Vs Sanfrecce Hiroshima (away) 22/8/26 J League match 3

Sanfrecce Hiroshima 1 - 1 Kawasaki Frontale

Our 33.3% record is still intact! Sure, when it comes to consistency, you might be also be able to point at Machida, Kashiwa and  Kashima, (played three won three), but when we come to play them, you’ve got to be confident that we’ll bend things our way and keep our perfect drawing record going. At the same time, you could point to the perfect records of Urawa and JEF, (played three lost three). The weird thing is that our next league game is against JEF and I just imagine that our perfect draw record will more likely be smashed by a defeat to them, than by a defeat to Machida in the following game. We’re so weird this year. I can’t work out if we’re alright or terrible. I think a bit of both to be honest. Certainly our shooting remains awful. It was quite fun to come back from a goal down against Sanfrecce who previous to this match had been scoring for fun, and ruin the day of the majority of fans inside the Piss Swing stadium. With another game coming up soon, (Emperor’s Cup at home on Wednesday), let’s get this post done as quickly as possible.

Pretty much the same players again, pretty much the same approach again, pretty much the same outcome again. We’ve certainly play kind of well in periods of matches, but our inability to take the relatively rare good chances that we make is a real problem. When Marcinho was through on goal there was an inevitability that he was going to blast the ball over the bar and that’s exactly what he did. Ito too. As has been the case for the last few years, for some reason the actual shooting chances we make rarely fall to the guy who’s on the pitch whose main job it is to score. I can’t explain tactically why this happens and I really can’t understand why successive managers over successive seasons have either not noticed it or have been unable to do anything about it. I still stand by what I said about the apparently unnegotiable presence of Wakizaka on the pitch for every single minute of every game not helping us when it comes to tactual flexibility. In this match it was even more stupid than it has been in previous games. It seems inevitable that after a period where we can’t get much going, Hasebe will do his semi regular recent change of bringing in Ozeki and moving Wakizaka to the right. He can’t really play there, (I reckon even the Wakizaka lovers would agree with this), but he is just seems to be eternally unsubbable. Even in this match where he could barely walk towards the end of the game. Maybe Hasebe makes a plan and nothing will allow him to deviate from it. That’s the only explanation I can come up with for why an obviously injured and knackered Wakizaka, playing out of position to the extent of being more of a hinderance than a help, was overlooked and Tachibanada was taken off as our last change. Wakizaka was even on the side of the pitch where Hasebe was sitting so presumably it’s not a problem with his eyesight. He didn’t have a particularly good game, (again), but I can’t imagine he’ll ever get dropped. Unlike Miura who was on the bench for this match. It was definitely a good idea as much like in the half season, Miura hasn’t started at all well this year and last year it took him being benched to get him back to his normal ways. When he came on in the second half he started pretty brightly and I was delighted. But there was one horribly vivid memory I have of him strolling back after an attack which resulted in nothing, and as Sanfrecce attached, it was left to Osa and a midfielder to do their best to cover for Miura. So maybe he needs a little bit longer on the bench, eh? But anyway, as I said, I can’t really explain what’s going on. Apart from the obvious bit where if you can’t shoot for shit, you’re unlikely to be able to score. I felt like we were the team more likely to win it towards the end, even if we did have one injured player on the pitch. This match saw the debut from the bench of Rin Honma, a player who’s still at university but is with us on one of these special contracts. I’m a bit confused why Hasebe, after choosing Mochiyama for the first game of the season, now seems determined to not play him even from the bench. But in any case, Honma did look quite lively. Once again, it’s just a shame that all of these players, (plus plenty of others too), are all competing for the one striker spot. Us playing with one striker also seems to be something that’s unnegotiable.

A few words about Sanfrecce and the ref. Once again, when we play them in this stadium they came as a package. I don’t know why the J League persists in getting a local lad in for every game we play in this stadium and I also don’t know, (but I can guess), why the local ref seems to always bottle it when it comes to giving a red card to a Sanfrecce player. Local lad Takasaki completely ignored the high shin-level raised boot tackle on Ito in the play off game, not even giving a free kick as far as I remember, and in this game we had Sutani, not actually from Hiroshima this time, but from neighbouring Shimane prefecture instead, who didn’t spot a foul on Marcinho and gave a throw in instead. Then we had the joy of an over five minute VAR delay. Of course he finally came to the conclusion that he’d accidentally missed the foul but decided that in spite of Marcinho being about to shoot as he entered the box and with the covering defender having no chance of getting there on time, it wasn’t a DOGSO. Probably this was because it was early in the game, was one of Sanfrecce’s legendary grandad trio of centre backs and, because J League refs are FUCKING USELESS! I can’t understand how it could be a yellow card and a free kick. Surely if there was contact and it was a foul it should have been a red. But I guess Sutani didn’t want to upset his neighbours. And I suppose you could say that Marcinho being though on goal doesn’t actually really count as a goal scoring opportunity… By the way, is it just me or does Shiotani look a bit like a baby who’s been left alone with the felt tips and has drawn on a moustache and beard to his own face? Maybe that influenced the ref too. The look on Shiotani’s face after he got the yellow suggests that he knew he’d got away with one, I think. I thought the ref was horrendous, but expected nothing else. so it didn’t come as a great surprise. What did come as a great surprise was the fact that the Sanfrecce fans also thought he was terrible. I’d never realised they were the kind of fans who just want to see correct decisions being given, even if they go against their own team. It was very honorable of them to boo the ref for consistently ruling in their favour. Bravo Sanfrecce fans! That is what they were moaning about, right? The Sanfrecce keeper whose name I insist on mispronouncing as OUCH!-i seemed pretty angry too. After we scored he spent the rest of the match moaning to the ref apparently claiming that there was a handball for our goal. A quick look at the replay for that shows quite how baffling this opinion is. Even after the final whistle he was still going at it. Presumably he was hoping that the ref would take another look at the goal and replay the final 35 minutes of the match. Oh, and Romanic’s yellow card was a joke. As you’d expect from a local ref trying to help out his mates. (I’m constantly told that of course the refs aren’t corrupt, and I’m not saying they are. But they definitely aren’t accurate as far as I’m concerned. And when you give local refs games in their local stadium with presumably their local team, I think you’re not making it any easier for them as when they are utterly useless, (as Sutani is in every match to be fair), it’s way too easy for idiots on the internet (Hello! That’s me!) to moan that they local guy is doing local things).

Yeah, well, I haven’t got a clue what’s going on with us. As I’ve long been saying, at least we can enjoy these baffling performances with horrible shooting in some different cities this time round. Who knows, maybe we’ll win a game soon? I suspect we will probably lose before we win though. We can say that we’re still unbeaten but this result saw us drop down the table one spot. Three points from three games isn’t great and whilst even if we draw every match, we’ll probably get a lower mid-table finish and should probably see us safe, it would be an extremely irritating season if we failed to win even a single game. A winless JEF at home in the league next weekend would seem like the perfect opportunity to pick up our first three point haul, but as they’re in terrible form and the game will see Erison back at Todoroki, clearly they are going to beat us and he’s going to score. Before then, we have Tochigi SC at home in the Emperor’s Cup on Wednesday. I’m not sure what kind of team will play this game. Given that the U21 league has now started, (I watched it on a tiny screen whilst in the pub so am not going to make any comments on it), maybe some of the players we might in our wildest drams have expected to take part might be rested for the next U21 game instead. But I do like these kind of games, so am looking forward to it. Hopefully it won’t be a draw…

 

Team 

GK 49. Svend BRODERSEN
DF 29. YAMAHARA Reon
DF 4. PEDRO ROMANO
DF 3. TANIGUCHI Hiroto
DF 5. SASAKI Asahi
MF 8. TACHIBANADA Kento
MF 6. YAMAMOTO Yuki
MF 17. ITO Tatsuya
MF 14. WAKIZAKA Yasuto 
MF 23. MARCINHO
FW 9. Lazar ROMANIC (Yellow card 72') 

Subs

GK 1. YAMAGUCHI Louis
DF 13. MIURA Sota (on for SASAKI 59')
MF 16. OZEKI Yuto (on for ITO 59')
MF 18. KONNO Kazuya
MF 19. KAWAHARA So (on for TACHIBANADA 81')
FW 20. MOCHIYAMA Kyosuke
DF 22. Filip UREMOVIC
FW 34. OSA Ryuki (on for MARCINHO 59')
FW 36. HONMA Rin (on for ROMANIC 73')

Man of the match

No, I’m still not going to give this. 

