Erison was looking knackered, I think I might have left Miyagi on though. The subs were a bit strange in this match as they followed the old Oniki pattern of moving someone all over the pitch in small stages. In this match it was Miyagi. And the first change seemed to mess up what had been a quite effective system. But what do I know? I always feel uncomfortable writing these kind of hamfisted attempts at some kind of analysis. So let’s double down and ask why it always seemed that when Machida were crossing, we always had either Tachibanada or Kawahara being the ones challenging for the headers. If Tachibanada had been just a little taller we might have won the match. But if he’d been a little taller, he presumably wouldn’t have fulfilled the criteria we look for when we’re signing players.
High point -
Definitely seeing Erik get sent off. Even when the ref is dodgy, you do sometimes get a moment of absolute justice. No surprise the ref missed it in the moment though.
Low point -
Their goal being scored through the axis or arseholery combination of Soma and Erik. I’ve really got to stop slagging players off before the game as it seems that every time I do it they then go on to score.
Any other business -
- Wonder what happened to Wakizaka? Not on the bench even. I don’t think he would really fit into this system, but you’ve got to think that Hasebe would still include him on the bench. Maybe he’s injured or maybe we could start a rumour about him and Hasebe having a falling out. (I don’t think this has happened, just for the record). I don’t think he’s had a particularly good season so far, so don’t mind him not playing. The bench looked quite light in midfield though, which makes me think it’s probably an injury.
- I saw a Machida fan at the station wearing a shirt with the name Kuroda on the back and instead of a number, a big GO on it. What kind of person admires Kuroda? Very bizarre.
- They may have enough big bucks to buy or at least compete with Vissel Kobe for every ex J League star who's made a slightly disappointing move to Europe and is returning to Japan with their tail between their legs, but it’s clear that money can’t buy everything. One of the most amusing things, (in a laugh at them way, rather than with them), is the fact that the merch stall outside the stadium is referred to as a 'weapons and armor shop' and is decorated with those kind of images too. Guess they are trying to make a big thing out of the ‘Fortress Nozuta’ thing. Dunno if that really makes sense though as I don't think it’s somewhere that the opposition team doesn’t like to visit. Certainly there isn’t going to be anything resembling a fortress when it comes to the Machida fans who are pretty quiet and not exactly numerous. Maybe a lot of them were still trying to get to the stadium long after the game had been completed. I don’t think the numerous hooligan/right wing related flags are going to make them more feared either. Particularly not the one behind the goal that just said ‘The Blokes’. Think I might have written all of this last year maybe. So I guess it must all be because of those guys with the big flags wearing the medieval style bondage gear on the pitch before the match. Certainly had me shaking with fear. Well, right up until one of them slipped over mid-routine, presumably giving himself a medieval style leather wedgie. Fair play to him, he didn’t seem to let it interfere with his big flag waving afterwards,
- The big talking point about Machida away is normally the access. To be honest though, getting there was a breeze this time. As my bus pulled away from the station around 13:00, the line of people waiting was quite short and there was another bendy bus waiting. So it looks like they’ve got that part sorted. Afterwards our plan was to walk the 5km back to Tsurukawa. If you’ve got to walk one way, it certainly makes sense to do it downhill. I’ve no idea how bad the buses were afterwards, but the queue did look impressively long. As this is all sounding a bit too positive, let’s undercut that. Apparently in response to the awful bus situation after games, they have now introduced a new system, whereby if you pay a premium fee you’ll be able to get on a bus before anyone who is paying the normal fee. A pretty despicable way to do things, I think. But in the light of their recent rise, it’s easy to say C.R.E.A.M. (Cash Rules Everything Around Machida).
- Fucking hell our penalties were bad. In a way I’m glad that three people missed as it doesn’t put the guilt on any one person. But when we saw Kobayashi stepping up for one, it was difficult not to remember the time when he was our regular penalty taker and the fact that it was definitely not a good idea to implement that policy. I suppose we can take some consolation in the fact that all three were saved rather than missed, can’t we? Hmmmm, actually maybe that’s not as positive as it might sound. Combine this with the fact that penalties definitely don’t seem to be Brodersen’s speciality, it’s a bit of a worry. But at the same time, this is only going to be an issue in this stupid half season as normally we won’t be having many penalty shoot outs. On the same topic, I wasn’t particularly enthused about this league’s format before the start of the season so was surprised when I heard some people saying that the penalties were a bit of fun. If those people still think this, I’d be surprised, as I find the shoot outs quite annoying already. Definitely boring. And they way the staff on the sidelines line up as if the shoot out is to decide the World Cup final is kind of irritating too. Oh well, at least we know we won’t have any more than 11 more penalty shoot outs this season. What a relief!
