Vs Gamba Osaka (away) 20/7/25 J League match 24

Gamba Osaka 2 - 1 Kawasaki Frontale

What a crushingly predictable result this was. Recently we’re always terrible away at Gamba so in a season where we’re always at the most one game away from shitting the bed, it was absolutely nailed on that we’d lose this game. It’s a shame though that we seem to have to lose in such frustrating and irritating ways. A little bit of hope when we scored against the run of play and took the lead! And then absolute resignation to what was going to happen as we conceded right at the end of the first half after giving the ball away cheaply. I honestly can’t believe we’re so high up in the table. I can’t believe we’ve scored so many goals. Because it seems that at least once every ten days we put it an absolute turd of a performance. To be fair, this was far from being the worst of our recent ones. That honour surely must go to either Verdy away or the Sagamihara game, but even after we scored I felt it was unlikely we’d score again and when you gift the opposition at least one goal a game, you’re never going to win if you only score once. And once again, (how many times is it now? Maybe I should check), we scored first and then fucked it up. As we now have three weeks off, (nice work J League schedulers. Glad we played a game every three days for the first few months of the season), I want to get this out of the way so I can concentrate on other less obvious ways of making myself miserable.

Us -

Was nice to see Kobayashi score. Was nice to see Erison back on the pitch. Wasn’t so nice to see us still press on with the same pointless shit we’ve been playing for the last few years. There really isn’t much discernible difference between some of our recent matches and ‘peak’ Oniki Frontale. People might point to the fact that we get it forward a bit quicker these days, but that only really means we lose the ball from hoofing it after lots of pointless passing rather than lose it from a short pass after doing the pointless passing. With Erison back on the pitch we looked a little more likely to score, but the fact is we spent 80 minutes of the game failing to do so. I feel like maybe I’m being a bit harsh as we had twice as many shots on target as Gamba did but crucially they scored twice as many goals as we did. It’s difficult to speak with much certainty on a lot of this match as my view from the eaves of the stand was massively blocked by a big flag rendering the whole experience even more frustrating. It did look a bit like Yamaguchi didn’t cover himself in glory though. For the second goal the ball was hit straight at him and he still contrived to let it go in through him. Our centre backs for this game were Maruyama and Sasaki. So now the guy who’s maybe our best full back is one of our first choice centre backs and his biggest contribution there was perhaps his assist for Gamba’s first goal. According to Hasebe having Tsuchiya and Kamihashi on the bench shows that they’re both ready to step up and are good players but I don’t think they were ever going to be used in this game. Not sure what’s happened to Jesiel. Perhaps he’s being used sparingly. Seems like we have quite a few members of our squad who can’t be expected to play every game. Having two centre backs who you almost certainly aren’t going to use on the bench probably speaks volumes about our squad depth. Looking at the bench, it was no surprise to see the changes that were made. In fact you probably could have bet your life savings on them before the game started. More on this in a little Hasebe moan section later. Looking at who we could bring on and who we did bring on, of course Erison could make a difference. Ienaga on his day could too, but those days are becoming increasingly rare. Miyagi still seems to be suffering from the problem he’s had since… well maybe always. He looks like he might be able to do something but rarely does. And the fact that one of our ‘game changing’ subs spent the last few years bouncing around J2 not doing much is a bit of a worry too. But who else is there? No one really. I can’t think of anyone in the squad who right now makes me think I’d like to see more of them. We’ve lost two of last year’s starting 11. We’ve brought in… a player from a university who presumably won’t be getting anywhere near the squad for at least a year. So we don’t have players? Hmmm. Well we do, but they’re plying like donkeys. So whose fault is that? Hmmmm. I’m sorry Hasebe but the honeymoon is over. Same formation as last year. Same tactics as last year with an occasional hoof added. Same subs, like for like every time, with no obvious desire to change anything and the apparent belief that sooner or later everything will work out just fine. He needs to do something fast. Some might say we don’t have the players to play a different formation but I’d suggest that in recent games we don’t have the players to play the formation we’re playing at the moment. There would be a case for saying that this was one of our better recent games. AND WE FUCKING LOST! Best not think about that too long unless you want to get quite depressed. I don’t expect us to win every game. But it’s probably not too much to ask that every game isn’t the same crushingly dull and pointless stuff. Modern football seems to be all about possession and we’ve gone down this route a lot in recent years. But the fact is, recently, more often than not we don’t even have the pointless possession to hang on to anymore. As I said, before the game I knew this was a nailed on defeat so maybe I shouldn’t be so upset about it. But it just all seems so fucking pointless. As soon as we scored I knew there was no chance of us scoring again. Perhaps we just need a change in our fortunes, but right now we look dodgy up front, dodgy at the back and non-existent in the middle. Oh well, at least due to Kobayashi’s goal the club was able to put a clip up online of the goal and everyone could get excited and emotional that he scored whilst ignoring the fact that we lost again and we look shit. Wonderful stuff! I know the club is looking for someone to do English language stuff at the moment. Do you think I should send in my application? I don’t want to criticise Hasebe too much but he’s got to do something as we look more like relegation candidates right now. Change something in our tactics or somehow instill a bit of belief in the players. I know I’m legendarily pessimistic, but I think the players must be feeling similarly right now. Hasebe, it’s time for you to step up and use this little break to make your mark, in whichever way you want, but please let us see Hasebe Frontale in the next game, rather than a very slightly tweaked to no discernible advantage 2023 or 2024 Frontale.

Them - 

Gamba controlled long periods of the game, had much more possession than us and more shots. But still I feel like they didn’t really deserve to win. (Heheheh, naturally). I think an utterly boring goalless draw would have been a fair result. If we weren’t so bad at shooting and didn’t give away goals so freely I don’t think they would have won. Hummet seems like a bit of a prick. Happy to dish it out but flopping to the floor as soon as anyone comes close to him. Can’t really say much else about them though. Well apart from the fact that Poyatos is a whiny little bitch. He lost his mind when we took a throw before they could do their subs. Stamping his feet at the fourth official and having a right strop. Presumably they must have been absolutely urgent changes. Although not urgent enough to do the next time the ball went out as he delayed them. Considering we were never going to score for most of the match, there was a lot of time wasting from Gamba. Even from the ball boys. This kind of thing really annoys when it’s the opposition doing it, but probably is quite amusing when it’s your team dishing it out. Oh, and I wrote something about the large amount of those old Japanese flags with racist connotations behind the goal but have deleted it because it just looks like sour grapes and plenty of other teams do the same thing. But in case you were in any doubt, fuck those guys who wave those flags. (By the way, please do check previous posts on Gamba away for my usual rant about them moving us up to the top floor. That still pisses me off, as you probably can tell).

Ref - 

Nakamura again, and as has been the case since he got ref of the year, he was awful. Absolutely card shy and just a general wanker. I mean, I guess this is true, but I could hardly see anything because of that sodding flag and the fact that I was so high above the pitch that I could probably have touched a cloud if they’d removed the roof of the stadium.