Goals

KATO (Sanfrecce) 29' 1-0
YAMAMOTO (Frontale) 58' 1-1
 

Vs Tokyo Verdy (away) 9/8/26 J League match 1

Tokyo Verdy 1 - 1 Kawasaki Frontale 

So begins a new season. It goes without saying that after the absolute mediocrity of the last half season, there’d definitely be something to work on and room for improvement in the break before the new season proper kicked off. We signed some players. Not many, but some. Two Brazilian strikers and one Brazilian centre back. Of course one of these stickers was presumably to replace Erison who perhaps felt dissatisfied with the situation at Frontale and left for JEF. The fact that we now have plenty of numbers up front and at centre back hinted that perhaps we might be seeing some kind of new approach. So naturally I anticipated the team announcement for the first game with some excitement. I only really have myself to blame for that I guess. Probably shouldn’t have been so optimistic. A couple of tiny changes to what was basically the starting line up from the start of last season. And exactly the same approach. Hip hip hooray.

Thankfully after seeing the starting line up I managed to temper any kind of anticipation I might have had so didn’t end up crushingly disappointed. And in a way, I could also say that our total tedium in this match was a useful thing for me as I was intending to trim down these blog posts a bit and if there’d been something exciting to write about I might have had to make a bit more effort. As I’m always the first to admit, I don’t really understand tactics so I’m going to try to steer away from talking about them so much. I will say though that I do understand utterly pointless tedium football as I’ve become so accustomed to it over the last year or so and that was very much on display in this match. 70% possession so lots of the ball. Almost absolutely zero attacking threat. Our late equaliser was in some ways deserved as Verdy looked as shit as us, but at the same time was utterly undeserved as we hadn’t troubled their keeper for the rest of the game. This is going to be a very long and extremely boring season. 

Maybe some positives are that the away kit looks nice. Pedro Romano looks decent. And… erm… that’s it. Unless you go to games looking forward to watching pointless passing in which case you have a lot to look forward to. Negatives, plenty. Fucking hell Hasebe, you had the first season where you didn’t want to rock the boat considering we were in the late stages of the ACL so didn’t change anything. Then we had the half season where we had a free hit and plenty of opportunity to change something and we didn’t change anything. And then the break between another eight place finish and this season where we once again we changed nothing. What’s he doing? Kengo on the bench next to him must feel a bit like his potential successor picking up some tips before he takes his job. I truly hope Kengo doesn’t take any tips from Hasebe though, as all he seems to be able to do is repeat the same thing eternally. Quite why we have five payers in the squad vying for the one striker spot, I don’t know. We’ve got seven players who can play centre back and we’ll seemingly only ever use two of them. I always imagined that the person who signs the players for the club communicates with the manager but I’m starting to think he’s making purchases according to email instructions he’s still getting from his last job or something. If we’re not doing at all well in a game Hasebe’s response is some good old like for like subs, bringing on the players he thought weren’t good enough to start the match. To give him credit he did make a tactical change in the 85th minute with his final sub. To take all the credit back, pretty much everyone in the stadium apart from him must have been able to see how badly we were playing, how much we needed to change something and how insane it was to wait until the game was almost over to do it. I know he’s a nice guy and everything but his eternal optimism when it comes to post match thoughts where he pretty much says we did well but need to score more is absolutely grating on me and it’s only the first game of what will almost certainly feel like a very long season. Fucking hell. Hasebe the baker is constantly praising his assistant bakers for measuring and combining the ingredients perfectly and doesn’t seem worried that no one in the bakery ever thinks of putting the cake in the oven. Hasebe the fashion expert has put together, through wonderful use of layering, a sensational outfit and has accessorised perfectly. Oh, but he didn’t think he’d need to go as far as dress the bottom half, so the model is walking around half naked. Hasebe the hobbyist has built a magnificent train set in his loft but isn’t going to bother with buying any trains. Hasebe the musician has rehearsed for weeks with his band and is now in perfect condition to not bother turning up to play the gig. But in all of these cases he’s reasonably pleased with how the half finished job has turned out. 

A few words on the ref as it would be remiss of me to not slag him off. After watching a World Cup with plenty of dubious decisions it was delightful to get back to the J League and see that the refs are just as shit as they have always been. Even among J League ref apologists, I think the name Mikuriya is one that fills people with dread and so it proved to be again. I came up with a very NSFW nickname for him that doesn’t really work that well. but does absolutely suit him down to the ground. If you’re interested in knowing what it is, please ask. The rules saying you need to take throw ins, goal kicks and make subs quickly from the World Cup are now in evidence in the J League, which I’m not sure is a great idea as the poor refs aren’t even really up to actually refereeing to the old rules so to put more on their plate is a bit unfair. Obviously Mikuriya thought we were delaying on one of our throw ins and gave it to them, even though we were trailing at the time so wouldn’t have made much sense to time waste. Making keepers not waste time on goal kicks is an interesting rule. And one which seems like it’s a bit pointless if you only start counting after the keeper has crawled on his hands and knees to retrieve the ball, dropped it a few times, had a couple of drinks, and possibly a light meal before putting the ball on the spot. The fact that the Verdy keeper was wasting so much time in the second half without any kind of censure made it all the more enjoyable that he conceded extremely late on. Also, I think we need some kind of paranormal investigator to have a look at the game, as every time a Verdy player was about to be changed they were suddenly struck down by a phantom condition that meant they needed lengthy treatment. However you feel about these new rules’ implementation at the World Cup, it was always going to be just one more thing for the useless bastards in charge of the J League to mess up. Oh, and finally, Ito's yellow card was a joke, but that's to be expected with Mikuriya. There truly is nothing to look forward to. Apart from the 2027/28 season if we manage to be able to start that one in J1.

Such a pointless game. Such a boring game. Such a predictable game. The finger clearly has to be pointing at Hasebe at the moment. On this showing we’ll be extremely lucky to finish in our usual 8th. Probably much closer to 18th. And for the final crucial game of the season where we’re battling to avoid relegation Hasebe will probably still be going with the same formation, players and tactics and will afterwards comment that we did really well passing the ball sideways back and forth in our own half and that we’ll have to work on actually shooting before the next match. Fucking hell. At least we’ll have some fun away games this time round! 

 

Team 

GK 49. Svend BRODERSEN
DF 29. YAMAHARA Reon
DF 3. TANIGUCHI Hiroto
DF 4. PEDRO ROMANO
DF 13. MIURA Sota
MF 6. YAMAMOTO Yuki
MF 8. TACHIBANADA Kento
MF 18. KONNO Kazuya
MF 14. WAKIZAKA Yasuto 
MF 17. ITO Tatsuya (Yellow card 68')
FW 20. MOCHIYAMA Kyosuke

Subs

GK 1. YAMAGUCHI Louis
DF 5. SASAKI Asahi (on for TACHIBANADA 76')
FW 9. Lazar ROMANIC (on for MOCHIYAMA 61')
MF 16. OZEKI Yuto (on for MIURA 76')
MF 19. KAWAHARA So
DF 22. Filip UREMOVIC
MF 23. MARCINHO (on for KONNO 61')
FW 24. MIYAGI Ten (on for YAMAMOTO 86')
FW 34. OSA Ryuki


Man of the match

You’ve got to be kidding me.

