Vs Cerezo Osaka (away) 25/10/25 J League match 35

 

Cerezo Osaka 2 - 0 Kawasaki Frontale

What a horrible game this was. I have nothing interesting or amusing to say about it really so I hope you’re not expecting much. With most of our midfield looking like they were already on the beach and our recently typical suicidal defending and goalkeeping this was always going to be a tough game to win. And that prospect became even tougher after seven minutes by which time we were already two goals down. In the time we’d conceded two we hadn’t even had an attack. I’m
Not proud to say this, but the most enjoyable part of the game for me was probably when Ito’s shot smacked straight into the face of the Cerezo keeper. Slightly in my defence, he had been acting like a twat before it happened so had already pissed me off. Apart from this moment, which I’m pretty sure was our first shot of the game, (in the 19th minute…), there wasn’t much to get excited about. There was one phase in the second half where we looked like we were rattling them and that the momentum might be about to shift, but for that to have happened it would have required us to be at least slightly potent in attack and we weren’t at all. At the start of the second half it seemed like our game plan was to try to hang on to what we had and go for the 2-0 defeat. Miraculously we did. But that was in part due to Cerezo being almost as shit as we were in front of goal. But by that stage the damage had already been done. Naturally one of their goals came from Yamaguchi diving across the goal and delicately delivering the ball to an unmarked striker with a little push of his gloves. I say naturally because we’ve conceded the same goal at least once every game he’s played recently. Either the opposition are always doing their homework or maybe we’re not very good at stopping teams scoring from not that threatening situations. Add to this the fact that the way we were trying to play was by passing it around at the back for a bit, (I say a bit, but the truth is it was much more than a bit. More like an age), and then after the sufficient pass total had been reached, hammering the ball forward to no one for it to be collected by their defence so we could get back to doing some more defending practice. Fucking hell it was a dull game. And then it started raining. And they didn’t have the beer truck there like they have had in recent years. It was all shite really. Even the atmosphere was (unsurprisingly) a bit subdued. We seemed to be singing the same song for ages without changing. But maybe it just seemed that way as time had slowed down because everything was so fucking boring. I said some of the players looked like they’d given up for the season and I think I started to understand their feelings and join them. I usually like singing, but in this match every time I interrupted my singing with important asides like ‘fucking hell that was bad’, ‘wow, that was lucky’ and ‘jesus christ try to get the ball out of our own half’, I went back into the song a little bit quieter until I gradually just became silent and slightly embarrassed. Crap crap crap crap crap.

I don’t have much desire to write anymore but I wanted to mention to that the time wasting from Cerezo was pretty horrific. They could have scored a lot more if they hadn’t wasted so much time. Even the ball boys were at it. And I’m not just saying that. Have a look J League and punish the club. Not that the ref was bothered though. His solution to any time wasting was to angrily blow his whistle and give a final warning that next time he’ll give them a card. And then proceed to do nothing as they continued time wasting. To be fair, it wasn’t a surprise as Tanimoto has a reputation on this blog for blowing his whistle a lot but never actually doing much. Naturally the only player booked was Uremovic, and I’m kind of surprised the speedy as a sloth arsehole on VAR didn’t decide to delay the game further and have a glacial-paced look at it. Aside from the fact that none of the players paid him any attention at all (‘Stop time wasting and leave the pitch behind the goal as you’re being subbed!’ ‘Who me? Oh sorry I didn’t realise you were talking to me, even though I’m clearly the one being subbed and to make up for not hearing properly, I’ll continue dawdling off the pitch via the absolute longest route that you told me not to use.’ ‘Well ok then, as you are. If you do this again in this match I’ll be really upset with you… but still do nothing’), the ref didn’t have a shocker. Not the case for the linesman or the aforementioned VAR clown who absolutely baffling ruled out Marcinho’s goal without ever getting the ref involved. He was absolutely nowhere near offside and how this decision could have gone to VAR and been upheld is an absolute mystery. The only thing I can presume is that they got Erison and Marcinho mixed up. If this is true, it is… well, I don’t really have any words for how that would be, but I’m sure you can imagine. I know I always moan about the referees, but take a look at this decision and you’ll know why. And don’t forget that they took about four minutes to come to this completely erroneous conclusion. But somehow fitting with the luck we’ve had on more than our fair share of occasions this year. Hasebe probably didn’t have his best game, but probably can’t compete against the various forces (mainly in the form of match officials) who seem to be conspiring to mess us up as often as possible. But Hasebe leaving Wakizaka and Yamamoto on and taking off Kawahara, one of the few players who’d looked like he was interested has got to go down as a weird decision. But perhaps not that surprising. Also not sure why he didn’t start with Jesiel and Uremovic at centre back. It’s almost as if even when we have fit defenders we think it’s not the right and proper thing to do to play them. Maybe Hasebe thinks it’s too easy to just pick out best players and it’s more fun and challenging to start every game effectively with one hand tied behind our backs. Maybe it’s all intentional and is done to be practice for next season when presumably we’ll once again have our usual annual defensive injury crisis. I’m still pleased that Hasebe is in charge rather than Oniki, but I’m starting to worry a bit about him. Obviously he’s knows more than I do, but some of the decisions he makes seem pretty strange to me. And he is Oniki’s polar opposite when it comes to being lucky. Oh and finally a quick update on those season comparison stats. No goals scored means we’re still one goal behind last year’s total and now with only three games left. It was the case that we’d have to concede 13 goals in our final five games to have conceded more than last year. In the first two of those games we’ve conceded five. So we’re pretty much on schedule to do exactly that. Fucking hell this game was shit. Did I mention that already? 

Next up, another fucking two week break (this season’s schedule has been ridiculous), and then Okayama at home. Then three weeks till Sanfrecce at home which is the game after that. No wonder the players can’t be bothered! Just let us get this season over and done with. Any hopes of end of season fun and games rotation in the dead rubber games we might have had has now gone out of the window as we played pretty much the same team in this game as we did in the previous one. It would be nice if some of the players who I suspect might be retiring could get a bit more time on the pitch and why not give Sung-Ryong, Ando and Lee a game each in goal. We have nothing to lose. But I’m sure it won’t happen, so maybe there’s nothing left to look forward to. But it’s ok, there’s one more away game so that should be fun! Oh fucking hell scratch that, it’s Urawa...