So another shite result which threatened to spoil the nice trip we had planned around the utterly futile 90 minutes of football. (As an aside, we went to Shiga on Monday to watch Grulla Morioka in the JFL. I can confirm that VAR has indeed ruined football as when Grulla scored their somewhat surprising first goal I wasn’t properly excited, thinking that presumably there was going to be a VAR check. Of course there wasn’t going to be one as there is no VAR outside of the top flight in Japan. But so accustomed have I become to the enjoyment-sapping influence of VAR that even when it definitely won’t be happening I still take it into consideration. Of course I’m not saying that there aren’t more correct decisions due to its influence. The problem is the referees are generally useless and totally inconsistent within matches and even more so from ref to ref. It’s a bit like having your partner’s parents visit your flat and painstakingly cleaning the kitchen to a sparkle but at the same time emptying the contents of the bin all over the living room. I know people say that if you delay the gratification sometimes the reward is heightened. Don’t think this really works when it comes to VAR though does it? The thrill is cut short and then if you’re lucky you get a feeling of light relief afterwards. Absolutely exhilarating. Anyway, clearly the horse has already bolted when it comes to VAR so there’s not much point talking about it. But if you were in any doubt, I still hate it). Three weeks off will hopefully bring either a rethink or some reinforcements or hopefully both. Please, please, please let it at least bring something other than just a break from the utter tedium of our football. As I said above, it’s a miracle we’re so high up in the table and have scored so many goals. It really doesn’t feel like we have. When the (possible) tedium recommences it will be at home against Avispa Fukuoka, which presumably will be a game Hasebe is quite up for winning. With that in mind he’ll probably go with the same team, formation and tactics. Sooner or later it will all come good, right? Just need to be patient and try not to expire from the tedium beforehand.

Team

GK 98. YAMAGUCHI Louis
DF 31. VAN WERMESKERKEN Sai
DF 5. SASAKI Asahi
DF 35. MARUYAMA Yuichi
DF 13. MIURA Sota
MF 19. KAWAHARA So
MF 6. YAMAMOTO Yuki
MF 14. WAKIZAKA Yasuto
MF 17. ITO Tatsuya
FW 11. KOBAYASHI Yu
FW 23. MARCINHO

Subs

GK 21. ANDO Shunsuke
MF 8. TACHIBANADA Kento (on for KAWAHARA 79')
FW 9. ERISON (on for KOBAYASHI 46')
MF 16. OZEKI Yuto (on for WAKIZAKA 79')
FW 24. MIYAGI Ten (on for MARCINHO 70')
DF 27. KAMIHASHI Ryota
FW 38. KANDA Soma

DF 39. TSUCHIYA Kaito
FW 41. IENAGA Akihiro (on for ITO 71')

My Frontale Fan Of The Match

Maybe it's a surprise that I'm giving this out in this game and perhaps this is something of a left-field choice, but I think it has to go to...

 

THE MASSIVE FLAG (THAT BLOCKED MY VIEW FOR LARGE PERIODS OF THE GAME) - congratulations to the massive flag for winning this for the first time. There was a lot of mediocrity on show on the pitch, but the massive flag did a great job of protecting me from the shite that was going on way down below. What you can't see, can't hurt you. Thank you, massive flag!

Massive flag in its full view blocking glory!

Goals

KOBAYASHI (Frontale) 9' 0-1
KURATA (Gamba) 45+3' 1-1
HUMMET (Gamba) 57' 2-1

Highlights

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

Kawasaki Frontale 2 - 2 Gamba Osaka

Welcome to part two of ‘Shit home games that end 2-2’. I will forever remain astonished that some people are happy to come away from a game like this, (and Wednesday’s), with positivity saying that it was an entertaining match. Clearly they are better people than me, as my feelings were irritation, frustration and creeping pessimism. And then I followed up this game by watching my beloved Leyton Orient lose the play off final in the pub. Thankfully the many beers consumed softened the blow slightly. But needless to say, this was a truly shit weekend for football. But then again, we could have lost I suppose. So perhaps not the shittest weekend ever for football, but quite a shit one. Unbelievably, but somehow at the same time totally believably, YFM thrashed Kashima, so we had a good opportunity to claw back a little of the gap. However, this is suggesting that we still have some hopes of winning the league. I think they are evaporating with every successive game. But hey, let’s be positive and say we at least closed the gap by one point! Oh, but that shit game on Wednesday opened the gap by two points so our two disappointing draws have taken us further away from the leaders. And have taken me further towards negativity. I’m still not blaming Hasebe, but I’m losing a bit of patience with some players who seem to be getting worse game by game. Let’s get this over and done with and I can start thinking about a nice trip to Hiroshima next weekend, hopefully not distracted by the fact that we have to watch presumably another irritating game that ends in a frustrating draw there. (Or is that being too optimistic?).

Us -

People who don’t like negativity, maybe skip this part. There were a significant amount of players who didn’t do very well in this game as far as I’m concerned. Even with Erison out, Yamada didn’t start. And when he came on, perhaps he justified the fact that he didn’t start. I really want him to come good soon, but right now I’ve got to agree with Hasebe for starting Kobayashi ahead of him. His desperation to score somehow means he’s getting further and further away from being able to score, and less likely to pass. I don’t know what Kanda has done to not even be used from the bench. I don’t like saying it, but Yamada should be the one who’s an unused sub right now. Wakizaka had another poor game and seems to still be troubled by the ACL exit, if that is indeed the reason he has become quite bad at most aspects of football since we lost the final. He also shouldn’t be starting. Ienaga got my goat again, as he did in the Urawa game for his extremely slow exit from the pitch after he was subbed. It’s very amusing when he does it if we’re winning, but in this game we were drawing and still he was wasting time. Presumably the solution is to start with him on the bench and then it won’t happen. And finally, but perhaps most significantly, Yamaguchi had another nightmare. The situation is getting dangerously similar to that with Kamifukumoto in that it seems that at the moment, Yamaguchi in goal is basically giving the opposition a one goal head start. And when you consider we are missing good chances for fun, it makes it quite difficult to win games. Against Urawa he just watched the ball dribble into the net from a soft cross. In this game for their second goal, if he stood still it would have hit him, but instead he ran away from both the ball and the Gamba player, giving him a much bigger open goal to aim at. (And don’t forget that the reason Gamba won possession for this goal was because Wakizaka lost the ball trying a stupid little back heel in a dangerous area). It wasn’t all bad though. Sasaki and Yamamoto had really good games. And Ito looked dangerous when he came on. The problem was that the people who were supposed to be scoring couldn’t hit the target, (two shots on target out of 14), and the guy who was supposed to stop the ball going into our net but seems to be so scared of the ball that he runs away from it, only made one save in the game and let their other two shots on target in. I said above that I don’t blame Hasebe and then went on to say how people who are playing terribly shouldn’t be playing. I guess these two things don’t quite fit together perfectly, so maybe Hasebe needs to stop playing players who are woefully out of form. But I guess his thinking is that they are good players and they won’t get into form by not playing. Maybe we could just use one or two of them at a time and we wouldn’t be so shit? Oh, I almost forgot to do my marks out of ten. Considering that in the Urawa game I gave us 5.5, I definitely can’t justify going any higher even though the result was the same. The gutting late equaliser in that game was horrible, but the total shitness from plenty of players in this game makes me feel that 5.5 is way too optimistic. Let’s go right down the middle with a 5, because some players were tens and some were zeroes. I’m a bit worried though about how irritating this 5/10 game was, and how much more irritating a score below five might be. Hopefully we can avoid those for the time being.