 

Goals

MIZOGUCHI (Verdy) 46' 1-0
ROMANIC (Frontale) 90+6' 1-1

Highlights

 

Vs Sanfrecce Hiroshima (away) 30/5/26 J League enthralling 7th place play off first leg

Sanfrecce Hiroshima 2 - 1 Kawasaki Frontale

It’s a shame that the first game I’ve missed this season is this absolutely crucial match. Oh, well actually this was just the first leg I guess. And actually thinking about it, it’s actually completely insignificant really, as the victors on this tie get the glory of finishing seventh whilst the defeated team have to put up with the humiliation of finishing eighth. 20 minutes into the match I was delighted we’d been unable to get tickets as we were completely shitting the bed, and 2-0 down. At the final whistle, well, it was still all a bit pointless, but was nice to at least get one goal back. As I never write much when I don’t actually attend a match, I’ll just use a couple of brief paragraphs to whinge and then get out of here. So here we go.

I was surprised to Yamaguchi in goal again. Maybe after the Machida game you could have said he deserved to keep his place. But he didn’t really do much against Mito and we were saved more by our opponents’ lack of composure in front of goal than by any skills from our keeper. After conceding twice in 20 minutes I was all ready to get back on the Yamaguchi moan train again, but to be honest, he did alright. I’m not completely sure he stopped anything that wasn’t fairly easy to stop and I’m not sure he was beaten by anything unsavable, but I think we’ve just got to accept that we’re going to concede goals for fun whoever is in goal. So basically no real moans here. To be honest, I thought we did alright in this match and there were definitely periods where we looked like we were significantly better than them. But we did lose though and the stats were largely in their favour. Was lovely to see evergreen cheat Sasaki Sho absolutely fuck up for our goal. Particularly after he’d cheated not too long before his brain fart. Perhaps in keeping with the general lack of meaning of this match, I didn’t get too upset about anything really. We weren’t great, neither were they. The score was reasonably reflective of the game, especially when you consider how many decent chances we wasted. If we’re on our game in the second leg I don’t think we’ll have any trouble dispatching them. That’s a big if though as times when we’ve been on our game have been quite rare this year and even when we are there’s a high chance well drop a five minute goal-conceding disaster into the middle of an otherwise solid performance. So all to play for. But whether we actually play for it is another matter.

Maybe the only thing I actually want to moan about, aside from the pitch which looked pretty bumpy on the TV screen is… have a guess… yes, you’re right, it’s the ref! Looking back through previous posts about games we’ve had with Takasaki has proved that him being shit in this match was absolutely par for the course. Even when we won 4-0 in one those previous games I still felt the need to mention the ref’s absolute lack of skills. He’s a young guy, only 33, so clearly is a bright young thing in the J League ref community. He’s also absolutely useless. The thing that pissed me off the most was him giving Marcinho a yellow for something that wasn’t even a foul and this pissedoffness was massively multiplied by the fact that before the yellow he’d totally ignored any intrusive thoughts about giving a card when some arsehole tried to break Ito’s ankle. To double down he also didn’t allow our physios on to the pitch. I think there was definitely a case to be made for it being a red but we should probably count ourselves lucky we even got the free kick. Oh, Takasaki, you’re so shit. And the fact that you stand out as being especially shit in a league where the normal level is shit, probably means that you’re are extraordinarily shit to a super level of incompetence. Watching the game in the pub I made a, (hilarious I’m sure you’ll agree), joke saying he’s probably either from Onomichi, Kure or Fukuyama or is a massive YFM fan because his decisions were so biased. I did a quick Google and discovered that he actually is from Hiroshima! Pretty unbelievable that he can ref a game with his local team playing. Maybe the J League is certain that any kind of bias is ultimately squashed by his general shitness. Maybe to return the favour we could have Kengo ref the next match. Although Kengo would probably do everything fairly anyway. Takasaki though can fuck off.

Next up, Sanfrecce at home next weekend. I think it’s quite hard to get excited about this game but maybe the biggest incentive for the players would be to try to win it to piss off Takasaki. He’d probably cry into his purple pillows if we overturned the deficit. After that, a sweet few months where we can rebuild some kind of excitement or enthusiasm or alternatively completely forget about football. Either sounds fine to me. 

 

Team 

GK 1. YAMAGUCHI Louis
DF 29. YAMAHARA Reon
DF 2. MATSUNAGANE Yuto
DF 28. MARUYAMA Yuichi
DF 13. MIURA Sota
MF 6. YAMAMOTO Yuki
MF 8. TACHIBANADA Kento
MF 17. ITO Tatsuya
MF 14. WAKIZAKA Yasuto 
MF 23. MARCINHO (Yellow card 35')
FW 20. MOCHIYAMA Kyosuke

Subs

GK 49. Svend BRODERSEN
MF 19. KAWAHARA So (on for YAMAMOTO 9')
FW 18. KONNO Kazuya (on for MARCINHO 69')
DF 22. UREMOVIC Filip
FW 24. MIYAGI Ten
DF 32. HAYASHI Shunsuke
FW 34. OSA Ryuki (on for ITO 69')
FW 38. KANDA Soma (on for TACHIBANADA 88')
FW 91. Lazar ROMANIC (on for MOCHIYAMA 69')

Wanker of the match

An absolute gimme. It has to go to...

TAKASAKI Koji - absolutely useless referee. Should be ashamed of himself.

 

Goals

NAKAMURA (Sanfrecce) 11' 1-0
KATO (Sanfrecce) 20' 2-0
ITO (Frontale) 43' 0-1

Highlights

 

Vs Mito Hollyhock (away) 24/5/26 J League East match 18

 

Mito Hollyhock 1 - 3 Kawasaki Frontale

 

So another season is finished. Some people might think that there are two games left but I personally have decided not to acknowledge them. I’ve long moaned about this dog’s breakfast of a season so I’m sure you wouldn’t expect me to suddenly become excited about it now we have an away trip to Hiroshima and an opportunity to once again finish 8th in the league. To be honest, I was quite looking forward to a decent away game but that was all squashed only a few hours after the game when we discovered that the away tickets had already sold out. It does feel a little bit like masochism that I attended all the shitty away games we’ve had in this half season and then denied myself the chance of having a good away trip. Apparently Sanfrecce have been selling the away tickets since the end of April, which probably tells you everything you need to know about this league. At the end of April it could have been any number of potential teams who’d be playing Hiroshima. I presume there is some kind of resale procedure, but presumably the most important thing for the home team is getting as much away fan cash as possible, so if a fan who’d bought a ticket for a game that their club ended up not playing in couldn’t resell it and didn’t attend, well, Sanfrecce still have already got their money, so they’re fine. I don’t know if this is how every team is approaching the sales for these matches, but it definitely does suck. Apparently there were some tickets available this morning (Monday), but by that stage the realisation had dawned that as we have a two legged play off, nothing would probably be decided in the first leg and that given that this ‘cup final’ is to decide who finishes seventh, it’s quite difficult to not feel like you’re being squeezed for as much cash as possible. So basically, fuck it, we’re not going. We’d started to plan but have canceled everything and will instead watch it on DAZN. That blog post is going to be shite.