 

Team

GK 98. YAMAGUCHI Louis 
DF 31. VAN VERMESKERKEN Sai

DF 4. JESIEL

DF 5. SASAKI Asahi
DF 15. TANABE Shuto
MF 19. KAWAHARA So
MF 6. YAMAMOTO Yuki 
MF 14. WAKIZAKA Yasuto 
FW 17. ITO Tatsuya
FW 9. ERISON

FW 23. MARCINHO

Subs

GK 21. ANDO Shunsuke

MF 8. TACHIBANADA Kento

FW 11. KOBAYASHI Yu

MF 16. OZEKI Yuto (on for KAWAHARA 46')
DF 22. Flip UREMOVIC (Yellow card 54') (on for TANABE 46')
FW 24. MIYAGI Ten (on for ITO 75')
DF 27. KAMIHASHI Ryota
FW 41. IENAGA Akihiro (on for MARCINHO 60')
FW 91. Lazar ROMANIC (on for ERISON 78')

Goals

RAFAEL RATAO (Cerezo) 4' 1-0
TANAKA (Cerezo) 7' 2-0

Highlights 

Vs Cerezo Osaka (home) 18/5/25 J League match 17

Kawasaki Frontale 2 - 0 Cerezo Osaka

I’m pleased to say that our winning run continues. But for most of this match it looked that it was probably going to come to an end at the earliest possible opportunity. This was far from vintage Frontale. After a bright start where both teams seemed determined to run as fast as possible to the other end of the pitch before wasting chances even before they had been properly made, it soon degenerated into a borefest. In my notes I wrote ‘end to end pointlessness’, but for large periods of the game it was more like middle third of the pitch pointlessness. Neither team had a shot on target until the 42nd minute and the half time relay race provided a lot more entertainment than the first 45 minutes had. With such a poor first half it was a bit of a surprise that we didn’t make any changes at half time. When all of our changes had been made we did finally break the deadlock in very enjoyable style. When we followed that goal up with a second shortly afterwards from an absolute hoof from Maruyama it was delightful. Perhaps Cerezo could feel a little hard done by, but when you consider they failed to have a shot on target in 90 minutes, they definitely didn’t deserve to win.

Us -

Some rotation again, but taking injuries into consideration, I think some people would say this was us rotating back to our best starting line-up. I don’t really agree with this and you’ll probably see why in my upcoming mild moaning. The defence did pretty well I think. If you keep the opposition from getting any shots on target you’ve probably done a good job. Admittedly, there was a hint of luck in some of their shots being so wayward, but you can’t deny that after being separated in recent games, it was good to see Takai and Maruyama back together. My doubts as to this being our best available line-up come a bit further forward. It’s not a good look to moan when we won 2-0, but the truth is that Wakizaka and Yamada are still not doing the business. Ozeki and Erison did much better when they came on. I’m all in favour of Hasebe trying to get them to play themselves into some kind of form, but I think this game might have been a bit more comfortable if our changes had been made earlier. I’ve long written about Yamada’s toils this year, but Wakizaka was playing well earlier in the season but seems to have been destroyed by the ACL. I don’t know if it’s due to fatigue, but he’s really having a bit of a dodgy period at the moment. I don’t think Ienaga had a particularly good game either on this occasion. I don’t think he should be an automatic selection anymore. Maybe he disagrees, but I think we look much more dangerous with Ito in that position. We looked a lot less dangerous with Wakizaka there after the first round of subs in this match, but I think that’s more to do with with Wakizaka’s current travails rather than his inability to play out wide. We’ve seen him do well there in the past, even if it has always been for just a few minutes between batches of subs. I still don’t understand why managers do that kind of thing, but I’m sure there must be some logic to it that is evading me. Ozeki, Ito and Erison all had an impact when they came on. As did Segawa who took only five minutes to help us break the deadlock, right around the period where I lamenting the fact that I thought we were going to end up with a 0-0. It was a lovely pass from him to give Erison his first goal. In the past Hasebe has experimented with Segawa in the Wakizaka role and I don’t think it suited him, so I hope we can see him do well on the wings in the future. There’s probably not much else for me to say in this part. I must admit I was starting to form my first ever Hasebe moan when we were huffing and puffing with absolutely no end product, but the changes did come and they were effective. So shut up Neil, and keep the faith!

Them -

After a bright start Cerezo didn’t do that much and reverted to what we might have expected from them in previous seasons. In the past we have tended to struggle a bit against them at times, so it was nice to finish this game with a 2-0 win, even if they scoreline didn’t completely reflect the whole reality of the match. I’m kind of shocked that I have no notes moaning about any of their players or actions so I don’t really know what else there is to write here. It seems that they can beat or lose to anyone in the league, so they’re clearly a bit of a mystery team. And that mystery seems to have rendered me opinonless.

Ref -

This game brought a new ref to one of our games. I’ve never even heard of Ohashi, but apparently he was the fourth official for our game against YFM. He’s young, (only 30), and… I don’t have anything to say about him. Once again an unknown ref has had a decent game while the more experienced ones continue to fuck up. Of course I didn’t agree with everything he did, but I wouldn’t, would I, as I am obviously biased? But definitely there was nothing that lingers in the memory which in these blog posts is the highest possible form of praise. Bravo!

Next up Urawa at home on Wednesday. After going on a long run of wins their last three results, (from oldest to most recent), have been a loss, a draw and a win. Given that they seem to hate Nagoya (let’s be honest, plenty of people do now), and they are playing them in the game after they play is, why don’t we just agree that on Wednesday we give them an absolute thumping so they can get charged up and smash Nagoya next weekend. Sounds fair, right? After that we’ve got Gamba at home next Sunday. Hopefully we can turn two wins into three, and then three into four. Fingers crossed!