Them -

Gamba seemed to be pretty going very physical in this match. Usami started the game by sliding into Maruyama’s ankle with his studs showing and the ball long gone. Ref didn’t even notice it. More on him and his accomplices later on. There was lots of overly physical play from Gamba I thought, but given that the ref was doing nothing, I guess it made sense as a game plan. Juan Kalano is still as unlikeable as he has always been, constantly with a scowl on his face, looking like he’s being made to play football with bits of lego in his boots. (Please note, that was note a typo when I wrote his name. Say it out loud if it doesn’t make sense). I think last time I saw him I got annoyed about the midget Yamashita’s diving and naturally that continued in this match along with him generally appearing to be a shithead. Of course he was always going to score, wasn’t he? Usami seemed to get injured late in the game. I wonder if it was just a way to waste some time and prolong an already planned sub. It happened after he’d ballooned the ball over the bar but if he was really injured I think the injury probably came from when he sprinted across the pitch to get up in the ref’s face not long before. It’s probably no surprise Gamba were employing rough tactics and general shittiness when you consider their manager though. Dressed in the classic wanker outfit of suit jacket and trainers, he was constantly whinging about everything. Fortunately for him, because he’s so special he was allowed to have a discussion with the ref over every incident that he thought hadn’t gone his way. He should have been sent off for his barrage of abuse at the officials when our second goal wasn’t ruled out. But instead he got a yellow card and an opportunity to air his grievances at length. Send the arsehole to the stands! And scuff up his trainers. That’ll teach him. Gamba weren’t that good in the first half and once again we really paid the price for not scoring more when we were clearly on top. A familiar story. But they did come into it later on and after their first goal, I don’t think we really made it out of our own half till we’d conceded another. So an entertaining game and a fair result? Well maybe, according to some. But fuck me it was an annoying afternoon.

Ref -

Sendachi was back at Todoroki. I checked my last two blog posts on his games with us and found one big win where I said he went unnoticed and one in the final game of last season where I said he let everything go. Well, I guess he at least kept up half of those two things in this game. Every decision he made, (when he actually did something), was probably one level too low. Regular fouls were ignored and we only got free kicks for things that merited yellow cards which of course he didn’t give. At the end he started throwing cards around everywhere, but to be honest it was too little too late. Perhaps he’d set himself a card target and realised that time was running out so he’d better start booking people. At one stage he played the advantage for a foul on a Gamba player, they played on and lost the ball, and then he took it back and gave them the free kick anyway. Very generous of him! Not wanting to be left out, the linesman in front of us also had a nightmare, constantly getting things wrong. There was an absolutely clear corner for us at the end that he gave as a goal kick. At one stage the ref overruled him for a decision he made about a throw. You have to be really, really shit to get overruled by such a shit ref. Even the useless Sendachi knew that one was a mistake. Apparently the linesman on the other side made a cock up for an offside against Gamba where they went on to shoot and Yamaguchi saved it. It’s a shame for Yamaguchi as that save might have made his stats look a bit better if the linesman hadn’t messed up. I guess the big decision that people will talk about is our second goal. Yamada seemed to be doing his best to get the goal ruled out by just wandering around in an offside position. Maybe the deflection helped us as when you consider the direction Ito was shooting in was well out of the way of Yamada until it was deflected. I dunno really. I think the rule is stupid. The problem is the whole interfering with play thing is that it’s another rule wildly open to interpretation. I don’t know why football is constantly trying to overcomplicate rules by making them subjective. Perhaps it’s to justify the continuing use of VAR. In this case, VAR checked it and wasn’t interested. Poyatos had his meeting and couldn’t sway the ref. I wouldn’t have been surprised if VAR had said the goal was good, Sendachi had gone over to Poyatos for their meeting, booked him and then canceled the goal. Something for everyone that way. Anyway, just another shit ref, this time with a couple of shit linesman friends with him. Guess we’d had a few games with nothing much to moan about from an officiating point of view so we were due a bad one. But blimey did he give both sets of fans plenty to complain about.

Next up, Hiroshima away… next Saturday! Wow! We have a midweek off. Not sure it will help the injury situation much as we seem to be cursed with lots of serious ones at the moment. I really hope Hasebe makes some changes otherwise we’re going to get battered. I really hope I don’t have to say at the end of the first half as I seem to be saying all the time recently, ‘I really hope we don’t regret not taking more of those many good chances’, before we go on to absolutely regret not taking more of those many good chances. This match, combined with the Orient game has made me very grateful for the Wednesday off. There was a total of one save in this game! One save! I’d take one save in Saturday’s game, but only if we make the save and we also have ten shots on target, all of which naturally we score from. Or maybe if we go with the same players again we’ll just have to hope that Sanfrecce field an ineligible player and we get awarded a 4-0 win when it’s discovered after the match finishes.

Team

GK 98. YAMAGUCHI Louis
DF 31. VAN WERMESKERKEN Sai
DF 2. TAKAI Kota
DF 35. MARUYAMA Yuichi
DF 5. SASAKI Asahi
MF 19. KAWAHARA So
MF 6. YAMAMOTO Yuki
MF 41. IENAGA Akihiro
MF 14. WAKIZAKA Yasuto
MF 23. MARCINHO
FW 11. KOBAYASHI Yu

Subs

GK 1. JUNG Sung-Ryong
MF 8. TACHIBANADA Kento (on for YAMAMOTO 90')

DF 15. TANABE Shuto
MF 16. OZEKI Yuto (on for KAWAHARA 71')
MF 17. ITO Tatsuya (on for IENAGA 58')
FW 18. SEGAWA Yusuke (on for MARCINHO 57')
FW 20. YAMADA Shin (Yellow card 90+8') (on for KOBAYASHI 57')
FW 38. KANDA Soma
DF 44. CESAR HAYDAR

My Frontale Man Of The Match

Kind of said this above but two people really stood out in what was a game of mixed fortunes for players.

SASAKI Asahi & YAMAMOTO Yuki - two bright lights in a day with plenty of gloomy performances. They were both at the heart of most of the good things we did in this match.

Goals

MARCINHO (Frontale) 32' 1-0
USAMI (Gamba) 53' 1-1
YAMASHITA (Gamba) 60' 1-2
ITO (Frontale) 79' 2-2


Highlights

Vs Gamba Osaka (home) 18/10/24 J League match 34

Kawasaki Frontale 1 - 1 Gamba Osaka

Let’s start at the end with this post. As the Gamba players approached their fans after the final whistle a chorus of boos rang out, their fans clearly being upset that they’d failed to beat a team as shit as us. To be honest I had some sympathy for them, as for the majority of this game we were once again absolutely awful, completely clueless and terribly turgid. We did have a good last fifteen minutes though… How far we’ve fallen since the times when we were good. Perhaps these bad times might be about to come to an end though as clearly the big news I’m burying with that intro is that Oniki is leaving at the end of the season. It was apparently not by mutual consent, but I guess it doesn’t need to be if his contract will be expiring. There was some surprise expressed that it wasn’t stated more like it was something that both parties felt was for the best though. I’m sure even Oniki has now realised that his magical touch has long gone.