WOW! -
With no Shimoda in the match day squad for Machida this could easily just be a list of their players, their manager and the ref. But let’s get a little more specific. Of course Erik, Soma, Tani and Kuroda aromatically qualify for this category, even when we’re not playing Machida, so they definitely get it. The new Machida striker / beanpole Yengi was quite annoying, his main abilities seeming to be falling over and complaining to the ref. But once again it has to be the man in black who takes the cake. Ueda had definitely researched Machida before the match. He probably read the part about them being fierce and the ground being a fortress and was pleasantly surprised. But he clearly had also heard about power harassment and maybe either in an attempt to avoid being harassed himself, or in order to stop some backroom staff being singled out as ‘dissenters’ he decided to give everything their way. Even with the red card, he didn’t even see it as a yellow card offence till he was told to get a grip by VAR. There were multiple yellow cards that he wasn’t interested in, instead going for a policy of just let the Machida ‘blokes’ express themselves through a bit of elbowing, diving, pulling, hacking and of course whinging. There was one occasion where they tried to steal almost half a pitch length at a throw in. The ref told them to go back. They did it again. He told them to go back again. They did it a third time and the ref decided to just turn his back rather than have to do anything. I know refs are supposed to let things go a bit this year, but Ueda’s commitment to letting things flow clearly favoured Machida. I don’t think Erison got a single foul on him given. In the past Ueda has been pleasantly insignificant in the matches we’ve had with him. But he definitely was all in favour of being assisted in his decision making by the Machida players in this match and they were well up for telling him which way he should give everything.
Next up, Urawa at home next weekend. They are about as shit as we are this year, so everything points to it being a stinker of a match. We definitely owe them one for the pasting they gave us at the end of last season. But hang on, that was mainly Yamaguchi’s doing, so maybe we owe him instead. No midweek game means that maybe we can get some players back from injury. At the same time, we don’t really know who is injured and how seriously, so this is all merely guesswork. I will say though that we saw some players after the game (Sasaki and Ozeki) so maybe they are closer to coming back than some others (Taniguchi). After that match we’ll be halfway through the half season. Obviously it’s over already, so I guess the only fun we can really have now is messing up other people’s seasons and maybe seeing some new ideas. I am praying that we can see both of these things at some stage in the next 11 games.
Team
GK 49. Svend BRODERSEN
DF 29. YAMAHARA Reon
DF 2. MATSUNAGANE Yuto
DF 28. YAMAMURA Yuichi
DF 13. MIURA Sota
MF 19. KAWAHARA So
MF 8. TACHIBANADA Kento
MF 17. ITO Tatsuya
MF 23. MARCINHO
FW 24. MIYAGI Ten
FW 9. ERISON
Subs
GK 33. LEE Keun-Hyeong
MF 6. YAMAMOTO Yuki (on for ITO 76')
FW 11. KOBAYASHI Yu (on for TACHIBANADA 86')
MF 15. MYOGAN Toya (on for MARCINHO 86')
DF 27. KAMIHASHI Ryota
DF 30. NODA Hiroto
DF 32. HAYASHI Shunsuke
FW 38. KANDA Soma (on for MIYAGI 90+1')
FW 91. Lazar ROMANIC (on for ERISON 90+1')
Man of the match
There are a few players who deserve a mention here I think. I’d like to give it to Maruyama who was great after a very dodgy cameo against YFM. Similarly Matsunagane did petty well after a confidence mashing last match. Kawahara looked good in the middle I thought. And Miura played well again. Maybe he really needed that dropping against Verdy. But I think it has to go to someone who I probably never imagined would ever get this ever again…
MIYAGI Ten - has really flattered to deceive since he came back from his loans… whenever that happened. Seemed to vacillate between being utterly focused on scoring a goal by getting the ball and not giving it to anyone before shooting (and missing), and hanging around looking not very interested waiting for a penalty he could take (and score). But in this match, playing up front with Erison, I thought he had the best game he’s ever had for us. Clearly this is the position he should play in. Whether he’ll get more chances to do so in the future, I’m not sure, but this was a really refreshing and promising game from him.
Good day -
Kind of good day for Hasebe as he got fully into the spirit of things and tried to fake out Machida with our team announcement. Miyagi was listed as a defender, presumably making everyone think that it was going be a 3-4-2-1 formation. Instead Miyagi played up front with Erison in a 4-4-2. (Although Flashscore disagrees with this and said it was a 3-4-2-1. As did DAZN). As far as I'm concerned though, Hasebe still seems to be terrified of playing a back three. This may be something to do with injuries though. Maybe. It’s feels weird to say Hasebe’s changes to the starting line up were good as the first half of this game, whilst feeling like an improvement on the debacle of the previous week, ended up with the same score and even less goal threat from us. The second half though was a different matter. We really had them rocking and could have, maybe should have won. Clearly we have good players, but the morale is really suffering at the moment, so hopefully the second half gave us a boost in that respect. It’s a bit of a shame that we had to have the penalties at the end though as that may have set things back again slightly. There were a few players who had a good game I thought, but I’ll save that for the man of the match section.