Team

GK 98. YAMAGUCHI Louis
DF 31. VAN WERMESKERKEN Sai
DF 2. TAKAI Kota
DF 35. MARUYAMA Yuichi
DF 5. SASAKI Asahi (Yellow card 53')
MF 19. KAWAHARA So
MF 6. YAMAMOTO Yuki
MF 41. IENAGA Akihiro
MF 14. WAKIZAKA Yasuto
MF 23. MARCINHO
FW 20. YAMADA Shin

Subs

GK 1. JUNG Sung-Ryong
MF 8. TACHIBANADA Kento (on for KAWAHARA 80')
FW 9. ERISON (on for YAMADA 67')
DF 15. TANABE Shuto
MF 16. OZEKI Yuto (on for MARCINHO 61')
MF 17. ITO Tatsuya (on for IENAGA 61')
FW 18. SEGAWA Yusuke (on for WAKIZAKA 80')
FW 38. KANDA Soma
DF 44. CESAR HAYDAR

My Frontale Man Of The Match

Plenty of mediocrity for most of this game so whilst it’s not very original, for the undeniable impact he had in turning one point into three, it’s got to go to…

ERISON - he scored. Twice. No-one else had really got that close so it’s kind of important he managed to do so.

Goals

ERISON (Frontale) 85' 1-0
ERISON (Frontale) 88' 2-0

Highlights

Vs Cerezo Osaka (home) 14/7/24 J League match 23

Kawasaki Frontale 1 - 1 Cerezo Osaka

After an Oniki masterclass managed to snap us out of our run of four consecutive draws by throwing in a defeat (to a lower league team which put us out of the cup at the first stage where we didn’t play a team that wasn’t made up of amateurs), we’re back again to those beautiful throw-away-the-lead draws. What’s the point of going to these games anymore? What’s the point of me writing these posts? Every week it’s the same. The only difference is a slight tweak to the players involved but absolutely no change to the tactics that have failed us for about three years now. The only thing I can presume is that Oniki is actively trying to get sacked, but he’s so useless that he can’t even sabotage us properly. Death by a thousand cuts is a familiar concept, but I wonder if this year we can change that to relegation by a thousand draws? Oniki needs to have a look at himself and decide what he wants his Frontale legacy to be. I think if he doesn’t want to totally trash his reputation he should probably quit immediately, as clearly, barring a massive change in character with him finally realizing that the same shit tactics might not come good after the hundredth unsuccessful attempt, he is not up to the job of keeping us in J1. Astonishingly after this match day, we’ve climbed one spot in the table. But don’t get too excited about that. Instead of being five point off 19th, we’re now three points from second bottom. Yes, we now have six teams behind us instead of five, but the fact is five of those six are one win away from overtaking us. A defeat next weekend away at Kashima could see us in the relegation zone if results don’t go our way. And if that happens, well, let’s expect the usual stuff from Oniki in his post match comments. ‘We wanted to win with so many fans supporting us’. ‘We tried to score a winner but couldn’t manage it’. ‘We will fight hard in the next game’. I don’t really know what the point of publishing these comments is. They are even more predictable than our awful play. For some reason, after this game he didn’t say he was to blame, like he usually does, presumably realising that no-one believes him when he says it, as they have heard him say it numerous times and then respond by changing fuck all. I guess the one consolation in this fifth consecutive league draw is that for once the opposition didn’t score shortly after an Oniki masterclass defensive change as they have done in quite a few of these last few games. In this game the eaualiser came a massive 12 minutes after Oniki’s visionary substitutions. I suppose in his defence you could say that the defensive change was forced on him this time due to the injury to Van Wermeskerken. But who am I kidding? It’s a certainty that we would have conceded anyway. The real miracle is that we haven’t managed to turn any of these draws into defeats.

The perfect photo for this game! Not very high quality,
people seem to have fallen over for no reason and
the officials apparently just staring into the middle distance

What can I say really? There were the same issues with this starting line up as there have been with most starting line ups for the last couple of years. There was the same lack of ideas. The same kind of soft goal conceded. In this game that goal almost appeared to be in slow motion. When I watched it back on DAZN I thought the play speed must have been adjusted, so slow were both the attack and the celebration from the goalscorer. So inevitable is it that we’ll concede an equaliser every time we go ahead that I think if the opposition decided to spend the whole of the second half sitting down in the centre circle, we’d still find a way to concede. Not just any manager can make this possible. It takes a special one to consistently be able to snatch failure from the jaws of victory.  But still he ploughs on. If he quit now, at least he won’t have our relegation on his CV. Of course it’s already at least two years too late for him to quit, but as our results get steadily worse, Oniki clings desperately onto his job, knowing that each week his stock as a capable manager drops further. If he quit now and let someone else take over, hopefully ditching Oniki’s shit tactics, we probably would have ample time to get at least a couple of wins and draw clear of the drop zone. But instead, Oniki seems determined to draw his way to J2, which is presumably is as high a level a job as he’ll be able to get next. Who am I kidding? There will definitely be some ‘big’ J1 club who are notorious for bad managerial appointments and love to throw cash around who’ll take him. That club, like many J League ‘experts’ on Twitter, having noticed that he won a few titles whilst ignoring the fact that it’s been rapidly diminishing returns for the past few years as Oniki gets rid of any traces of skill and capability that might still be leftover from previous managers. I think the only reasonable thing to do at this stage is to start singing the following lyrics to the tune of ‘Blame it on the Boogie’:

Don’t blame on our players,
Don’t blame it on the other team,
Don’t blame it on the referee,
Blame it on Oniki!