So with Oniki’s impending departure in mind, this was a kind of emotional day for many people. Before the game the usual Oniki Frontale chant was massively extended. Heart strings were yanked. People reminisced about the good old days and reflected on the fact that Oniki has brought the club the success that in the past was always elusive. He put the final piece in the jigsaw that saw ‘not quite’ turn into ‘almost certainly’, repeatedly. It’s fair to say that recent seasons might have soiled previous memories a little, but the fact is he did what previous managers had failed to do, and to be honest, what no other manager in the league had managed to do. His run of success is unrivalled. So in a way it’s a bit of a shame that his departure came at least a couple of years too late. There were definitely lots of opportunities for him to leave on a high but for whatever reason, we kept offering him new contracts and he kept deciding to accept them. Getting booted out of the Levain Cup last weekend was perhaps the final straw, with us now having an utterly pointless run to the end of the year. (Well actually relegation is still mathematically possible, so maybe there is some point to these last few games, but the fact remains that the most positive emotion we can hope for is relief about having avoided a bad fate rather than delight at achieving something). So yeah, people were emotional in the run up to this game and I have to admit that my usual harsh feelings towards 2024 Oniki softened a little, and melted into a kind of end of term, ‘we’re all moving on but it’s been fun’ kind of thing. Oh, and then I saw the starting line up and realised that his departure is way too late and that the last few games are going to be filled with the same frustrating shit, rather than be a kind of handbrake off, expression of fun and excitement. It’s not going to be pitch time for unheralded squad members. It’s going to be the same players, squished into the same shitty formation with the same shitty tactics.

Yeah, we’ve got injuries, but did we really need to field a back four where only one player was playing in their preferred position? And even that player was a veteran who’s had a bit of a challenging year with us. And naturally, it was only a matter of time before Tachibanada got moved to play at full back! We’ve got lots of players who could play on the wing so we didn’t need to play our central midfielder there.  But as usual with Oniki it’s pick the players first and then try to squeeze them in where you can. And the results were utterly predictable. It was a strange decision to play the not very big attacker Segawa at right back and put him up against the muscly Brazilian Gamba we’re playing there. Blog Gamba pointed out to me that Welton had had a storming start to the season before teams worked out exactly how to nullify his threat. Naturally Oniki didn’t bother with this and instead basically gave him an easier route to break through us. Almost every set piece Gamba took saw the ball end up at the far post where they had at least one player in acres of space, completely unmarked. For it to happen once was unfortunate. For it to happen repeatedly, well, it just seems kind of stupid. We had quite a few shots in the first half but I wouldn’t say we ever really threatened. it was the same old thing, some quantity, but zero quality. Half time came and we weren’t playing well. So zero changes to personnel or approach! The second half started the same way. We didn’t have a shot at all for the first 25-30 minutes of the half. And don’t forget, we were trailing at the time. The last bit of the game was alright though. But you can’t really say that we deserved to win when you consider we didn’t really play for 80% of the game. Equally Gamba didn’t deserve to win so you could say a 1-1 draw was the perfect result. I’d disagree. I think a 0-0 would have better portrayed the pointlessness on show from both teams. 

Let’s briefly digress into some bitching. Blimey, Gamba were big on the time wasting. I guess that’s to be expected when you give them an early goal, but jeez, they could have scored loads against us in the first half if they hadn’t taken every opportunity to delay, roll around on the pitch or in the case of the keeper, take countless drinks of water in between picking up the ball and placing it down for a goal kick. Then another few drinks before retreating for the run up. Then a couple more before actually taking the goal kick. I thought my tweet about Ichimori was one of the most amazing things ever written, but predictably was pretty much ignored. So they seemed determined to get a 1-0. And for some reason it seemed that for most of the match we were equally determined to lose 1-0, given that when we had the ball, we just did the usual tidy passing until we get out of our half and then lost it. But let’s get back to Gamba moaning. Their winger Yamashita was an unbelievable diver, and this was most clearly demonstrated when, in an attempt to get another one of our players booked, he not only flopped down, but seemed to do that roll and flip back into the air like a leaping salmon as he rotated his way towards the edge of the pitch, crucially stopping before he left the field. The ref hadn’t even given the free kick initially I thought, but clearly impressed by his midair version of the famous break dancing move the worm, decided she’s clearly missed something and had a guess what that might have been. I’ve had a look at the replay and it seems like there was no contact at all. A good thing for Yamashita when it came to getting decisions given his way was the fact that his mum was reffing the game. I say his mum, but I’m only guessing. The ref Yamashita isn’t that old, but definitely old enough to have birthed Yamashita the player, who judging by his size and his little-shitheadness, has probably just entered his teens. The poor lad was having a right strop! A bit more on Yamashita the ref. Any criticism of a female ref is clearly going to look like the rantings of a gammon, so I have to tread carefully here. Given that her name was roundly booed by the Gamba fans when announced before the game, I guess she has some history with them. So this match gave her the perfect opportunity to try to win back their favour by giving them pretty much everything. I’m sure Gamba fans won’t agree with me about this, but to me it seemed like every time we got with a metre of a Gamba player they’d drop and she’d give them a free kick. In contrast there’s the widely shared clip on Twitter of a horrible challenge from a Gamba player on the ankle of Tachibanada, (I think), which could easily have been and probably should have been a red, but didn’t even warrant a yellow according to Yamashita. To be fair though, this is clearly something that VAR should have mentioned to her. Instead we just took a quick free kick short, as we always do in every situation. So on the ref, some might say she’s not up to the job, but on the evidence of this game, I’d say she fits in perfectly in the J League as she is without a doubt as shit as most of the male refs are. Bravo!

So, yeah, another shit game, overshadowed slightly by the Oniki love in, but which perfectly encapsulated why he should be leaving. Knowing that he’s on his way definitely makes it easier to balance my emotions about him recently. I know he’s trying his best and doing what he thinks will be best. I also have heard that he’s a nice guy and that everyone loves him. I have no desire to constantly moan about him, but he hasn’t exactly given me any other option in recent times. With the news that he’s leaving having sunk in, I feel that I can now watch the games, get a grump on about our shitness but not feel any personal animosity towards him. It’s definitely a very sad moment for some of our fans. It probably speaks volumes that with all of the tweets and posts of people rightly saying how much he has achieved for us and how sad it is that it’s the end of an era, I don’t think I’ve seen even his biggest fans saying that we shouldn’t be parting ways. When even your biggest fans think it’s time to move on, you know you’ve probably left it a bit too late. Anyway, I presume I’ll be repeating this kind of thing in every blog post from now till he goes, so I should stop going on about it now.