It’s a bit of a shame as we finally have started playing some exciting football. Well in the second half at least. Mochiyama’s first pro goal, which was shortly followed by his second and then third provided some much needed and long overdue positivity. I’m not one to brag but check my conclusion to the FC Tokyo away post from the 2nd of May. I said I wanted to see Mochiyama play, he got a chance and he scored three times. I am a genius clearly. (Just ignore all the times I get predictions wrong). In Hasebe’s favour, there is no way that Oniki would be giving these youngsters any time on the pitch even in these pretty useless end of season games. And also, Hasebe is definitely going to at least equal the league finishing position that Oniki took us to in his last season with us. I really want things to work out for him, and I want him to have a bit more courage in his convictions. I can’t imagine he will be leaving us after the next two games, (there have been no rumours as far as I know, and our money obsessed chairman would most likely not want to have to pay off anyone’s contract), so I guess we just have to hope that Hasebe will have the chance to finish the season in good shape and with some morale that maybe we could carry over to next season. He’ll also have a decent break to work on some things if he chooses to do so. You’ve also got to say that he’s been absurdly unlucky with injuries this year. (Even more unlucky than most years when we’re merely ‘unlucky’ with injuries). I’m sure we would have done better this year if even a few of our injuries had been avoided. I don’t think Hasebe has had any moment of the season where he could select from a fully fit defence. This kind of talk is probably more appropriate for an end of season post though. Erison has been absent for a couple of games now. Not sure why that is. And Yamaguchi has been back in goal ahead of Brodersen. Not sure why that is either. Even in this match when we were 3-0 up with time running out it was inevitable that we’d concede at least one to ruin the hopes of us keeping a clean sheet for only the fourth time this season. And before then we’d already been saved by a, how should I put it, generous VAR decision after Wakizaka lost the ball just outside our box and was just about fouled enough to maybe stop him from perhaps winning it back. Have I couched that sentence in enough uncertainty? This was by no means a walk in the park. We weren’t very good in the first half, in the way that we’ve been not very good extremely often this year.  But it was nice to get the job done and very nice to do it by more than one goal.

A few words about the ref and opposition. I didn’t mention this yet, but the view from the grassy knoll, (I presume it’s ok to use that phrase, isn’t it?), behind the goal was not great. (I feel like it has to be a knoll as to use the word slope would greatly exaggerate the elevation). The bottom of the goal was obscured by the advertising hoarding so the only way of determining whether the ball had gone in was to watch the movement of the net carefully. This bad view led to me not making any notes, as basically I couldn’t see much. Thankfully our goals were at our end, but still there was a certain mystery to what happened until I watched the highlights. Anyway, bad view, but not particularly a bad impression of the ref Yamashita, who let’s be honest, has come in for a lot of criticism from plenty of people in recent years. No notes probably means either than I couldn’t be bothered, (pretty much true), or that there was nothing particularly contentious in the match, (also pretty much true… I think). As I said, I think we were lucky with their disallowed goal, but at the same time, I think you could make a case for it going either way. As for Mito, I don’t have any strong moans about them either. Well apart from their captain Watanabe who seemed to embody all the things that irritate me in an opposition player, fouling, diving and whinging. Makes it all the more satisfying that it was his goal that was disallowed. This was the third time we’ve been to Mito away and the first time where it wasn’t an evening game, so we got a chance to go to some places after the game and the locals seemed to be interested in football and very nice, even though we’d beaten them. Compared to some other places we’ve been where locals on seeing the kit asked what sport we’d been watching and then who was playing, apparently unaware their city even had a team, Mito definitely seems to be a football town. Of course I want to nice to Mito too, as I overheard some fans in one pub talking about how nice and passionate our fans were compared to XX and ZZ who turned up and acted like entitled arseholes. (See if you can guess who these teams were. Answers at the bottom of the post). So, Mito is nice! I would say it was the best away trip of the season, but there was hardly any competition. And it definitely helped that we won.

Next up, two glorified friendlies, away and home against Sanfrecce Hiroshima. With only five days between the end of this match and a match hundreds of miles away that required accommodation and booking transport, (and apparently the foresight to book away tickets for every potential away game we might have got and then be saddled with some of them), this was always going to be a big ask. So it’s good in a way to have a moral reason to ‘boycott’ it. I am a bit gutted though… Then we’re back at home the following weekend for the second leg. I know one swallow doesn’t make a summer, and any kind of positivity taken from this and the previous match could all come crashing down soon, but at least we’ve finished the regular part of this cursed mini tournament in at least a little bit of style, getting both the win and a glimpse of a player that some great geniuses have been calling for Hasebe to give a start to for at least three weeks. Watch this space for the next truth bomb.

Team 

GK 1. YAMAGUCHI Louis
DF 29. YAMAHARA Reon
DF 2. MATSUNAGANE Yuto
DF 28. MARUYAMA Yuichi
DF 13. MIURA Sota
MF 6. YAMAMOTO Yuki
MF 8. TACHIBANADA Kento
MF 17. ITO Tatsuya
MF 14. WAKIZAKA Yasuto 
FW 24. MIYAGI Ten
FW 91. Lazar ROMANIC

Subs

GK 49. Svend BRODERSEN
FW 15. MYOGAN Toya
MF 19. KAWAHARA So (on for YAMAMOTO 82')
FW 20. MOCHIYAMA Kyosuke (on for ROMANIC 46')
MF 23. MARCINHO (on for MIYAGI 46')
DF 30. NODA Hiroto
DF 32. HAYASHI Shunsuke
FW 34. OSA Ryuki (on for ITO 88')
FW 38. KANDA Soma (on for WAKZIAKA 89')

Man of the match

Think there’s no doubt that I had to do this for this match and there’s no doubt who should get it. Admittedly there was some fortune involved as two of his goals were deflected, but you’ve got to be in it to win it, so it goes to…

MOCHIYAMA Kyosuke - an absolute banger of a second goal, beautifully sandwiched between two slices of deflected-shot-goal bread. Delicious!

 

Goals

MOCHIYAMA (Frontale) 58' 0-1
MOCHIYAMA (Frontale) 78' 0-2
MOCHIYAMA (Frontale) 85' 0-3
PATRYCK (Mito) 90+1' 1-3

Highlights

 

Quiz answer: It was Urawa and Kashima. Obviously. Surprised that Machida weren’t on the list, but that was probably because the massive empty spaces in the away end helped dilute the toxicity of the areshole element of their fanbase that they seem to have.

Vs Kashiwa Reysol (away) 10/5/26 J League East match 16

 

Kashiwa Reysol 1 - 0 Kawasaki Frontale

Oh well, another shit and utterly predictable game. Any team on a long run of defeats should definitely want to play us as we’ll always offer up the three points. We were in reserved standing behind the goal. There was no way to choose your spot when buying tickets and we ended up being right next to the drums. This was probably the highlight actually. If we’d had been in a different area it would have been just another awful 2026 game, but given the location it was instead an unusually noisy awful 2026 game. Of course our games have long ago become meaningless. This meaninglessness is a huge relief as we are truly terrible right now. We should be on a run of four defeats in a row. We completely robbed Verdy and deserved nothing out of that game. The less said about the other matches the better. Not only was our position in the stand quite noisy, it was at the perfect height and angle for a lot of the match to be obscured by the crossbar. Perhaps this was a blessed relief. At one stage it looked like the ref and a couple of players were looking for a dropped contact lens. It was only when I stood on tiptoes that I noticed they were looking down at an injured player. So basically, I couldn’t see much, and maybe there wasn’t much to see, so it seems like a good idea to just rush through this post as quickly as possible and get on with not thinking about football for a delightful six days! Sounds blissful!

It felt like we dominated the first half. Of course we didn’t score. We’re operating on an entirely different plane to those teams that try to shoot and score goals. Instead we’re more interested in taking the route of passing it between the keeper and centre backs until things get dicey and then hoofing the ball up the pitch directly to the opposition. Sooner or later the football world will catch up with us and realise that goals are an outdated concept and the number of completed passes at the back before a hoof is how matches should be scored in the future. There was a really encouraging period in the second half where I think we had a shot that could have gone in but let’s not be greedy though and instead keep waiting for that scoring rule change. Actually, we really overindulged in this match by having four shots on target, more than in our previous three games combined. It’s a shame as we were scoring for fun in the warm up but somehow it seems like we’re not as good when there is someone trying to get in the way and stop the ball. If we could remove the opposition from the pitch completely I think we might even have a chance of scoring even two or three!