A few words about the ref. Kimura is a useless ref. I always say this so even this part is a repetitive waste of time. In posts about him in our games this year I’ve described him as’ an absolute disgrace’, ‘so useless he needed the the help of the [opposition] players’ and ‘really struggling to understand even the basic aspects of [his] job’. He continued in the same way in this match. But don’t get me wrong, as I sang above, I don’t blame him. But the VAR for our disallowed goal was quite annoying. I guess this is the fault of the VAR guy though, who was the equally jumped up and useless Yamamoto. If they only had the angles they showed us on DAZN and I presume this is the case as otherwise why would they not show us the evidence, they are presumably using their x-ray eyes to see through Ienaga to prove that the ball was off the pitch. Maybe it was, but I’m pretty sure that there was not the Mitoma World Cup goal level of attention to detail for the decision and instead Yamamoto dithered, remembered he hates us and then decided to rule it out. It seems a bit of a stretch to say that it was a clear and obvious error, especially considering that perhaps the ‘proof’ was by no means conclusive. Add to this that Cerezo won the ball back twice in the extended build up and gave it back to us both times, which I thought meant that the passage of play was over. I’ve looked at the rules and of course, as seems to be the case with many of the new regulations, (particularly ones related to VAR), that have been brought in to make the game more accurate and clear cut, there is a ridiculous amount of subjective opinion needed to make what I thought were now supposed to be unequivocal and evidence based decisions. People say the mistakes are supposed to even themselves out over the season, but that was also said before we had VAR and in those days we didn’t have the game killing boredom of waiting for a decision to be, (often incorrectly), made and the let down of having the celebrations of yet another ‘goal’ we’ve scored demolished. The feeling after VAR rules out a goal you’ve gone nuts about is probably something like the feelings of the kid who calls their teacher mum by accident in class. You’ll get over it, but it’s going to feel a bit embarrassing or disappointing for at least 24 hours. Oh and whoever that 4th official was, he’s a snitch. I don’t know why our translator got sent off. If he’d called the ref a useless wanker I think it would have been well worth it. I wish someone would say something similar to Oniki to be honest to snap him out of his bizarre self belief in his tactics. It might have actually done us good on this occasion though, as presumably afterwards Ze Ricardo would have not understood what Oniki was trying to tell him to do, so at that stage we had at least one player who wasn’t being constantly misdirected to the point of incompetence. If only it had been Oniki who’d been sent off! Maybe we could have got the win. One of the three magnet boards that now seem to be on our bench could have taken over. I’m pretty sure they would have done a better job at inspiring and motivating the players. I certainly would have more faith in them.

Truly exhilarating form!

So another game where I left quite quickly after the final whistle. I don’t know why, but at away games I feel like I should at least hang around and give the players a clap even if the game has been terrible. But at home games, I just want to get out of there as soon as possible. After a quick trip to the toilet I discovered that there wasn’t any booing on this occasion, but there was a bit of murmuring. The party line still seems to be to keep happy clappy about everything though. Next up, Kashiwa away with exactly the same tactics I’m sure. Presumably the best we can hope for is a draw. But given that they are close to us in the table, I expect we’ll lose. I also expect some people to lose their rag. But of course, Oniki won’t ever lose his job.


Team

GK 1. JUNG Sung-Ryong
DF 31. VAN WERMESKERKEN Sai
DF 2. TAKAI Kota
DF 5. SASAKI Asahi
MF 8. TACHIBANADA Kento
MF 16. SEKO Tatsuki
MF 10. OSHIMA Ryota
MF 14. WAKIZAKA Yasuto
FW 20. YAMADA Shin (Yellow card 33')
FW 9. ERISON
FW 23. MARCINHO

 

Subs

GK 99. KAMIFUKUMOTO Naoto
DF 3. OMINAMI Takuma (on for VAN WERMESKERKEN 65')

MF 6. ZE RICARDO (on for OSHIMA 46')
FW 11. KOBAYASHI Yu (on for ERISON 58')
FW 17. TONO Daiya

FW 30. SEGAWA Yusuke (on for YAMADA 82')
FW 41. IENAGA Akihiro (on for MARCINHO 65')

Goals

MARCINHO (Frontale) 36' 1-0
VITOR BUENO (Cerezo) 77' 1-1

My Frontale Man Of The Match

This section will be going on hiatus until we are not as useless as we are right now. Maybe some time next year.

Highlights

Vs Cerezo Osaka (away) 13/4/24 J League match 8

Cerezo Osaka 1 - 0 Kawasaki Frontale

Well, I dunno. What’s there to say? One again we lost. Once again we lost away at Cerezo. Once again we lost away at Cerezo and I’m not that pissed off. Oh hang on. That’s probably the headline. Last year’s away game here saw us get battered 3-0, but I came away from that game with some positivity thinking that at least the great Oniki had finally tried something different. Not sure that’s particularly the case with this match, but at least you could say that we played better than we did against Machida. Admittedly that’s not a high bar to clear though. As the games pass this year and the defeats keep on piling up it would make sense to get more angry about our 2024 uselessness. Certainly looking at the result of this game would give you plenty of things to moan about. But to be honest, I thought this was a game that should have been a 0-0, with both teams showing that they were pretty crap when it came to finishing off chances. As it was we’ve ended up even closer to the relegation zone and the bottom of the table and Cerezo ended the weekend at the top. To be honest, this was something of a blessing, as usually the trains after the game are unpleasantly busy. It seemed that knowing that they’d gone top of the league, the Cerezo fans decided to hang around and enjoy the moment. I can't say for sure as this was another game where we left pretty soon after the final whistle. For these kind of shitty performances at home we’d probably go on the final whistle, but at away games, particularly when we’ve put up a bit of a fight, I feel like I should at least wait and acknowledge the bow of shame. Not going to hang around cheering off our losing team till they get back into the changing room though. Life is really way too short for that. I was considering if there was a way to enjoy Frontale games more this year and the only thing I could think of would be to avoid the matches as much as possible and otherwise continue with the away game activities or home game routine. That way you’d get all the fun and none of the misery. Hmmmm. Perhaps worth considering. As I don’t think there’s much to be said about either Cerezo, (basically not that good on the day, but crucially, with some kind of plan and like most teams, not as bad as us), and the ref, (pretty crap but not offensively so apart from him letting pretty much anything go unless one of our Brazilian players was involved in which case, he gave them a booking), I’m going to dispense with the usual headings and instead wrap this up in one bloated miserable diatribe. Well, maybe not miserable, as like I said, this defeat was a vast improvement on the Machida game. But definitely bloated and certainly a diatribe. Ok, here we go.