Next up Shanghai Shenhua away in the ACL on Wednesday. The good news for Frontale fans is that once again I will be working that night so won’t see the game, perhaps ensuring that we play a bit better than we did against Gwangju. So far in the ACL it seems that plenty of teams have won one game and lost one so whilst it looks promising that Johor hammered them in the last game, it doesn’t look so good that they won their first game handsomely against Pohang. We have the same amount of points as them but have only scored the one goal, boring our way through two games. So basically, I dunno what will happen. After that we’ve got Kashima at home at the start of November in more FRIDAY NIGHT J LEAGUE!!! The Kashima board can have a good look at their new manger for 2025. Presumably Oniki will want to do well as if he’s crap, whilst it might please Kashima in the short term, it might affect his future employment opportunities. As we run out of games and trundle towards the end of the season it’s quite difficult to get too excited or be optimistic. But fingers crossed we’ll at least have something to cheer about sooner or later. 

Team

GK 1. JUNG Sung-Ryong
DF 30. SEGAWA Yusuke (Yellow card 48')
DF 5. SASAKI Asahi
DF 35. MARUYAMA Yuichi
DF 31. VAN WERMESKERKEN Sai
MF 8. TACHIBANADA Kento
MF 77. YAMAMOTO Yuki
MF 14. WAKIZAKA Yasuto
MF 23. MARCINHO (Yellow card 53')
FW 20. YAMADA Shin
FW 9. ERISON

Subs

GK 98. YAMAGUCHI Louis
FW 11. KOBAYASHI Yu (on for ERISON 68')
DF 15. TANABE Shuto
FW 17. TONO Daiya (on for SEGAWA 68')
FW 26. YAMAUCHI Hinata (on for MARCINHO 68')
FW 41. IENAGA Akihiro (on for YAMADA 68')
DF 44. CESAR HAYDAR

Goals

WELTON (Gamba) 7' 0-1
KOBAYASHI (Frontale) 81' 1-1

Highlights

Vs Gamba Osaka (away) 19/5/24 J League match 15

Gamba Osaka 3 - 1 Kawasaki Frontale

What better way to follow up getting a thumping by getting a humping? Or a dumping…? A bumping? A stumping? A rumping? Chumping? Not even sure those last two are real words, but let’s roll with it. Coming into this game Gamba had scored 11 goals in 14 games. But don’t worry, the Frontale donation association rolled into town, spreading gifted goals and points to whoever wants them. Newly promoted team from J2 who everyone thinks will go down? Jubilo, have five goals on us! Team who’ve survived in J1 against the odds for years but seem to have run out of luck? Sagan Tosu, have five goals on us! Team who are doing pretty good compared to recent years but just can’t score more than once a match unless the moon is a nice shade of blue? Gamba have three goals. And of course, all of you can have the three points too. Admittedly on this occasion we weren’t as generous as we had been on the other occasions but I feel like all three goals in this game were gifts to a certain extent. And even better that we gave away the first one immediately after we’d scored to really batter the morale. In the Sagan Tosu game I didn’t really want to point the finger too much when it came to individuals’ catastrophic mistakes as it was clearly obvious who’d fucked up for at least four of their five goals. After reading Twitter after this game, I feel I need to be a bit more direct as people seemed to be blaming Ze Ricardo who came on in the 77th minute for us conceding the third goal. I’m pretty sure I was cursing Wakizaka for that one, but I guess he’s untouchable. Which is kind of a big problem for Frontale at the moment. Certain players can’t do anything wrong, even if they do something obviously wrong. And at the same time, players who’ve been given almost no pitch time come in and are blamed for everything. I have to admit I haven’t watched the highlights for this game yet so maybe I’m completely wrong on this count. But I just wish that the players who are getting only a few minutes here and there weren’t being scapegoated for the failures of players who are playing the majority of the time. To be fair though, I don’t really blame the players for our current plight. It’s clearly the clueless manager who is at fault. Long time readers of this blog might be a little bored to hear me say this, but Oniki is evidently way past his sell by date and his one formation is now so aged that it is almost fossilised. As much as he moves those magnets around in between matches he just can’t seem to get away from his beloved and utterly useless in 2024 (and 2023… and actually for most of 2022 to be honest), 4-1-2-3. To be honest though, I think it’s more the approach that is the problem. This game could be perfectly summed up by the occasion where Marcinho had the ball and the defence parted in front of him, allowing a free run at goal. But of course, presumably following Oniki’s strict instructions, he decided to stop, cut back and attempt to beat just one more defender. He lost the ball. I swear that if the opposition sent their keeper up for a last ditch corner and we had a player break free with the ball with no one between him and the goal, he’d stop at the edge of the box, waiting for some support, in order to get the requisite 45 passes in before being allowed to shoot. But even then they might be in trouble as 40 of those 45 need to be between the defence and goalkeeper, before the final hoof upfield. We’re shite. The players probably aren’t. But the manager definitely is.

During the game I noticed that a butterfly was relaxing precariously close to the foot of the guy a couple of seats away from me. I pointed this out to him and the butterfly ended up flying down to the row in front where it diced with death relaxing next to another foot. At the time I thought that this would be great blog post fodder. I can’t quite put my finger on how to use it though. Is the butterfly our ‘beautiful football’ tactics, which are being seriously imperiled by the reality of the J League in 2024. Hmmmmm. No. I think that’s giving way too much credit to the beauty of a type of football that is basically the most pointless passing possible. Frontale’s art project in 2024 is more like someone making bang average pottery at home, never showing it to anyone and then smashing it to pieces. Not only is it not that good, but it was an utterly pointless exercise. Is the butterfly the hopes of the fans who started following us when we were good and now are threatened with being submerged in a deluge of shitty football? Perhaps. I’d like to propose a third option. The butterfly is my Frontale spirit. It looks like it’s in extreme danger and almost certainly will end up getting squashed, but somehow against all the odds, it’s just about hanging in there. And probably will continue to cheat death, but jeez, the constant repetition of the same useless stuff is really taking its toll. This story wouldn’t be complete without me telling you what happened to the butterfly, right? Sorry. I didn’t see if it got crushed or flew away. So please draw your own conclusions. I like to hope it’s the latter.