Hasebe finally went with a back three in this match. I can’t really say what was going on further up the pitch though. Even though we had Miura and Yamahara as wing backs Hasebe seemed to also play Wakizaka and OSA wide too with only Erison up front. Like I said, I couldn’t really see and have no intention of watching even a minute of this match again. Maybe it tightened things up at the back a bit, (we did still concede obviously), but unsurprisingly didn’t help with us being shit at making chances. In the second half Hasebe threw a few things at the wall but even though we had Romanic, Wakizaka, Kanda, Ito and Marcinho up front we still looked light on numbers and absolutely idea free. Marcinho’s having a bad year. He’s not played particularly well when he’s started, (of course this is not in any way limited only to him), so Hasebe hoping he’ll be the magical solution from the bench is a bit optimistic. As soon as they made changes they started looking dangerous. And when you have a dangerous looking opposition and your own team is flapping around doing not much at all, I guess it’s inevitable which way the game will go. Was quite irritating though. But utterly deserved. So what’s the reason behind us being so relentlessly awful week after week, dropping us slowly down the table? Is Hasebe trying to engineer a play off game against Avispa? Or is he thinking he’ll try to get a third consecutive eighth place finish without realising we’re in a league with ten and not twenty teams this time round? Whichever way you look at it, the season really can’t finish soon enough as far as I and I guess many others are concerned.

Hey ho, there’s always next year, right? At the end of the game there was no booing but there was a bit of shouting from the supporters to the players, which I always think is pretty stupid. I don’t think this was particularly deserved. Equally, I don’t think the large amount of fans singing the players off the pitch was deserved either. I think everyone collectively doing a big tut, shrugging the shoulders and then leaving the stadium would have had quite a dramatic effect. I know the players don’t want to be shit, but supporters telling them how to play or that they should care more must be quite irritating for them. Much better for us all to have a huff I think. This was for the most part a game where both teams seemed to be trying to fail to score but eventually one team failed to fail to score. With a tiny change of fortunes it could easily have been 1-0 to us and people would be celebrating. Would be nice if we could somehow have just a little bit of excitement in our football though, wouldn’t it? Maybe Hasebe will try four centre backs and two wing backs next time. Eventually one of those panicked hoofs will go in and we’ll be keeping things so tight through our eight at the back that we will win a game. In conclusion, this was our fourth shit game in a row. And the one before them wasn’t that good either. I don’t know if it’s the meaninglessness of the fixtures or something else, but I am really getting to the stage where I really don’t give a shit. The thought of going to this match this morning just seemed like a chore. There was clearly not going to be anything fun about it. It’s now basically a strange kind of job where you have to pay to do it and it manages to combine frustration with making you sad. Yet you keep on paying and doing it. Only two games left. Thank fuck for that!

Next up Machida at home next Sunday. In the same way that this shitty match was made more interesting by standing in an unfamiliar area, I intend to liven up the next match by walking there from home, stopping at a couple of breweries on the way. You know, have got to try to keep things interesting, right? Maybe I’ll be able to get either so drunk or so tried that I may be able to sleep through part of the game. I suspect that if I do, I won’t be missing much.

 

Team 

GK 49. Svend BRODERSEN
DF 2. MATSUNAGANE Yuto
DF 5. SASAKI Asahi
DF 28. MARUYAMA Yuichi
MF 29. YAMAHARA Reon
MF 8. TACHIBANADA Kento 
MF 6. YAMAMOTO Yuki
MF 13. MIURA Sota
FW 34. OSA Ryuki
FW 14. WAKIZAKA Yasuto
FW 9. ERISON

Subs

GK 1. YAMAGUCHI Louis
MF 17. ITO Tatsuya (on for OSA 46')
MF 19. KAWAHARA So (on for TACHIBANADA 85')

DF 22. Filip UREMOVIC
MF 23. MARCINHO (on for YAMAMOTO 80')
DF 30. NODA Hiroto
DF 32. HAYASHI Shunsuke

FW 38. KANDA Soma (on for MARUYAMA 85')
FW 91. Lazar ROMANIC (on for ERISON 64')

Man of the match

Man of the match section is on strike. I demand something even slightly interesting to give me more clarity in who I should give it to and will refuse to announce it till they bow to my demands.

 

Goals

HOSOYA (Kashiwa) 73' 1-0

Highlights
 

Vs FC Tokyo (away) 2/5/26 J League East match 14

FC Tokyo 2 - 0 Kawasaki Frontale 

Well that was shit, wasn’t it? Maybe not quite as bad as against Urawa but pretty close. And at least in the Urawa game we had two shots on target. In this one we managed just one. Three shots on target in 180 minutes of football. Truly woeful stuff. And still Hasebe seems to think we’re making progress. His post match comments are top level gaslighting at this stage. He says our defence is slowly improving, apparently unaware that we’re still conceding goals for fun. He says we need to improve our attacking. No shit! Don’t forget his intention when he arrived was to tighten up our defence a touch and keep the exciting attacking. He’s done the opposite with both of those things. And apparently hasn’t really noticed. I know this season is a pointless waste of time but it would be nice if we weren’t playing like we had that at the forefront of our minds. An attack every now and then would be nice. And it’s not as if Hasebe is using the opportunity of having a pointless season to try some things out. Even the slightest tweak is immediately erased and we return to the same old crap. The booing at the end of the game spoke volumes. I don’t particularly like to boo, but on this occasion I did. You could argue that it’s the fault of the manager rather than the players, but there definitely are some of them that are stealing a living at the moment. As I’m currently on a train and won’t be home till shortly before the next match, this post will be quite threadbare till I have time to add the usual bits. But let’s be honest, I don’t think anyone wants to read much about another shitty game, so I think it doesn’t really matter. 

A few words about this travesty. Hasebe did exactly what I hoped he would after the Urawa debacle. He switched to 4-4-2 and dropped Wakizaka. Sadly in a Trump rivalling U-turn, he brought Wakizaka on at half time. And also Marcinho, who let’s be honest, has really struggled recently. So two of our most ineffective players against Urawa were supposed to come on and turn the game around. Marcinho isn’t having a good year. At the moment he only seems to be able to run fast and occasionally successfully dribble, but his passing and crossing are awful right now. I wish I could be so positive about Wakizaka, whose main contribution seems to be giving the ball away stupidly to start dangerous  opposition attacks. Hasebe did the right thing to leave them out, but you know, HACO, Hasebe Always Chickens Out. His response to us not setting the world on fire after trying something slightly different for 45 minutes is to go back to the old way which has failed for most of this year and last year. Such is his skill-sapping influence that I think if he took charge of the most successful top league moneybags team in any country, he could probably have them in non-league within just a few years. Shortly after their fourth successive relegation was confirmed he’d probably comment that their defence is steadily improving. I think our squad is pretty good, so it takes a really special manager to get so little out of them and make the football they are playing so unappealing.  

Erison and Kanda up front seemed like a strange choice. It looked like they hadn’t even met before, let alone played together. Miyagi was on the wing again and underwhelmed again. He had a great game when he played up front but clearly that was a bit too daring for H(ACO) so he has never been played there since. Last year, Ito, fresh from a disappointing European stint was keen to impress and was on fire. But don’t worry H(ACO) has now squashed all of that out of him. Both of these players got 45 minutes and then were replaced by Wakizaka and Marcinho. Wakizaka on the wing never works but still it’s H(ACO)‘s answer if the formation we’re playing doesn’t suit Wakizaka. And no worries anyway, Wakizaka will wander across the field anyway, meaning that one of our strikers ends up on the wing. All good, as long as Wakizaka gets what he wants and can move into more central areas to wave his arms, tell people what to do whilst doing nothing himself other than giving the ball away to start dangerous opposition attacks. We’re fucking shit! We spent about a whole minute camped in their box in control of the ball and failed to even have a single shot instead just moving the ball from side to side presumably waiting for the defenders to get bored and get out of the way to avoid prolonging the tedium. I just don’t understand what the game plan is. I suspect there maybe isn’t one. 