I've said it plenty of times and whilst people don't like to hear it, right now (and for a while as far as I'm concerned but not to most), Oniki is a bit crap isn’t he? I suspect the board and him will realise this fact shortly after our relegation to J2 is confirmed. I think it’s clear that we are very much in the diminishing returns era now. I’ve been moaning for years and with every passing game it seems that what I’ve been saying seems to be coming increasingly apparent. Admittedly, we’ve been getting shafted by injuries recently. This weekend the club has confirmed that Maruyama is injured. And Miura has a knee injury so don’t expect him back any time soon. And unsurprisingly, Jesiel's injury been confirmed. Don't forget that Oniki played a clearly unfit Jesiel, kept him on the pitch long after he looked like he was crocked, and eventually left it till we’d conceded and he was completely crocked till he changed anything. So he’s definitely got to be blamed for Jesiel’s absence. Let’s hope it’s not a long term thing. But history says that it probably will be. So yeah, plenty of injuries. You could say that’s why Oniki played a striker at right back and a midfielder at left back. Well, you could, but there was a player on the bench who can play in either of those positions, so the truth has to be that Oniki as usual likes to play his favourites, regardless of logic in all but the rarest of occasions. For a bit of positivity when it comes to injuries, Oshima and Gomis played in a practice game on Sunday against JEF. Perhaps slightly unfortunate that we have plenty of fit players who play in their positions though and a manager who is wedded to the same players in pretty much the same formation. Perhaps Oniki will go for Oshima at right back And Gomis at left back in a game soon. That’s the level of out of the box thinking we’re dealing with.

So Segawa at right back and Tachibanada at left back. Sounds like an attacking line up, right? Well… maybe in theory. It was nice to see us equal our total number of shots on target in the whole game against Machida after just four minutes in this game. The match stats will tell you that we had a magnificent five shots on target in this game! Sounds even better when you consider we’d only had 13 shots on target in the previous five games. But crucially, we still failed to score. That’s three games without a goal now. Blimey. Although I don’t see there being a great deal of difference since we switched to two defensive midfielders, (when we played FC Tokyo at home and somehow... won! That result is looking increasingly bizarre week by week. Unless you remember that two of the goals were absolute gifts from Chofu and the other was scored after their keeper had been sent off), we’ve tightened things up a little at the back but have significantly blunted our attack. Oniki did exactly the same thing last year, (or was it the year before?), when he played Tachibanada and Joao Schmidt together. Much like last time he tried it, it has stopped us conceding for fun. Unlike last time though, in 2024 this change means us conceding one goal and losing rather than keeping a clean sheet and hoping for a 0-0. The attack blunting effect of the change is pretty much the same as when Oniki last tried it though. Erison looks completely isolated and our don't-go-forwards-if-there's-a-backwards-pass-available approach is unsurprisingly not that effective when it comes to scoring. So don’t any of you dare say he NEVER changes anything! Obviously the truth is that he seldom changes anything and when he does he changes to a formula that he’s tried before, which didn’t work then and won't work now. That’s the beauty and quality of Oniki Frontale! BRAVO!!!!! It’s a shame that the other myriad formations or tactical approaches that are available are never even considered by him. Perhaps he’s only got a very limited number of options on his magnet board. It always makes me laugh how he seems to shuffle his magnets as a sign to show everyone that he’s really thinking. Shuffle them around, stand up purposefully and then impose exactly the same tactics as last time. Please, someone in the club, steal that board and smash it to pieces. I think he needs to go magnet cold turkey. It’s the only way we’ll break out if this insanely looping reality that we’re in. Most teams would look at our steady decline and notice that something needs to change. It looks like we’ll go with the ‘wait till we’re relegated’ route before anyone even dares question Oniki’s tactics or abilities as a manager. Before I was aware of the extent of our latest injuries I looked at the starting line up and my only conclusion was that Oniki had a nice job lined up somewhere and was desperately trying to get sacked so he could get a pay out rather than resign. Now I know the extent of our injuries… actually maybe I still think that same thing. But the truth is, Oniki is unbelievably risk averse. The weird thing is that he sees playing 3/4 of the defence out of position as being less risky than playing players who aren’t experienced but can play in those positions. I’m almost convinced that if we got a couple of injuries in the goalkeeping department Oniki would probably play Tachibanda there rather than Ando or Hayasaka. Thankfully we haven’t had that particular crisis yet as Sung Ryong kept us in the game again early on in this match. Well Sung-Ryong and some truly crap Cerezo finishing. The stats at the end of the game were fairly even, with us actually having more shots. The truth is though that this was another crap performance and one where we came up against a team who were also on this occasion playing like crap so luckily we avoided getting whupped. Our results have been terrible but you could probably say that we’ve been kind of lucky considering how poor we’ve been.


I’m not that interested in continuing this blog post much longer so let’s rip through one other notable thing. This game saw us come up against Nobori for the first time since he left us. When he came to say hello after the match he was moved to tears. I suspect this was probably tears of joy as he noticed he’d dodged a real bullet by leaving us before the start of this season. Not sure where he was playing for Cerezo as it sometimes looked like left back, sometimes centre back and sometimes defensive midfield. I wonder if the Cerezo manager actually has some original ideas about how to play football. Oniki take note please. I suspect it’s unlikely that he will. Nobori was the latest in a long line of players we have discarded to ‘weaker’ teams who’ve come back to us, beaten us and kept their new team in a much higher position in the league. I’m not saying we shouldn’t have got rid of these players. I actually think our squad this year is better than last year's. It’s just the complete lack of ideas that is the killer. 

 

(No) Banner wisdom -

 

I'm sad to say that there were no amusing banners on display at this game, which means that my snarky section is dying before it even really got started. So instead this week I'll change the focus slightly.