I’m so tired of saying Oniki should quit or be fired. It’s obvious, isn’t it? But at the same time, it will probably never happen. He’ll squeak through an ACL group with teams from India, Singapore and Hong Kong, (don’t say this is offensive and unfair, I just googled weakest leagues in Asia so blame the site I checked and not me), and be offered a new contract. The terrible thing is that he’ll accept it, fully believing that he’ll soon be turning the corner and things can only get better. Don’t forget though that we were pretty shit in 2022 and somehow managed to finished 2nd. The following year we were crap but everyone said it was a rebuilding season. This year, with what I believe to be a stronger squad, we’re infinitely worse. Perhaps we have to demolish completely before we rebuild? Surely it’s time for people to acknowledge that Oniki isn’t the man for the job? You’d think so, but on Twitter after this game I saw someone saying that if we change manager we’ll probably get relegated. I would counter that with the fact that if we don’t, we definitely will get relegated. I don’t actually believe this, but the brass balls of someone who is defending Oniki in 2024 is just astounding to me. I don’t know what kind of secretly taken incriminating photos he has of his supporters, but somethings clearly going on. I can’t imagine anyone really believes he’s the best man for the job. When I was young, if you asked me to drink heavily for a week straight, I’d consider it both a duty and an honour. Right now if you asked me to do it, I’d admit that I’m probably not that man for the job. (To be fair though I’ve made a decent effort of doing it for five days this week). Quite why people can’t grasp the fact that just because Oniki did something good in the past doesn’t necessarily mean that everything he will do in the future will be good is beyond me. To take this post even further to the gutter, there were probably some people who though that Harold Shipman was a decent doctor, Fred West did a great job building their extension and that Jimmy Saville did a lot of good work for charity. (Sorry for the very British references. I would suggest you Google then, but if you don’t know who these people are, maybe it’s better to remain ignorant). These things may be true, but the murders, necrophilia and child abuse probably more than slightly discredit any past good work. Of course it’s not a very nice thing to compare Oniki even obliquely to these people. Don’t get me wrong, I think as everyone has said that he’s probably a nice guy. But just because you’re a nice guy doesn’t mean you’re the right guy or a good manager for us in 2024. Maybe we need to have a chat with him and say ‘It’s not you Toru, it’s me. I just see us more as friends and don’t think we should be a couple anymore’. I’d certainly be happier if he moved into the friend zone with the club where we can from time to time remember the good old days and not actually have to worry about the toxic effect he’s having on our lives anymore. Right now he seems to be in a death spiral. If he doesn’t try to salvage the situation somehow we’ll be in big trouble. But salvage probably means change, and that’s just not in his skill set.

In the first five minutes of this game we missed two absolutely wonderful chances, and we’d missed them to a ridiculous extent, not poking the ball straight at the keeper, more like the shot going out for a throw level of miss. As usual I pondered whether we would come to rue missing these chances. And of course we did. But the truth was, we were actually alright for large parts of the first half. Well, alright apart from the whole scoring goals and shooting on target thing. Oh and the not getting so dizzy after taking the lead that you immediately concede, as we did in both this match and in Hiroshima. At least in the latter we managed to avoid defeat and pick up one precious point. That wasn’t to be the case in this match. After scoring and then conceding I don’t think anything went right for us. I don’t know what Oniki said at half time but it was probably motivational stuff along the lines of ‘keep doing the same thing, but try to make it less progressive’. So perfect was his half time team talk that I think we failed to even have another shot till about the 70th minute. I can’t stress enough how hopeless his team talks and tactics seem to be. He turned a halfway decent first half performance into a parade of cock ups and a terrible defeat. I often think that he must have instructed the players to make sure that during goal celebrations they spin round at least 100 times in the same direction, ensuring that when the opposition kick off we’ll be so dizzy that they can just walk through us and score. Likewise when he is preparing subs we often seem to concede. Perhaps he’s told them that when they see a substitution being readied whoever touches the ball next will be taken off. Although right now that might mean that everyone immediately rushes to the ball, determined to end the unpleasant experience that is playing for us at the moment. Maybe that butterfly was a Frontale fan and was just begging someone to step on it to end the agony. Every time Oniki gets involved we fuck up. If he could just stay in the changing room for the next match and then lock himself in the toilet at half time I think we’d see a real difference in performance and result. 


Some of Oniki’s wisdom: 



- 3-1 down having made no chances in the second half? Probably best to change both of the centre backs right? 

- High wage foreign striker on the bench when you really need a goal? Best bring him on and play him out of position on the right wing and push a centre back up front. 

- Tactics and formation stinking up the place for about 3 years? Probably better keep going with the same stuff till every team in the country knows how to play against them. 

- Having trouble making Chances? Probably need a few dozen more sideways passes along the defence line.

- Absolutely terribly bad results from your awful management? Well, definitely don’t quit. It’s probably just a three year blip and those tactics will start working just as soon as our relegation is confirmed. 



He really should go. He won’t go. He really should be sacked. He won’t be sacked. We’ll get one flukey win in the next few games which will give him a stay of execution and then he can get back to what he knows best; truly dull, pointless and ineffective football.

This is going on too long. Let’s quickly bitch about the ref and the opposition a bit. The ref was Iida and as expected was shite, but equally shite to both teams I felt, so on balance had a good game. He seemed happy to let almost everything go, apart from randomly awarding some free kicks to keep us all guessing. He’s shit, but this was just regular level shit, so well done to him. Gamba seem to be a team quite like Frontale. Loads of pointless passing and a complete lack of progression. It should have been an utterly boring 0-0 draw. But somehow we came with a bit of fire in our belly and went for it and ended up scoring. Much like against Tosu we scored first and then capitulated. At least we didn’t capitulate four subsequent times in this match. Just the three goals conceded. Lovely! The general feeing from Gamba fans about the first half seemed to be that we were all over them and they needed a kick up the backside. With that in mind, it’s quite telling that even with us bossing it in the first half, at half time we still weren’t winning. We just can’t take advantage of erm… our advanrtages. Throughly shit stuff. I’m still annoyed about them shifting us up to the second tier. I’m sure it was mainly intended to stop the away team from building up any kind of atmosphere. It makes sense but doesn’t seem like a very honourable thing to do. And blimey, when you’re up there it’s a little vertigo inducing. It’s a steep stand and it felt like a gust of wind could cause a domino rally of Frontale fans tumbling forwards and ending up in a pile in the front bit of the second tier which also was off limits to us. Perhaps though they’ve put us up there so we can fully appreciate the large number of Japanese nationalist flags in the home end. They seemed to be multiplying as the game went on. I don’t really understand what kind of person prepares for a league football game between two Japanese teams by getting their dodgy flag ready and spending 70 out of the 90 minutes waving it. I dunno, maybe they really like the navy. Maybe they hate foreigners. Or maybe they’re just a bit simple. Thankfully this doesn’t seem to be a problem we have to deal with. I feel sorry for the majority of Gamba fans who don’t feel the need to express their love for an old flag with plenty of dubious baggage by waving it incessantly in a mindless way.

Ok, I probably need to say these last few things just to get them off my chest. I don’t think Kami is the answer in goal. He’s so wedded to the idea that he’s a crucial part of our build up as a hybrid sweeper keeper that I think he forgets he’s not an outfield player and consequently doesn’t think he can use his hands when he’s trying to stop the opposition from scoring. His new default pose seems to be with his arms extended sideways but with his head turned back, as if he’s now ready to save the shot that he’s just checked has already gone in. To be fair to him, he had some good games, but in contrast to the way that early-Frontale-form Erison was basically almost like a one goal head start, recently Kami in goal means that the opposition will get at least one goal for free. It’s not all his fault by any means, but I don’t think he’s the answer. Well, unless the question is which Frontale keeper is most likely to get caught in possession. People on Twitter who say he plays an important part in our build up play, please watch the whole game and not the highlights and notice the myriad times where endless passing between him and his defence with the opposition pressing more each subsequent pass ends up with Kami hoofing the ball upfield or off the field to give the opposition a chance to start a new attack. He’s in terrible form. But then again, so is… erm… everyone. And the other thing that really pissed me off in this match were the unnecessary and unsuccessful showboat passes. If you’re winning by a few goals, well, maybe it’s ok to do this kind of thing. Perhaps not very classy, but excusable I guess. But if you’re struggling to get anywhere near scoring maybe best to play the simple pass instead of the outside of the boot, no look pass which inevitably goes straight to the opposition. Ienaga did one amazing bit of skill in this game. Naturally it came to nothing. And in contrast, the multiple other times he tried something fancy, we lost the ball. It wasn’t just him though, it was a few players. Currently the effectiveness of our ‘tekkers’ is basically the equivalent of us setting ourselves up for an overhead kick into our own goal. Maybe it looks impressive if it comes off, (and that’s a big if), but it’s not doing us any good, and it’s actually doing us harm. It really doesn’t sit well with me that people are doing this kind of thing when we’re so shit.