Bad day -
Kind of bad day for Hasebe. Bet you didn’t see that coming, did you? We still can’t win. The first half saw us have two shots, both off target and we could easily have been 2-0 down. I saw some criticism of his tactics when he replaced two reliable, (touch wood), penalty takers late on with some players who probably couldn’t be trusted so much, but I think I’ll give him the benefit of the doubt and say that I was pleased that he made the changes as it meant we were really trying to win the game in the 90 minutes and could have done. Erison was looking knackered, I think I might have left Miyagi on though. The subs were a bit strange in this match as they followed the old Oniki pattern of moving someone all over the pitch in small stages. In this match it was Miyagi. And the first change seemed to mess up what had been a quite effective system. But what do I know? I always feel uncomfortable writing these kind of hamfisted attempts at some kind of analysis. So let’s double down and ask why it always seemed that when Machida were crossing, we always had either Tachibanada or Kawahara being the ones challenging for the headers. If Tachibanada had been just a little taller we might have won the match. But if he’d been a little taller, he presumably wouldn’t have fulfilled the criteria we look for when we’re signing players.
High point -
Definitely seeing Erik get sent off. Even when the ref is dodgy, you do sometimes get a moment of absolute justice. No surprise the ref missed it in the moment though.
Low point -
Their goal being scored through the axis or arseholery combination of Soma and Erik. I’ve really got to stop slagging players off before the game as it seems that every time I do it they then go on to score.
Any other business -
- Wonder what happened to Wakizaka? Not on the bench even. I don’t think he would really fit into this system, but you’ve got to think that Hasebe would still include him on the bench. Maybe he’s injured or maybe we could start a rumour about him and Hasebe having a falling out. (I don’t think this has happened, just for the record). I don’t think he’s had a particularly good season so far, so don’t mind him not playing. The bench looked quite light in midfield though, which makes me think it’s probably an injury.
- I saw a Machida fan at the station wearing a shirt with the name Kuroda on the back and instead of a number, a big GO on it. What kind of person admires Kuroda? Very bizarre.
- They may have enough big bucks to buy or at least compete with Vissel Kobe for every ex J League star who's made a slightly disappointing move to Europe and is returning to Japan with their tail between their legs, but it’s clear that money can’t buy everything. One of the most amusing things, (in a laugh at them way, rather than with them), is the fact that the merch stall outside the stadium is referred to as a 'weapons and armor shop' and is decorated with those kind of images too. Guess they are trying to make a big thing out of the ‘Fortress Nozuta’ thing. Dunno if that really makes sense though as I don't think it’s somewhere that the opposition team doesn’t like to visit. Certainly there isn’t going to be anything resembling a fortress when it comes to the Machida fans who are pretty quiet and not exactly numerous. Maybe a lot of them were still trying to get to the stadium long after the game had been completed. I don’t think the numerous hooligan/right wing related flags are going to make them more feared either. Particularly not the one behind the goal that just said ‘The Blokes’. Think I might have written all of this last year maybe. So I guess it must all be because of those guys with the big flags wearing the medieval style bondage gear on the pitch before the match. Certainly had me shaking with fear. Well, right up until one of them slipped over mid-routine, presumably giving himself a medieval style leather wedgie. Fair play to him, he didn’t seem to let it interfere with his big flag waving afterwards,
- The big talking point about Machida away is normally the access. To be honest though, getting there was a breeze this time. As my bus pulled away from the station around 13:00, the line of people waiting was quite short and there was another bendy bus waiting. So it looks like they’ve got that part sorted. Afterwards our plan was to walk the 5km back to Tsurukawa. If you’ve got to walk one way, it certainly makes sense to do it downhill. I’ve no idea how bad the buses were afterwards, but the queue did look impressively long. As this is all sounding a bit too positive, let’s undercut that. Apparently in response to the awful bus situation after games, they have now introduced a new system, whereby if you pay a premium fee you’ll be able to get on a bus before anyone who is paying the normal fee. A pretty despicable way to do things, I think. But in the light of their recent rise, it’s easy to say C.R.E.A.M. (Cash Rules Everything Around Machida).
- Fucking hell our penalties were bad. In a way I’m glad that three people missed as it doesn’t put the guilt on any one person. But when we saw Kobayashi stepping up for one, it was difficult not to remember the time when he was our regular penalty taker and the fact that it was definitely not a good idea to implement that policy. I suppose we can take some consolation in the fact that all three were saved rather than missed, can’t we? Hmmmm, actually maybe that’s not as positive as it might sound. Combine this with the fact that penalties definitely don’t seem to be Brodersen’s speciality, it’s a bit of a worry. But at the same time, this is only going to be an issue in this stupid half season as normally we won’t be having many penalty shoot outs. On the same topic, I wasn’t particularly enthused about this league’s format before the start of the season so was surprised when I heard some people saying that the penalties were a bit of fun. If those people still think this, I’d be surprised, as I find the shoot outs quite annoying already. Definitely boring. And they way the staff on the sidelines line up as if the shoot out is to decide the World Cup final is kind of irritating too. Oh well, at least we know we won’t have any more than 11 more penalty shoot outs this season. What a relief!