Heavenly audio -

 

Every team seems to have a rousing anthem to gee up their fans before the match. FC Tokyo go for a karaoke backing track of 'You'll Never Walk Alone' with Colin from the local Eikaiwa multi-tracking several vocal parts in a few different voices, (Chofu Eikaiwa employee, Chofu ALT, Chofu based gaijin TikTok content maker), over the top to blast out at maximum volume to cover up the mumbling coming from the stands. YFM have their shitty towel twirling 'banger'. Vissel Kobe proudly sing about the three lions on their shirts and the return of football to it's true home in Hyogo. And of course I shouldn't forget Urawa having a look at their logo and the hip music lover on their staff scanning through his collection of 'NOW THAT'S WHAT I CALL MUSIC!' CDs to find the first song with the word 'house' in its title (it's on NOW 23 in case you were wondering). Cerezo took a different approach and asked their staff if any of them had a casio keyboard at home, the cheaper the better. Thankfully one of them did and after carefully selecting the Funky Pop preset and letting it rip, they did a bit of one finger drum pad fills to keep things exciting. Of course it was crap, and of course every team does these kind of crap things. But you know, I just thought I'd try to inject just a little of of levity in this otherwise dour post. 

Next up Tokyo Verdy at home next weekend. They now sit ahead of us in the league. That’s true for fifteen teams though, so perhaps not worth mentioning. We've already lost to the other two newly promoted teams at home. And we’ve played two of the teams who are below us in the league so are supposedly worse than us and lost to one of them! The other was a slightly unsteady win at the start of the season before we knew quite how bad things were going to get. Ah! The glory of 2024! How nice it would be to go back to the days when we could play like shit but not lose! With Takai away with the U23 Japan team it seems like we'll be enjoying this injury crisis in defence for a while. But we should be used to that kind of thing, as it seems we have an injury crisis in defence every season. 2024 is going to be the year of throwbacks and repetition it seems. All of the problems we've had in previous years just keep cropping up again. I guess that's got something to do with us doing exactly the same thing every week and expecting things to magically start working. I suppose at least we'll soon have one new thing though to experience soon though. The excitement of being in a real relegation battle. 

 

Team

GK 1. JUNG Sung-Ryong
DF 30. SEGAWA Yusuke

DF 3. OMINAMI Takuma

DF 5. SASAKI Asahi
DF 8. TACHIBANADA Kento
MF 16. SEKO Tatsuki
MF 77. YAMAMOTO Yuki

MF 14. WAKIZAKA Yasuto
FW 41. IENAGA Akihiro
FW 9. ERISON (Yellow card 60')
FW 23. MARCINHO (Yellow card 55')

Subs

GK 99. KAMIFUKUMOTO Naoto
MF 6. ZE RICARDO (on for YAMAMOTO 73')

FW 11. KOBAYASHI Yu (on for IENAGA 73')
DF 15. TANABE Shuto

FW 17. TONO Daiya (on for MARCINHO 58')

FW 20. YAMADA Shin (on for ERISON 73')
FW 28. PATRICK VERHON (on for WAKIZAKA 79')

Goals

LEO CEARA (Cerezo) 70' 1-0

 

My Frontale Man Of The Match

 

Briefly toyed with doing a serious FMOTM, and then with a sarcastic one. But finally settled on just not bothering.

 

Highlights  

 

Vs Cerezo Osaka (away) 2/9/23 J League match 26

Cerezo Osaka 3 - 0 Kawasaki Frontale

Where to start with this game? This is probably going to be a post that surprises some people with its light positivity and occasional complimentary words for Oniki. At the same time though, this was another truly horrible result in a year that just keeps on disappointing. There are so many things to talk about, but at the same time I don’t really want this to be ridiculously long and instead only very long. The stuff about the game is fairly straightforward, although perhaps I have a different opinion to most about it. The other stuff around the game and about the club in general is a bit more complicated. And given that I have no insider knowledge or gossip, I’ll try to deal with that in as much of a detached way as possible. We have no games for a couple of weeks now, (next up, FC Tokyo at home in the league), which is probably a good thing. But at the same time, when you have a result like this, it’s sometimes a good thing to get it out of your system as soon as possible, rather than think about it for 14 days, but that’s what we’ll have to do, I guess. For once I’m not going to dwell on the opposition or the ref. I didn’t really have any complaints about the ref to be honest, apart from a VAR moan which I’ll put in the part about the game. As for the opposition, the beer truck wasn’t as good this year as aside from a couple of slightly mediocre Kawasaki beers, it only had Deraileur stuff, and I’m not a massive fan of them. Seems a bit ungrateful as it is that brewery’s beer truck, but hey, I’m a beer snob, I guess. The only other opposition point is that Croux is still a total wanker and an unbelievable diver. To slightly throw some shade on the ref perhaps I should moan that although he didn’t fall for all of Croux’s dives, he did fail to punish Croux for his dives when he spotted them. Although I can’t remember the last time I saw anyone get booked for diving. Start dishing out those yellows J League refs! I guess most of them have enough trouble with the basic rules of the sport so they should probably work on understanding them first. Anyway, here’s a bit about the game, a bit about things surrounding the game, and a bit about the state of the club in general.