Aaaaah, confidence at an all time low. No way we can even buy a win unless the opposition don’t turn up. What a time to be alive! But don’t blame Oniki, eh? If we’d tried hard and fallen short I think we could all accept that, given that we’re nothing like as good as we were when we were at our strongest. But right now our manager’s influence on what are good players is basically the same as someone trying to break the world record for fastest time to solve a Rubik’s cube but being told by their boss that it would be better to do it wearing boxing gloves. Even if the person attempting the record tried their best, it’s impossible not to be frustrated by the ridiculous barrier that’s been put in between them and success. We need massive clear the air talks between the players and the manager. We need an admission that the problems we’re having aren’t just little mistakes and an acknowledgement that the overall plan is absolutely not a good one. We need something fun (or at least slightly positive, or I’d even settle for not mind numbingly dull) and something different. Can Oniki deliver any of these things? Well, I don’t think so, but plenty of people remain convinced he can. Kashiwa Reysol at home next weekend. They’re five points ahead of us with a zero goal difference. You’d be a fool not to think that their points and goal difference won’t be better next Sunday. Will another horrible loss be enough to signal the end of Oniki? I don’t think so. Oniki seems to be something like back pain, or getting old. It’s not something you can really do anything about. You just have to accept it as part of life and begrudgingly learn to live with it.

 

Team

GK 99. KAMIFUKUMOTO Naoto
DF 30. SEGAWA Yusuke

DF 4. JESIEL
DF 3. OMINAMI Takuma
DF 5. SASAKI Asahi
MF 8. TACHIBANADA Kento
MF 17. TONO Daiya

MF 14. WAKIZAKA Yasuto
FW 41. IENAGA Akihiro
FW 18. Bafetimbi GOMIS
FW 23. MARCINHO

Subs

GK 22. HAYASAKA Yuki
DF 2. TAKAI Kota (on for JESIEL 77')
MF 6. ZE RICARDO (on for OMINAMI 77')
FW 9. ERISON (on for GOMIS 67')
MF 16. SEKO Tatsuki (on for TONO 60')

FW 20. YAMADA Shin (on for MARCINHO 67')
DF 31. Sai VAN WERMESKERKEN (Yellow card 47') (on for SEGAWA 38')

Goals

SEGAWA (Frontale) 26' 0-1
NAKATANI (Gamba) 28' 1-1
FUKUOKA (Gamba) 70' 2-1
KURATA (Gamba) 81' 3-1

Highlights 

Vs Gamba Osaka (home) 6/8/23 J League match 22

Kawasaki Frontale 3 - 4 Gamba Osaka

Oh jeez. Where to start with another horrible result? Actually it doesn’t really matter where I start, just as long as I get this post out of the way as quickly as possible. The misery of 2023 Frontale continues. We’re still wildly inconsistent. We still look like we’re just clueless most of the time. The manager still veers from one stupid plan to another. Perhaps the one bright spark in this game is that we lost to a team who are at least in some kind of decent form this time, unlike when we lost to them earlier in the season when they were struggling for anything and they managed to score twice against us and shut us out. And also perhaps you could say that at least we’re keeping things interesting, in that we’re coming up with a variety of routes to take to get to the underwhelming results. I think this is the first time this year we’ve come back from a big deficit only to throw it away right at the death. A fresh and exciting way to cock things up! It’s been a lovely few weeks for me without Frontale games and without having to write these awful blog posts. But damn it, we’re right back in Frontale Rabbit hell again. Let’s get whinging.

As usual, I’m not going to go into details in this post. And please excuse me if there aren’t the usual light-hearted observations. There’s just nothing funny about us or our games anymore. Instead I’m going to bang out my moans as fast as possible. In my opinion, Oniki used to be a lucky manager, getting much better results than his aptitude deserved. Now his tactical genius is rewarded with exactly what it merits. Perhaps he’s used up his whole career’s worth of luck and it’s all going to be last minute opposition winners from now on. I thought he was appalling last year, but little did I know that 2022 was actually a good season for us. 2023 is abysmal. His tactical genius on this occasion included reverting back to the midfield that never seems to work (Joao AND Tachibanada. Although on this occasion we did manage to score with it, instead of the usual hang-on-for-a-0-0 way games go when we play them together), and bringing Marcinho straight back into the starting line up after injury even though he apparently wasn’t even able to play even a couple of minutes against Bayern (Marcinho stating that he hoped to get at least a few minutes in that game might have been his undoing. Oniki seems to love a power play. ‘You want to play against Bayern? Ok, I’ll leave you out, but bring you back shortly afterwards to show you who’s boss’). Marcinho seemed to get injured again in the first half and didn’t reappear for the second. Perhaps it had something to do with the appalling state the pitch was in. No idea what had happened to it, but it looked terrible. I’m not blaming Oniki for that, although such is the depth of his incompetence, I wouldn’t be surprised to hear that his ‘new tactics’ included getting a groundsman to take a few spins round it on a tractor pulling a plough in order to disrupt the opposition’s game. Still very much in evidence is our utterly plodding approach that can only come from the man at the top. In the past we’ve said that Frontale’s play style at times resembles a modern art exhibition, where the artist makes a comment on the futility of life and the inanity of repetition. (Personally, I love a bit of repetition, but I don’t think it’s very well suited to football). In this game our attacks would progress forward slowly, every few metres the ball being passed one player to the left, (even if the recipient was unmarked and in the box with an open goal, keep those passes moving), and when it got to the furthest player on the left, it would get booted across back to the right so the process could begin again. Oniki in the past has talked about drawing the opposition out with his tactics, but it doesn’t really work if the opposition just don’t bother getting drawn out. And why would they? They know that if they just stay in position, we’ll continue the passing, and sooner or later will lose the ball. In the first half, aside from the goal we were absolutely terrible. Three shots, astonishingly resulting in one goal, but at the same time conceding three times, on average once every other shot for Gamba. Takai had a nightmare in this game, giving away one goal in the first half with a howler of a back pass, and then giving away the corner at the end of the match and failing to defend it. I don’t want to get on his back though as I really like him and he’s definitely one for the future. The problem is that due to Oniki’s complete failure year on year to sort out our defence, our ‘one for the future’ is having to play every game and be the rock of the defence. I was wondering if perhaps it was a subtle ploy from us to make him make just enough absolutely horrendous errors in order to not get transferred too soon. In spite of some of our fans thinking Takai should be crowned king of the universe, I can’t imagine any team who has to pay some money, (probably not much money judging by J League transfers to overseas teams), to sign him would be able to ignore his multiple cock ups. But like I said, I don’t blame him. I blame Oniki. Naturally.