There’s no point me writing any smart arse comments about the opposition. I can’t even be bothered to write about the shit ref. It’s all down to Hasebe and he’s almost certainly not the man to sort the situation out. The board seem to be equally or perhaps even more useless, so don’t expect anything to change on the managerial front. As long as the club keeps making money the club president Yoshida is happy. He is a businessman with absolutely no understanding of football. I wish he’d fuck off back to Fujitsu where his talents might be more appreciated. Our president doesn’t understand football, our manager doesn’t seem to be able to manage and our players have lost the ability to play. And this all is kind of understandable, because as a supporter, I’m losing any enthusiasm for supporting. I don’t have any problem with losing to better teams. I have a big problem with us losing every match before a ball has even been kicked because the game plan is so stupid and the manager seems to be incapable of motivating anyone. If he hasn’t lost the changing room, he really should have done by now. Someone needs to say something. Or are the players being gaslit too?  

Even when we’ve won this year it has more often than not been luckily. Great players are becoming shit players and there still seems to be the feeling that we should just say ‘oh well, let’s move on and support even more in the next match’. Considering the shit we’ve been put through by a string of awful games we should really be reacting in a way that isn’t just shrugging our shoulders and looking forward. If I succeed in getting a ticket for the Mito game I will have seen every fucking minute of this awful season and I feel that rather than unconditionally giving my support for every subsequent game I should be getting a handwritten apology from the club and some payment for the massive amount of wasted time and effort. Think of all the more exciting things we could have done instead of watching these matches. We could have counted how many grains of rice there are in a 5kg bag. We could have unfurled and then rerolled a Costco bumper size pack of toilet paper. We could have reread every one of these awful blog posts and counted how many times I’ve used the word ‘shit’. All of these things currently sound more appealing prospects than watching another turgid 90 minutes of so called football. But as I’m an idiot, I’ll go to the next game.  

Next up Tokyo Verdy at home on Wednesday. The away leg was a shockingly boring game and since then we’ve absolutely regressed so expect an absolute rotter. If there was any justice, Hasebe would start the match with a completely different team from the ones who’ve started the last two matches. I want to see Hayashi, Kan, Noda, Mochiyama. And some of the players who have been in and out and have been doing their best. But the problem is that we can’t drop the manager so we’d still be shit. It’s going to be 4-2-3-1 again with the usual players, isn’t it? Two shots on target against Urawa, one in this match, so presumably on Wednesday we’ll fail to hit the target even once. But we’ll still get the post match comments saying how we’re improving defensively, in spite of conceding five. Maybe I’ll take a book to read and some noise cancelling headphones. That way it won’t have been a complete waste of time. 

Team 

GK 1. YAMAGUCHI Louis
DF 29. YAMAHARA Reon
DF 5. SASAKI Asahi
DF 28. MARUYAMA Yuichi
DF 13. MIURA Sota
MF 17. ITO Tatsuya
MF 8. TACHIBANADA Kento
MF 19. KAWAHARA So
MF 24. MIYAGI Ten
FW 9. ERISON (Yellow card 66')
FW 38. KANDA Soma

Subs

GK 21. HAYASAKA Yuki
DF 2. MATSUNAGANE Yuto
MF 6. YAMAMOTO Yuki (on for TACHIBANADA 79')
MF 14. WAKIZAKA Yasuto (on for ITO 46')

DF 22. Filip UREMOVIC
MF 23. MARCINHO (on for MIYAGI 46')
DF 32. HAYASHI Shunsuke

MF 34. OSA Ryuki (on for ERISON 87')
FW 91. Lazar ROMANIC (on for KANDA 57')

Man of the match

There wasn’t one.

 

Goals

SATO (FC Tokyo) 41' 1-0
NOZAWA (FC Tokyo) 56' 2-0

Highlights

Vs Urawa Reds (away) 29/4/26 J League East match 13

Urawa Reds 2 - 0 Kawasaki Frontale 

As predicted in the last post we followed up two wins in a row with a defeat against a team who had lost seven games in a row. Good old Frontale! Always there to help out a team who are in hopeless form by giving them an easy three points! It was a bit sneaky of them to invoke the new manager bounce by sacking their old guy a few days before this match. I’m starting to think that I wouldn’t mind us giving the new manager bounce a go too. Two wins in a row covered up two pretty mediocre-at-best performances, both of which swung our way through late goals. I know it’s tedious to hear people moaning about their team being shit when they’ve won, so I apologise for doing that in the last couple of posts, but I’m sure you’ll forgive me as clearly the shitness that was there in those match in the form of a little tickle in the back of throat and occasional cough has now developed into a full blown flu of cackiness. Golden week has started with possibly our worst performance of the season (so far). And don’t forget this was a season which included us losing 5-0 to YFM. As I have now nice plans for Golden Week, (which are presumably going to be interrupted by a couple more shitty games), I have no desire to prolong this any more than I have to. The next two posts will probably appear in a very rough and unadorned way as I’ll be traveling. I’ll post the moaning but I’ll add all the details at a later date. The thought of this is already pretty off-putting.

Atrocious Frontale -

Seven shots in the whole match! Only one save necessary from their keeper. And we started quite brightly. But it was our old friend ‘attack and pass till you get close to their goal and then don’t bother shooting’ who was very much in evidence again. I should have know the match was going to go badly when our first shot was blocked by one of our own players. That was probably about as close as we came to scoring. Right from the start the ref was awful, and was clearly not going to book anyone unless he really had to, basically clearing the way for a full on Urawa assault on our players. But don’t get me wrong, although the ref was absolutely awful, (equally the linesman, who forgot to do the part of his job that related to watching the line and seeing if the ball crosses it), it wasn’t him that cost us the game. It was Hasebe. 

In the past I’ve said Hasebe hasn’t come up with anything new to stake his claim on the team. I now realise this was incorrect. I was wondering why Romanic was starting every game over Erison. Sure, he scored so deserved to keep his spot. But then he didn’t score and still kept his spot. In this game it all became clear to me. Hasebe is actually a tactical innovator extraordinaire. He’s come up with a wild and refreshing plan, (which I incorrectly described as moving the ball forward more quickly in the last post), which involves us hoofing the ball forward to Romanic at every opportunity as quickly as possible. He usually wins the ball, sometimes manages to keep it, sometimes manages to pass it to a team mate, but more often than not, perhaps due to the speed and distance of the hoofing, is unable to do anything with the ball as it’s only him who’s past the half way line, and he’s surround by defenders. This would account for us having only 29% possession and two shots, both off target, in the first half. And don’t forget this was a half we started quite brightly! So a terrible first half when you looked at the 35 minutes that preceded half time. So what did our great leader do at half time? Apparently fuck all other than further demotivate our players. Once again we got nothing going at all until we we’d used most of our subs, had thrown Hasebe’s tactics away and the players were just doing what they wanted. His subs were weird again, Hasebe, as ever, being totally committed to keeping Wakizaka on the pitch, even if it meant playing him on the right wing where he’s not very good or in defensive midfield, where he’s not very good. To be fair to Hasebe though, Wakizaka has also been not very good in his preferred and normal position this year. Hasebe’s response to us going 2-0 down was to bring on Kawahara for Ito. Don’t worry, Wakizaka will cover it! Miyagi didn’t make it onto the pitch till the 83rd minute. Kanda sat on the bench again. 

 

But Hasebe would probably point to the massive improvement in our stats in the second half, right? We had five shots in the second compared to two in the first. Bravo! We had one shot on target compared to none in the first. Bravo! We had 54% possession compared to 26% in the first. Bravo! We conceded two goals compared to one in the first…. oh. But don’t for a moment think that this defensive frailty was anything to do with us going all out attack. This is just the awful football that is Hasebe Frontale. Occasionally we squeak a result to paper over the cracks. But sooner or later those cracks are gaping again, and Hasebe probably would also think that Wakizaka would be the man for the job if you had an issue with your interior decorating. Every game starts with us having a dodgy half with Hasebe’s first choice players, formation and tactics. Sometimes we scrabble together a result by just flinging everything at the wall late on and hoping something sticks. And then Hasebe takes any positive result as confirmation that he should start the next game in exactly the same way, ignoring the fact that nothing normally happens till he abandons his plans. 