WOW! -
With no Shimoda in the match day squad for Machida this could easily just be a list of their players, their manager and the ref. But let’s get a little more specific. Of course Erik, Soma, Tani and Kuroda aromatically qualify for this category, even when we’re not playing Machida, so they definitely get it. The new Machida striker / beanpole Yengi was quite annoying, his main abilities seeming to be falling over and complaining to the ref. But once again it has to be the man in black who takes the cake. Ueda had definitely researched Machida before the match. He probably read the part about them being fierce and the ground being a fortress and was pleasantly surprised. But he clearly had also heard about power harassment and maybe either in an attempt to avoid being harassed himself, or in order to stop some backroom staff being singled out as ‘dissenters’ he decided to give everything their way. Even with the red card, he didn’t even see it as a yellow card offence till he was told to get a grip by VAR. There were multiple yellow cards that he wasn’t interested in, instead going for a policy of just let the Machida ‘blokes’ express themselves through a bit of elbowing, diving, pulling, hacking and of course whinging. There was one occasion where they tried to steal almost half a pitch length at a throw in. The ref told them to go back. They did it again. He told them to go back again. They did it a third time and the ref decided to just turn his back rather than have to do anything. I know refs are supposed to let things go a bit this year, but Ueda’s commitment to letting things flow clearly favoured Machida. I don’t think Erison got a single foul on him given. In the past Ueda has been pleasantly insignificant in the matches we’ve had with him. But he definitely was all in favour of being assisted in his decision making by the Machida players in this match and they were well up for telling him which way he should give everything.
Next up, Urawa at home next weekend. They are about as shit as we are this year, so everything points to it being a stinker of a match. We definitely owe them one for the pasting they gave us at the end of last season. But hang on, that was mainly Yamaguchi’s doing, so maybe we owe him instead. No midweek game means that maybe we can get some players back from injury. At the same time, we don’t really know who is injured and how seriously, so this is all merely guesswork. I will say though that we saw some players after the game (Sasaki and Ozeki) so maybe they are closer to coming back than some others (Taniguchi). After that match we’ll be halfway through the half season. Obviously it’s over already, so I guess the only fun we can really have now is messing up other people’s seasons and maybe seeing some new ideas. I am praying that we can see both of these things at some stage in the next 11 games.
Team
GK 49. Svend BRODERSEN
DF 29. YAMAHARA Reon
DF 2. MATSUNAGANE Yuto
DF 28. YAMAMURA Yuichi
DF 13. MIURA Sota
MF 19. KAWAHARA So
MF 8. TACHIBANADA Kento
MF 17. ITO Tatsuya
MF 23. MARCINHO
FW 24. MIYAGI Ten
FW 9. ERISON
Subs
GK 33. LEE Keun-Hyeong
MF 6. YAMAMOTO Yuki (on for ITO 76')
FW 11. KOBAYASHI Yu (on for TACHIBANADA 86')
MF 15. MYOGAN Toya (on for MARCINHO 86')
DF 27. KAMIHASHI Ryota
DF 30. NODA Hiroto
DF 32. HAYASHI Shunsuke
FW 38. KANDA Soma (on for MIYAGI 90+1')
FW 91. Lazar ROMANIC (on for ERISON 90+1')
Man of the match
There are a few players who deserve a mention here I think. I’d like to give it to Maruyama who was great after a very dodgy cameo against YFM. Similarly Matsunagane did petty well after a confidence mashing last match. Kawahara looked good in the middle I thought. And Miura played well again. Maybe he really needed that dropping against Verdy. But I think it has to go to someone who I probably never imagined would ever get this ever again…
MIYAGI Ten - has really flattered to deceive since he came back from his loans… whenever that happened. Seemed to vacillate between being utterly focused on scoring a goal by getting the ball and not giving it to anyone before shooting (and missing), and hanging around looking not very interested waiting for a penalty he could take (and score). But in this match, playing up front with Erison, I thought he had the best game he’s ever had for us. Clearly this is the position he should play in. Whether he’ll get more chances to do so in the future, I’m not sure, but this was a really refreshing and promising game from him.
Goals
ERIK (Machida) 41' 1-0
ERISON (Frontale) 59' 1-1
ERIK (Machida) 41' 1-0
ERISON (Frontale) 59' 1-1
Highlights
No comments:
Post a Comment