The game -

I was strangely pleased with the line up in this game. It seemed that Oniki had finally realised that we are not in the title race anymore, something which most of us have known since the first few weeks of the season. Perhaps with this in mind, or perhaps because we played 120 minutes on Wednesday and then had to come to Osaka for Saturday, Oniki shuffled the pack. Finally we saw Ienaga and Yamane get a rest, (although quite why the former, a laid back and slightly lethargic influence at the best of times, was brought on in the second half to chase the game, I don’t know). We saw a shake up up front, the defence was shuffled, the midfield was… pretty much the same as usual. We maybe even saw a change in formation!!!! There was talk online from an expert before the game of us playing 3-5-2, the main reason being that Ominami couldn’t be expected to do the high intensity right back thing after playing the whole game on Wednesday. Well, that person was half right. It looked like the normal formation to begin with but soon seemed to change into the 3-5-2, but instead of giving Ominami a partial rest and playing him as part of the back three he was instead played as the right wing back and therefore had to do even more work than usual. I thought he did pretty well though. Segawa on the other side looked good going forward and did his best to help out Tanabe, (long time no see!), on the left hand side of the back three, but Segawa is absolutely not a defender and got caught out quite a few times. Guess he joins the long list of non-defenders who Oniki has played on the left hand side in a defensive position. Tanabe had a good game I thought. I’d been cursing Oniki for recalling him and then after he got injured, totally forgetting him, but he was back again and showed that he can become an important player for us. I guess some people suspected he might be playing as a wing back as he can play anywhere across the back line. But he looked good at centre back. Likewise, Takai was back after a bit of a rest perhaps due to some shocking errors, and also looked reasonably solid. Yamamura, the other centre back had a bit of a nightmare game, but I don’t particularly blame him either. He’s not a defender. The Cerezo fans must be bewildered why we signed their midfielder, who can do a job up front and had on occasion filled in at the back in an emergency and then refused to play him anywhere other than at centre back. It definitely true that he had an unlucky game. The first penalty looked borderline and far from clear cut. The VAR check took just under five minutes (speedy!). Remember that these things are supposed to be for clear and obvious errors. It’s a common moan of mine and many others that if a check takes that long, it’s probably not a clear and obvious error. Also, if the only angles the ref saw were the ones that were displayed on the screen in the ground, it’s a total joke. There were only two marginally different side-on angles neither of which had any hope of showing where the ball made contact with the player. VAR with these angles is like trying to read the small print on your refereeing job contract whilst looking through the wrong end of a telescope. If that’s how the J League refs are told to read the rule book it would certainly explain some of their decisions. The ref was perhaps taking guidance from Kagawa who seemed to be offering advice non-stop as we waited for the VAR guys to watch the same two wholly inappropriate angles before basically tossing a coin to make the decision. And I’m pretty sure that whilst the check was being painstakingly done, the Cerezo fans were chanting ‘VAR, Ole! Ole! Ole!’, which was a bit weird. Actually that was a lot weird, but kind of makes sense as whenever there’s a VAR incident we’re involved in at that ground, it goes against us. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying it 100% wasn’t a penalty, but it was nowhere near such a sure thing as the Cerezo fans and players thought it was, and with the evidence available, there was no way the ref’s original (perhaps correct, perhaps incorrect) decision should have been overturned. But these things happen. And pretty sure this thing happened in the same stadium to us last year, or maybe the year before. We never seem to do that well away at Cerezo, so all the failures blur into one somewhat. 

 

Jumping to the second penalty, I don’t think VAR got involved, perhaps realising that they’d already wasted enough time with the first one. The way the Cerezo player celebrated suggests that perhaps he thought he had ‘won’ the penalty, rather than it being a sure thing. Again, it looked possible, but nowhere near nailed on, so perhaps VAR did the right thing on this occasion as the ref had given it and no clear error had been made. I guess it’s just our luck at the moment that when there are two borderline penalty decisions in a game, both go against us. Prior to both of these we’d already conceded when Yamamura glanced a defensive header onto the head of Takai which sent the ball past Kamifukumoto. Later in the game when we were attacking, one of our headers deflected off the head of a defender and it floated perfectly into the arms of the keeper. Unlucky again, as was the case with most things in this game for us. It’s not good to concede three times, but aside from three bits of bad luck / borderline decisions that all went Cerezo’s way, they didn’t threaten us that much, particularly in the first half. The big problem is that we didn’t threaten much either. It was interesting to see Oniki try a front two for the first time in ages. It was perhaps a bit of a shame that he did it with two players who’ve hardly ever played together. There really was a lack of understanding between Damiao and Yamada, but it felt that with a bit of instruction from the manager it could have worked. I don’t know if Oniki gave them any instructions before the game. You’d hope so, but at the same time, you can’t really guarantee he would have done. I was kind of encouraged though by the possibilities in the first half and was delighted when Oniki went against my expectations and kept the front two the same for the start of the second half. We still didn’t really make any good chances though, but there was a feeling that perhaps with a bit of time it might work. Up until Oniki made his first QUADRUPLE substitution, I thought we were still a work in progress and were doing ok. Not great, but ok and certainly there were more things to be hopeful about than in recent times. We had conceded a goal in quite unfortunate circumstances but things weren’t a disaster. In the interminable seven or eight minutes that it took Oniki to get the subs on, we conceded again. I don’t know how exactly many times we’ve conceded whilst waiting to make subs, but it’s happened memorably often. Out of the subs we had available, my thinking was that if you need a goal, the two most likely sources on the bench would be Seko or Tono. They were the two players who weren’t changed. Marcinho has been a shadow of himself this year, perhaps troubled by his injury still. But he did alright when he came on, but alright in that some chances were almost created but not to the point of actually having a shot or passing to someone to have a shot. Ienaga came on and didn’t do much at all. Give the guy a proper break. Oh, and with these subs we switched back to the good old 4-3-3, which has never not failed to get us a goal this year. So after the subs, all there was to look forward to was the final whistle and the pub after the game, and even that experience was delayed by 10 minutes of injury time (and that second penalty). So we left immediately on the final whistle, (which probably is a bit harsh as the players had done their best but had been let down by what seemed like a bit of a failure with the preparation and some bad luck), and missed out on the next big talking point.
 