 

Poor old Hasebe. I’m sure he doesn’t want to be this terrible at his job. I’m sure he can’t feel great about being tactically outsmarted by someone who has never managed a professional game before. I’m sure he much rather still be somewhere where people thought he was doing a good job. To be honest I’d much rather he was somewhere where people thought he was doing a good job. Because presumably that would mean he was no longer our manager. It seems pretty clear to me that he’s not going to change anything. Every slight ray of hope where he slightly changes something is immediately extinguished by reverting to the same old shit as soon as possible. Maybe we should experiment in the next game by playing the game in reverse, starting the match with the players and lack of tactics that we finish games with. It would certainly be more interesting and would probably be more effective. Hopefully by half time we might have scored and then he could suck the life and enjoyment out of the match through one of his half time team talks and us reverting to utter dullness in the second half with him bringing on his subs to build his usual starting line up might result in us not conceding so many. Then after the match he can give his pre match motivational team talk which hopefully the players will have forget by the time the next match comes around. Some might say that if we fire him we have no one to replace him with. I’d suggest that right now his influence is purely a negative one and that without him, we’d be doing a lot better. Sorry, Hasebe, but I think your time is up.

Despicable opposition - 

It wouldn’t be right for me to post about an Urawa game without taking at least a few potshots at them. Their fans were it seemed VERY VERY UPSET with the club before the game. No big flags, no banners with increasingly weird ways of describing the male youthfulness of their fan groups, (Zut alors, pas de garçons! Bof!), the briefest of chanting when their players came out. They weren’t a happy bunch because they definitely believe they deserve to be at the top of the league and winning every game 15-0. (Sorry guys, you can’t play us every week. Other teams will put up a bit more resistance). So not happy at all, but they were still very happy to boo us. This is because they are oh so very fearsome and a really naughty bunch. As I work in Urawa and speak to a lot of …Urawans (?), I take issue with their ‘Pride of Urawa’ flag. Their team is absolutely not the pride of Urawa. I can guarantee that if I survey my classes the overwhelming winner of the pride of Urawa contest will be Urawa Parco. I reckon there were probably more people in Parco than were in the stadium too. I reckon I might join them when this fixture comes round next time. It’s certainly a lot easier to get to and even if I just emptied the contents of my wallet down the toilet in Parco I think I’d probably have a more satisfying and enjoyable experience than I would going to the Saitama Stadium. At least in a normal season where we’re playing awfully we get to go to some interesting places. This year I’ve spent way too many hours I’ll never get back in stadiums having a horrible time and then only being able to return home through those horrible wastelands that surround those horrible teams stadiums, rather than go out and see something interesting. This year, the trips are shit, the football’s shit, the experience is shit and most of all we are shit. 

WOW!

I’ll keep this brief and ever so slightly cryptic. Mikuriya is a turd of a referee so he definitely gets a share of this. He’s not corrupt or crooked or anything, he’s just useless. The other person who takes this is perhaps a lot closer to home. I don’t think there can be any doubt as to why we were so awful, so the person who orchestrated that has to get a share of the spoils.


Next up, who gives a shit? (It’s FC Tokyo away on Saturday). Maybe in that game we might be able to have more than one shot on target if we’re really lucky. I never want us to lose a game, but with Kashima losing on this match day, (whenever they lose we always lose it seems, regardless of whether we are challenging them in any way or are nowhere near them. To be fair though, we are losing quite often recently, so maybe that skews things a little), it’s not going to upset me in the slightest if they wallop us. It might be one step closer to Kashima not coming first in this shitty competition, and it could also move us one step closer to perhaps a managerial change. I will be there, but will be deep in holiday mode. Nothing will be able to bring me down. Well, perhaps apart from another useless ref. But I’m determined not to let another inevitably rotten performance ruin the rest of my Golden Week. This seems to be a much healthier way to approach all of these kind of things. Phew. 

 

Team 

GK 49. Svend BRODERSEN
DF 29. YAMAHARA Reon
DF 22. Filip UREMOVIC
DF 2. MATSUNAGANE Yuto
DF 13. MIURA Sota
MF 8. TACHIBANADA Kento 
MF 6. YAMAMOTO Yuki
MF 17. ITO Tatsuya
MF 14. WAKIZAKA Yasuto
MF 23. MARCINHO
FW 91. Lazar ROMANIC

Subs

GK 1. YAMAGUCHI Louis
DF 5. SASAKI Asahi (on for UREMOVIC 61')
FW 9. ERISON (on for ROMANIC 61')
MF 19. KAWAHARA So (on for ITO 74')

MF 24. MIYAGI Ten (on for TACHIBANADA 83')
DF 30. NODA Hiroto
DF 32. HAYASHI Shunsuke

MF 34. OSA Ryuki (on for MARCINHO 61')

FW 38. KANDA Soma

Man of the match

Not a fucking chance of anyone getting this. 

 

Goals

MATHEUS SAVIO (Urawa) 54' 1-0
KOMORI (Urawa) 71' 2-0

Highlights

Vs Yokohama F Marinos (away) 18/4/26 J League East match 11

 

Yokohama F Marinos 1 - 2 Kawasaki Frontale  

I should start this post with some background explanation. I was quite hungover for this match. I could make some claims for the restorative power of a win against one of your team’s most despicable rivals as the result and perhaps the way it came about definitely gave my spirits and body a boost. But at the same time, if that late winner hadn’t gone in it would have been a very different result, (for my health I mean. Obviously it would have been a different result for the game). Naturally, winning 2-1 at your rivals’ stadium doesn’t make up for us getting hammered by them at our big showpiece National Stadium event. Presumably everyone at the club knew we wouldn’t be able to win 6-0 so instead went for the more achievable late winner option, which although not reaching the trauma inflicting heights of a massive defeat, probably stings a lot more than something like a comfortable 2-0 win with all the goals coming in the first half. That is what this season has come to now. We have nothing to play for other than hopefully making rival fans miserable. Oh, and maybe giving some youngsters some pitch time. I hope I can enjoy some of both of these things over the next few weeks. Given that this match was for the most part, pretty shitty, and given that I had a hangover, please excuse the lack of any kind of insight or any real effort in the writing of this post. I’m sure you’d expect nothing less.

Us - 

‘Why change a winning team even if it was the subs that won the game?’ said I, after Hasebe made his team selection for the Kashima defeat. I could say something similar for this match, as aside from bringing Romanic in for Erison, Hasebe went with the same line up and tactics again. So maybe it would be more accurate to say something like ‘why change a… team?’ Win or lose we keep going with the same things. But this is probably not massively surprising as after hearing some things from my friend who watched a recent training session, it could well be the case that these are pretty much the only fit players we have at the moment. Which is quite worrying! The players we might most be hoping to have a swift return from injury weren’t training at all, which suggests the road back to us being full strength will be a long one. With that in mind you have to temper any massive criticisms of Hasebe I suppose. Also, it’s not him who is missing so many of our chances. At the same time, it does seem a bit weird that he is apparently so wedded to starting every match the same way, and always ignores the fact that we are playing a different system when we score most of our goals and play our most exciting football. I suppose there is more to it than I’m saying, but it seems a bit baffling to me why we keep doing the same thing. Well, baffling if you don’t consider the Wakizaka issue. In this match when we switched formation he ended up on the wing. It doesn’t suit him and we had people on the bench who could play there but it seems that it’s just not the done thing to drop Wakziaka or to even substitute him unless we’re in injury time. Even though he seemed to suggest that the reason we lost against Machida was because he wasn’t in the squad, I can’t really see what he’s adding at the moment. This was the second match in a row that his mistake directly lead to an opposition goal. Go on Hasebe, give it a go without him just for a game or two and see what happens. At times it seems like Hasebe is very risk averse. Maybe so risk averse that he’s the kind of guy who’d wear a full inflated life jacket whilst feeding the ducks at the knee-deep village pond. But hang on, we won this match so I shouldn’t be so negative. As I said above, this was far from being a good performance. Both teams seemed determined to drag the opposition to ever lower depths. We had some more shots on target than usual but a significant proportion of them were reminiscent of softly hit back passes. But we scored twice! And both of our strikers scored! And scoring in the eighth minute of the five that had been added on was extremely entertaining. Sometimes it’s not so important to win in style. It’s far more important to just win and this result gives us a decent opportunity to pick up consecutive wins for the first time this season. Our next game is at home against bottom placed JEF so surely this is our best chance? Well maybe our best chance alongside the second game of the season where we faced JEF away, after seemingly being able to score for fun against Kashiwa, and struggled to even have a shot. So let’s not get too carried away, eh? No midweek game will give us the opportunity to get some platers back from injury, but like I said, don’t expect any of them to be the bigger names, most of whom didn’t train at all last week, so clearly still have a long way to go. But at least we can go into that game with a smile on our faces after the late winner in this match. Lovely!

