Vs Tokyo Verdy (away) 18/3/26 J League East match 7

Tokyo Verdy 0 - 2 Kawasaki Frontale 

Well I never, this was a welcome result that gives us a bit of refreshment after some very dry weeks. I’ve long been saying that this ridiculous half season is a joke of a tournament and therefore it doesn’t matter when we lose. So logically, I shouldn’t get too excited about us winning either. But blimey, we needed something to get at least slightly happy about after some of our recent games. We never seem to play particularly well against Verdy. Some might point to our win there two years ago, but in that match, hiding not so subtly behind the five goals we scored were the four goals we conceded. And that match was very much an outlier. Games between the two teams usually tend to pretty dour and goal shy affairs. So in a way, it’s a bit of luck that we got a couple of early goals in this match. Particularly considering that getting shots on target has been a bit of a challenge for us recently. With three games in nine days, there was always going to be a bit of rotation. Well, I say that but I probably should have said ‘always should have been’ instead of ‘was always going to be’. But the rotation seemed to be effective and was pleasantly surprising. Anyway, with another game coming up soon, it is imperative that I get this out of the way quickly.

1st half -

Much better first half. Miura dropped so I feel like a genius at the moment after saying that should happen. We’ll see how long that lasts. But to be honest this is clearly a rotated side, which is exactly what we should be doing more. Team seem like they’re up for it. We’ve made chances. We’ve looked reasonably solid! Whats going on? Stats are surprisingly dull when it comes to us but don’t really reflect the way the game has gone. Wakizaka looking much better. Feel like there was maybe a bit of a clear the air bust up after the last game?

2nd half -

How nice it was to not concede! In my mind this was a fairly comfortable 90 minutes for us, but again the stats don’t seem to really back this up. Taniguchi might have a hamstring injury. The club and player are keeping shtum about this at the moment which isn’t normally a good sign. When he went off we almost saw a debut for Hayashi, but instead Miura came on and Nagane moved to centre back. Miura did a lot better than he has in any other game this season. Whether that was as a reaction to being dropped out of the starting line up or was just the fact that he normally does a bit better at the end of games, I’m not sure. Guess there are some decisions to be made for the next game now depending on the injury situation. Still no sign of Sasaki… The best thing about this game was that we didn’t constantly give the ball away. Hang on, actually the best thing was that we scored and won but not giving the ball away constantly definitely contributed to this. Yamamoto had a decent game too. Let’s not get carried away, but this was definitely a step in the right direction.


Good day -

Good day for Lee, who made it into a match day squad for the first time. Credit to Hasebe for rotating the sub goalkeeper as only in very rare situations will they actually be needed. Perhaps this was the thinking behind putting Hayashi in the squad too, but he came very close to having to come onto the pitch until Hasebe changed the plan and moved Nagane across. Was good to see Kobayashi back in the squad again. Wouldn’t mind seeing some more variation in the subs, but I understand that Hasebe probably wants to get us playing a bit better before doing those kind of things. Good day for Hasebe as he might have played a blinder by dropping Miura. Must be a good thing as we looked better without him and maybe it will also give him kick up the backside. We know he’s a good player, he just needs to get out of the funk that he’s currently in. Guess we’ll see what happens at the weekend, particularly given that the injuries are piling up again. But well done Hasebe, job done, not in a thrilling style, but job done all the same.

The ref was Nagamine and much like against JEF, he seemed to have brought his little linesman friend along with him. Do refs and linesman work in teams? It might make sense actually. I have no idea. Maybe I was just in a better mood in this match than on Saturday, (actually, that maybe is not only superfluous, it is perhaps even disgracefully misleading. I definitely was in a better mood), but I don’t recall shouting at the ref much at all. So I suppose that means he should be in the good day section.

Bad day -

Bad day for whoever has to deal with the massive amount of green light sticks that Verdy will have left over this morning. Apparently they were giving away 11000 of them and the stadium wasn’t exactly full. Check online auction or resale sites today if you’re interested in purchasing one, or perhaps even a few hundred. Not much else to snark about really. It’s quite a refreshing feeling.

Perhaps bad day for Taniguchi who on his return to his old team got booed, got injured and then got sad. Hopefully the injury isn’t serious as he seems to have settled in pretty well. 


Any other business -

I don’t think there is.


WOW! -



I also don’t think there is for this section either. 


So, a mercifully short blog post, perhaps due to the fact that I took almost zero notes and instead of getting furious by the constant cheating of the opposition club from top to bottom (Kashima) and the incompetence of the referee (Kamimura in the Kashima game), I just watched the match and had a little sing. Let’s not kid ourselves though, we still didn’t do that much in this match, but the consolation is that what we did was to a slightly higher standard than it has been recently. The big game comes next. When I say big game, I don’t mean important for the league or against tough opposition. It’s just that we’re playing YFM at ‘home’ on Sunday and perhaps many Frontale fans, certainly me anyway, will be very keen for us to win that match against our despicable and disgusting neighbours. Obviously, I think it is rotten that we’re playing a home game at the National Stadium and would normally rail against these kind of things and was set to do so. However, I heard that it was essential for us to bow to the pressure of the league and kiss the ring by having a game here in order to be able to potentially use the stadium when it comes to redeveloping Todoroki the season after next. Not sure this is 100% true and I’ve only heard a rumour, but it seems plausible. It will be interesting to see what line up Hasebe goes with. I hope on Sunday night I still have the same sense of calm that I do right now. 

 

 

Team 

GK 49. Svend BRODERSEN
DF 29. YAMAHARA Reon
DF 3. TANIGUCHI Hiroto
DF 28. MARUYAMA Yoichi
DF 2. MATSUNAGANE Yuto (Yellow card 64')
MF 8. TACHIBANADA Kento (Yellow card 51')
MF 6. YAMAMOTO Yuki
MF 18. KONNO Kazuya
MF 14. WAKIZAKA Yasuto 
MF 23. MARCINHO
FW 9. ERISON

Subs

GK 33. LEE Keun-Hyeong
FW 11. KOBAYASHI Yu
DF 13. MIURA Sota (on for TANIGUCHI 60')
MF 15. MYOGAN Toya (on for WAKIZAKA 90+4')
MF 17. ITO Tatsuya (on for KONNO 60')
MF 19. KAWAHARA So (on for TACHIBANADA 60')
DF 32. HAYASHI Shunsuke
MF 41. IENAGA Akihiro (on for MARCINHO 88')
FW 91. Lazar ROMANIC (on for ERISON 79')

Man of the match

Weird that I gave this out against Kashima but don’t feel like doing so in this match. Nagane did well, as he has every time he’s been called on this year, which remains pleasantly surprising. Marcinho got two assists too. But I think we won because of a general raising of standards all round rather than anyone standing out. Does that mean I should give it everyone or no-one? So…

EVERYONE or NO-ONE - I explained this above. You choose which one, depending on your current mood.

 

Goals

WAKIZAKA (Frontale) 9' 0-1
ERISON (Frontale) 23' 0-2

 

Highlights