The other stuff -

Ooooooohhhhhhhhh. There was pitch invasion by a pair of ‘Frontale fans’ whilst the hero interview was being done! Some people online compared it to when about 50 Urawa fans broke through the barriers, invaded the opposition fans area, tried to fight them and destroyed their flags. At this match, two people climbed over the barrier, ran around briefly and then climbed back over the barrier into the crowd where they were dealt with by Frontale staff, who had managed to get to them before any of the security had actually noticed anything had happened. I’m not condoning it as it’s a pretty stupid thing to do in any situation. I think it’s a bit of a non-story though. There has been speculation that they weren’t even Frontale fans as they weren’t wearing anything that suggested they might be. It was actually noticeable that alongside the empty seats, there were quite a few new fans / interested tourists in our end. It’s a bit of shame that we couldn’t do anything to retain their interest. If that was my first game as a potential Frontale supporter, I think I’d start looking for not just a new team to follow but a new sport to get interested in. I did quite enjoy the atmosphere though. Cerezo do their best to make the away supporters experience as ineffectual and unsatisfying as possible, by not giving us a roof for the sound to bounce off or to protect us in the event of rain, making the stand not very steep to make the view of the other end of the pitch pretty bad and making the distance from the pitch extra big so they could get some extra advertising hoardings in. I’m only whinging for fun though. It’s better than their old stadium. Along with the pitch invasion, and also missed by those of us who left promptly, was some booing. A very rare thing at Frontale matches, but some might say long overdue. I don’t know where I stand on this. I think we should be able to express our dissatisfaction at our results and the way we’re playing. At the same time, I don’t think booing is particularly going to help. Equally, cheering and singing wildly after another defeat isn’t exactly very useful I think. It makes us just look like we’re nuts. Perhaps leaving on the final whistle is the thing. It certainly works for me. If the whole crowd did it, it might send a message. Support them during the game, but when it’s over, save yourself some time and a lot of effort by just leaving. I think I’ve made it quite clear that I don’t blame the players particularly. Some people are having bad seasons, but the same guy keeps picking them and the same guy is deciding on the tactics. I don’t even want to moan about Oniki in this game. The saddest thing about this result is that any hopes for us experimenting a bit more in what are now utterly pointless league matches are probably now dead. We saw in this match that as soon as things started going wrong, Oniki reverted back to the same players and the same system that hasn’t worked all year. After getting a walloping I can’t see that he’ll try anything new in the next match and it will be 4-3-3, Ienaga, Yamane, and the usual sideways passing. Two up front is probably dead. Three at the back is probably dead. The same midfield will obviously live on. The truth is we can’t get away from the fact that we haven’t won in the last six games and we’ve lost four of them. We’re conceding goals at a shocking rate and there doesn’t seem to be any ideas from Oniki how to stop that happening. We’ve conceded ten goals in the last four games! Since we beat YFM in the last minute halfway though July, the only team we’ve beaten is Kochi United and that wasn’t exactly a comfortable win. We signed one player in the summer transfer window and he is still nowhere to be seen apart from in promotional materials and social media posts. I don’t know what we’re saving him for. We let two central midfielders go and now find ourselves with almost not enough people to play in that position. It’s all a bit hopeless really. It’s too easy for some fans to pile on to certain players online for individual mistakes but we probably should remember that the one constant in all of our horrible games this year is the manager. And he must have something to do with the fact that we don’t have enough defenders. He used to be lucky, but the whole thing about luck eventually evening itself out casts a horrible shadow over the next couple of years as right now we’re experiencing some misfortune, but judging by how much good luck we got in the last couple of years, we’ve got quite a bit of bad luck still to come.
 

So to summarise, as far as I am concerned, we weren’t as bad as the score line suggests and there was even something to be a little positive about when it comes to perhaps trying new things. But any chance of that happening in the future has now probably been destroyed. I think Oniki did the right thing on plenty of occasions in this match, (apart from the subs), and I’m sure that he’s not enjoying how bad we are. I just hope he continues trying to change things, even a little. The problem we’ve had is that we’ve rigidly stuck to a once winning formula for so long, that when we get an injury or we lose a player to the bright lights of the Albanian third tier we can’t replace them as the players who might take over have only featured in the final five minutes of a few games. I once again will say that it seems unlikely that all of of squad have simultaneously become awful players, so we need to have a look elsewhere when it comes to trying to discover what’s going wrong. For once, and in a hugely ironic way considering the bluntness of our attacks and the result of the game, I wasn’t that upset by watching us try to do things in the first half. Nothing worked, but at least we were trying. It was only when the same old crap was wheeled out with the first substitutions that everything became a lot more irritating. But I’m calm now, so it didn’t even leave a scratch on me. It’s pretty futile to moan on the internet about this stuff. (Hmmmm, brief moment of self-observation there where I thought perhaps I was trolling myself). It’s probably also not going to help to moan about it at games and boo. But I understand people’s frustrations, particularly as plenty of our fans have only known good times. I don’t particularly want Oniki to leave. I do want Oniki to change, but as I don’t think he’ll easily do the latter, I guess the former has to happen. But in this match he tried something and if he has the courage of his convictions to carry on with this in the future, I’ll be happy. I think it’s unlikely he will though. If we’re back to the normal stuff next game I won’t be very happy. And presumably now Oniki will really be under pressure to lift the mood so perhaps he’ll play the Gomis card. If Gomis isn’t ready to be involved by the next match we play in two weeks, I think we really have to wonder quite how old he will be when he is deemed worthy of some involvement. All of our eggs are now in the Emperor’s Cup basket so we can definitely afford to try something different again in our remaining league games. It would probably be a better idea to pick a formation that we actually have the players to play though, instead of putting square pegs in round holes. But what do I know, eh? I know that we have only three away games left this year, one is at the worst ground for away fans in the J League and one is at the national stadium, which to be honest, could be a competitor for the former title. It’s a bit of luck that we finish up the year with one of the best away trips. So there you go, there is something to look forward to after all!  We’ll be able to celebrate our 10th place league finish with shochus galore on the terrace behind the goal at Tosu! 

 

Team

GK 99. KAMIFUKUMOTO Naoto

DF 29. TAKAI Kota (Yellow card 90+4')

DF 31. YAMAMURA Kazuya

DF 15. TANABE Shuto

MF 6. JOAO SCHMIDT

MF 3. OMINAMI Takuma

MF 8. TACHIBANADA Kento

MF 14. WAKIZAKA Yasuto

MF 30. SEGAWA Yusuke

FW 20. YAMADA Shin

FW 9. LEANDRO DAMIAO

 

Subs

GK 1. JUNG Sung-Ryong

DF 2. NOBORIZATO Kyohei (on for TANABE 74')

MF 16. SEKO Tatsuki

FW 11. KOBAYASHI Yu (on for LEANDRO DAMIAO 74')

FW 17. TONO Daiya (on for TACHIBANADA 84')

FW 23. MARCINHO (on for SEGAWA 74')

FW 41. IENAGA Akihiro (on for YAMADA 74')

 

Goals

 

TAKAI (Frontale) OWN GOAL 52' 1-0

LEO CEARA (Cerezo) PEN 72' 2-0

WATANABE (Cerezo) PEN 90+2' 3-0

 

My Frontale Man Of The Match

I mean, I know I've been a bit more positive than you might have expected, but a man of the match is taking it a bit far, isn't it?

Highlights