Them -

People will I’m sure know that I’m not a big fan of our salty neighbours YFM. When I recently decided to somewhat immaturely place all of the J1 teams into groups depending on how much I disliked them, YFM were of course a no-brainer for being in the most dislikable group. Considering they are having another dodgy season it’s a bit of a shame that there’s no relegation in this mini season. At the same time, given how up and down we are, that might actually be a good thing. You might have thought that after they walloped us in our ‘home’ fixture, they would have come into this match with some more confidence and a belief that they could beat us again. I certainly thought they probably would. But instead it seemed like they spent the whole match trying to play for penalties. I guess this makes sense as I think it’s become clear that penalties might not be our strength. There was so much play acting in this match for injuries that YFM players required the stretcher to be brought onto the field four times. Naturally, only one player actually used it, as by the time they’d rolled around on the floor kicking the pitch and grizzling for a few minutes, more often than not they’d wasted the requisite amount of time. Their goalkeeper hung on to the ball for way over the allowed amount of time, each time the ref presumably forgetting to start counting, and when he finally remembered to start, waved his arms in such a dramatic wide ranging way that clearly his seconds were lasting much longer than the seconds we are used to in the real world. They also seemed to have set up the pitch to make things as difficult for us as they possibly could, (of course this is perfectly acceptable). At times it looked like we were playing with a rugby shaped bouncy ball instead of a football given the weird-angled and massive boings we were getting. At half time there was a perfunctory watering of first few meters of one side of the pitch, so it clearly was a tactic. But still they couldn’t defeat the mighty Frontale. (Well, apart from that last time when they smashed us). YFM were pretty shitty. As were we. But thankfully they were shittier. I think they’d spent all week with training sessions practicing falling over and rolling on the floor, occasionally interspersed by a drill where they raised their arms in unison, pleading to the linesman for absolutely clearly non-existent offsides. Perhaps in keeping with their horrible form it shouldn’t be a surprise that the stadium was so empty. We helped play our part in the emptiness as there were clearly a lot fewer of our fans than in previous seasons. I guess people have got fed up with watching shitty football in a half season that is ultimately pointless for all but one of the teams. But hang on you say, this format ensures lots of thrilling local derbies. (Hmmmm, apparently not enough of a draw for this match). I’d love a nice away trip but instead all we get is games at stadiums I’ve seen us play at numerous times before. Even the two newly promoted teams in the East section don’t present new or interesting trips for us as we’ve played both of them away in fairly recent times. I guess the real excitement will come when the two leagues combine at the end of the season. The really important games will come where over a two-legged thrilling tie, we finally discover the answer to the crucial questions like who exactly are the fifteenth and sixteenth best teams in the league. I am hanging on with my fingers crossed that we’ll get a nice trip from our final league position. I suspect though that these cup finals to decide ninth spot might not be the big draw for most people that the league thinks. So maybe attendances are going to drop even further over then next few games. Our away trip to FC Tokyo isn’t selling particularly well, I’ve heard. Tamagawa Classico? More like Tamagawa Couldn’t Give a Tossico. Hmmmm, that could have worked a bit better, but it’ll do.

I’ll finish this section with a little wish that YFM improve slightly over the course of the next few games. I think it’s very important that they finish the year in mid table as I’d hate for them to have a terrible season and end up making wholesale changes in preparation for a season where they could get relegated. Far better to have a little mini recovery to make them think that all is right in their garden and then collapse massively next season. And don’t be sad Marinos fans. You may have lost four out of the last five, but at least you’re not Urawa who’ve lost six in a row now. The two teams in the shittest of forms actually play each other next. I’m sure that game’s going to be a cracker…

WOW! - 

You would have thought there would haver been plenty of options for this given the opposition, but one guy in the stadium was never going to let this award elude him. Kamimura was in charge again after we had him for our away game at Kashima. In that blog post I mentioned his bizarre concept of time, his absolute bat shit inconsistency and his bizarre interpretation of the rules of the game. All were once again evident in this match. He was just all over the place when it came to making decisions. The thing that took the biscuit though was the phantom free kick he gave when a Marinos played twisted his ankle with absolutely zero contact. It happens around 35 minutes in the first half and is worth a watch for anyone who thinks that being a ref is difficult but that they generally do a good job. It seemed that he had been informed of how bad the decision was given that from the resulting free kick, he immediately blew for a free kick to us. But if you then consider that he’s covering up one erroneous decision by making another one, it just all becomes a bit of a joke. And presumably if they’d shot from the free kick and scored, he wouldn’t have been able to rule the goal out. Perhaps I should embrace the absolute shitness of the J League refs and see it as just another aspect of the match day entertainment. It’s tough to do this though as more often than not they are absolutely infuriating. But it’s great to have such a clear cut example of quite how bad the officiating in this league is. Kamimura, throw yourself in the bin.

So, as stated above, next up, JEF at home. It would be nice if we weren’t quite so gutless in next week’s match as we were in the away game. It’s funny looking back on that match now as although it did deflate the excitement from the previous big win, it did feel like it could be just a blip. As it has turned out, that game was a perfect encapsulation of our season, in that  it was pretty low on excitement with most of our football being absolutely pointless. Fingers crossed we can improve on that game and keep the good feelings gained in this match going. After that we’ve got a couple of games in a week. How nice it is that we get to cerebrate Golden Week by heading to the absolute wasteland of the Saitama stadium…. That’s a trip to really get the juices flowing, isn’t it?

 

 

Team 

GK 49. Svend BRODERSEN
DF 29. YAMAHARA Reon
DF 28. MARUYAMA Yuichi
DF 2. MATSUNAGANE Yuto
DF 13. MIURA Sota 
MF 8. TACHIBANADA Kento 
MF 6. YAMAMOTO Yuki
MF 17. ITO Tatsuya
MF 14. WAKIZAKA Yasuto
MF 23. MARCINHO
FW 91. Lazar ROMANIC

Subs

GK 1. YAMAGUCHI Louis
FW 9. ERISON (Yellow card 90+9') (on for ROMANIC 77')
MF 15. MYOGAN Toya
MF 19. KAWAHARA So (on for YAMAMOTO 86')
MF 24. MIYAGI Ten (on for MARCINHO 46')

DF 27. KAMIHASHI Ryota
DF 32. HAYASHI Shunsuke

MF 34. OSA Ryuki (on for ITO 77')

FW 38. KANDA Soma (on for WAKIZAKA 90+1')

Man of the match

Once again this wasn’t exactly a vintage performance with us only managing eight shots in a game against a team in terrible form, and also seemingly being determined to concede a goal after giving the ball away repeatedly until they could finally manufacture a shot. Both the strikers scored so they could get a look in. But I think as his performances continue to surprise, it has to go to…

TACHIBANADA Kento - seemed destined to be drifting out of contention earlier on in the season but now is consistently our best midfielder and probably the only player in that area who I could say definitely deserves to start every game. Bravo!

 

Goals

ROMANIC (Frontale) 15' 0-1
AMANO (YFM) 45+3' 1-1
ERISON (Frontale) 90+8' 1-2

Highlights