In the first half, aside from conceding three times, we did seem like we were in control of the game. I enjoyed writing that sentence as it’s clearly an insane thing to say. Perhaps that would be Oniki’s positive way of looking at it. Something along the lines of ‘it’s unfortunate that I’ve just completely destroyed your house and all of your possessions, but some local kids have done a great job of painting some nice pictures on the box you’ll be living in from now on. Oh, and let’s all do a nice dance whilst we take you to your new box home’. In the second half we were much better. Well in a way. We scored twice, but we missed an unbelievable amount of good chances. We could almost have had double figures in this game if the majority of our shots didn’t sail miles wide. And once again you’ve got to look at the fact that Oniki can’t pick a starting line up or starting tactics. Aside from Kobe away, in which let us not forget we managed to end up drawing, and in which we’d mainly made a good start due to them making a terrible start, we pretty much always do absolutely nothing until our great leader abandons the brand of genius he has decided on at the start of the game. Whoever the players are who start, we start badly. Sometimes he can turn things around and get a draw by randomly throwing players on in a panic.  But can you imagine what it would be like to have a manager who could actually get something right before the match? Perhaps he has too much time with the magnets in between games that he overthinks things. Can you imagine if we ever went back to three subs? We’d be screwed. In his post match analysis Oniki commented that he’d chosen Damiao for this game in order for him to be the focal point of the opposition’s defending and allow the wide players to take advantage. An interesting tactic to use our star striker and perhaps one of our biggest wage earners to basically be a decoy. And when you consider that one of these wide players who should have been taking advantage was Ienaga who never stays on the wing, it just all becomes even more confusing. Maybe it worked well on the magnet board. Perhaps taking every fucking single free kick short also worked well on the magnet board. I never thought I could find a way of taking free kicks so annoying but it was really grating in this game. Take everything short, even if the intended target is surrounded by opposition players. Mind-numbingly annoying and utterly useless for trying to proactively score a goal. And similarly, even when Seko was on the pitch Oniki persevered with Wakizaka taking every corner and placing it perfectly on the head of the first defender. Infuriating! I don’t enjoy moaning constantly about Oniki and I’m often told he’s a nice person, so it doesn’t feel good to just moan and moan, but he’s useless and totally without ideas. I really wanted him to put up his hands at the end of last year, admit he’d fucked it up and move to pastures new. Instead he’s opted for staying and trashing his reputation further. He’s not a good manager as far as I can see. He inherited a good system and made a basic tweak to it which everyone in the world apart from Kazama could see was necessary and has been blessed with some good players. In fact maybe I’d even go further and say that his mindless refusal to sign defenders and his stubborn desire to play players who are hopelessly out of form meant that his interventions actually made us worse than we should have been, even when we were doing well. Perhaps a little hyperbolic, but what did you expect. Perhaps he’ll have a spell at a big money club next year where he’ll struggle because he’ll have to start from scratch, before dropping to a relegation battling team the year after and then after that an unsuccessful spell with a J2 giant, before ending up being an advisor for the national team. I don’t wish him ill, but I just don’t think he’s up to the job at all.

A few words on the opposition and the ref. I wondered where Tani was in the starting line up before being told he’d transferred to the Belgian second division. The stuff of dreams for a football player! But given how blunder prone he was, probably a good move for the club as well as for him (presumably he imagines it’s a good move). All this shows how much I have switched off from the J League in recent weeks, which in turn might explain why they’ve been a fun few weeks! Gamba employed a prestigious amount of time wasting in this game, both when they were winning and even after we’d caught up, with them trying to hang on for a draw. Apparently it really enraged Oniki. But perhaps that was just a cover for things going wrong due to what he perhaps realises are his own inadequacies. Even when a team are time wasting and hanging on for a draw, somehow Oniki tactics can gift the opposition a goal that they aren’t even trying to score. My final opposition comment is that for most of the game it was difficult to work out whether there were more shirts off in the Gamba end than there were old nationalistic rising sun flags. Imagine that some of those guys would get on quite well with Urawa’s fans. Oh, and the ref was absolutely useless as were his assistants. Particularly galling was an offside given against Ienaga when a long ball was played forward, the Gamba left back tried to control the ball and totally cocked it up, losing the ball and Ienaga raced about 10 metres across the pitch only to be given offside for the position he was in when the initial ball was played (which I don’t even think was offside anyway). Perhaps people will tell me that I’m wrong, but it doesn’t seem right that even if you’re offside but nowhere near the ball, that the play can be pulled back and your given offside if the opposition player gives you the ball. Anyway, Tanimoto was useless regardless of whether I’m right about this or not, but what do you expect from Tanimoto anyway? And it wasn’t him who lost us the game, it was Oniki and the result of his terrible short and long term decisions.

Next up Vissel Kobe at home on Saturday. Presumably we’ll win this game making all of these losses against apparently weaker teams even more frustrating. Presuming we’ll win does suggest though that Oniki’s negative influence won’t be able to mess things up, so maybe I’m being a bit optimistic in that respect. I suspect we’ll see Kamifukumoto back in goal as my feeling is that Oniki has been waiting for a chance to put him back in. What other ridiculous selections he’ll make, well who knows? As the game is on Saturday we’ll have a bit longer in the pub afterwards which is nice. But we’ll also possibly have Sunday ruined by the hangover from more Oniki cock ups. It might be hard to believe, but I am still employing my new chilled out approach to Frontale in 2023. I wouldn’t like to think how deranged this post would be if I were still as raging as I was earlier in the season. Calm is definitely the right approach though, as it seems almost certain that 2023 is going to be our worst season for quite a few years. What a positive note to finish on…

Team

GK 1. JUNG Sung-Ryong

DF 13. YAMANE Miki

DF 29. TAKAI Kota

DF 3. OMINAMI Takuma

DF 2. NOBORIZATO Kyohei

MF 6. JOAO SCHMIDT

MF 8. TACHIBANADA Kento (Yellow card 89')

MF 14. WAKIZAKA Yasuto

FW 41. IENAGA Akihiro
FW 9. LEANDRO DAMIAO
FW 23. MARCINHO

 

Subs

 

GK 99. KAMIFUKUMOTO Naoto

DF 5. SASAKI Asahi (on for NOBORIZATO 58')

MF 16. SEKO Tatsuki (on for JOAO SCHMIDT 58')

FW 17. TONO Daiya (on for IENAGA 88')

FW 20. YAMADA Shin (on for LEANDRO DAMIAO 63')

FW 30. SEGAWA Yusuke (on for MARCINHO 46')

FW 33. MIYASHIRO Taisei  

 

Goals

 

ISHIGE (Gamba) 13' 0-1

WAKIZAKA (Frontale) 27' 1-1

JEBALI (Gamba) 30' PEN 1-2

ALANO (Gamba) 41' 1-3

SEGAWA (Frontale) 71' 2-3

SEGAWA (Frontale) 75' 3-3

DAWHAN (Gamba) 90+6' 3-4

 

Highlights