Vs Kashima Antlers (home) 12/4/26 J League East match 10

Kawasaki Frontale 0 - 2 Kashima Antlers 

Of course, as was always destined to happen in this rotten 2026 half season, we followed up a morale boosting win with a defeat. The only consistent thing about us in 2026 is that we are consistently inconsistent. We haven’t strung together two of the same results in the first ten games of the year. The closest we’ve come is a win and then a win on penalties at the start of the season and one occasion where we followed up a completely humiliating defeat with a defeat on penalties. In those ten games we’ve only won properly three times and there was an element of luck to at least two of them. Sure we’ve been wracked by injuries, again. Which to be honest shouldn’t be a surprise as it always seems to be the case. People are now talking about the Asao training ground being the cause of some of these injuries but to be honest, I think they’re just clutching at straws. Certainly I think we’d be doing a bit better if we had some of the injured players available. But it’s definitely not our biggest issue. I’d also like to blame the consistently awful refereeing of our games, but even I’m not enough of a tinfoil-hatted loony to say that we’re being unusually affected by that. It is annoying though. So where does that leave us? Somewhat worryingly, I think it’s becoming increasingly difficult not to blame Hasebe. But I’ll go into that more later. It’s just a very irritating time to be a Frontale fan. Kashima are at the top of the table but have looked shit both times we’ve played them. Significantly though, we lost both games and failed to score in either game. I’m sure in the next few weeks we’ll be doing the (lose twice) double against some other teams too. YFM who we play next are having another awful season. And they beat us 5-0. So our next match is very important. Not for anything related to league position, but more to stop me completely losing my marbles. Hasebe really has to pull his finger out if he wants to secure our usual recent overall eighth place finish. Right now it looks more likely that we’ll finish up eighth in the East section. 


Few bits about the match but more about two individuals -

Actually, on leaving the stadium, whilst disappointed, I wasn’t particularly upset as I felt we had lost slightly unluckily to the team at the top of the league. Sadly the slightest bit of reflection made it clear to me that this was actually another step closer to us being absolutely shite instead of merely moderately shite. Reading Hasebe’s post match comments made me a bit irritated. He really does seem to think that our failures aren’t anything much to do with him. Whilst it’s true that it’s not him personally failing to hit the target more than twice in a match, throwing the players under the bus whilst studiously ignoring the absolute dog shit tactics that he seems stuck to is a bit annoying. He also said we couldn’t win because the Kashima players are better than our players. This doesn’t seem like the kind of stirring motivational stuff I’d like to hear if I were one of them. More like just another way to pass the blame and wash his hands of any kind of responsibility. The only time things have gone well for us is when Hasebe throws out the game plan in frustration and it all becomes a bit of a free for all. We finished the game against Urawa pretty well. And Hasebe took that as a sign that he should start this game with the same players who’d started against Urawa and been not very good. And still we have this godforsaken formation and godforsaken tactics that he insists on starting every match with. I don’t know if there is any kind of pressure from above on Hasebe to play a certain kind of way. If there is, I don’t understand why we hired him for this job and why he accepted the job. When he joined the rumbles of doubt about us suddenly becoming ultra defensive were quashed by numerous people at the club saying we would still be playing football the Frontale way. Right now, I don’t really know what that means. My only guess is the Frontale way means 'in a way that is intensely irritating and completely ineffective’. Even during the worst times of Oniki’s tenure we at least could hang on to us having lots of possession, any doubts about us never making any chances apparently made up for by the beautiful passing. Now we usually don’t even have possession and some players don’t seem to be able to pass at all. Hasebe’s one attempt at shaking things up, away at Machida when he started with a 4-4-2, showed some promise but was immediately abandoned for the next match and now only gets rolled out when we’re chasing the game after our usual shitty formation has caused us to go behind. I think the reason Hasebe is reluctant to try it more is because it doesn’t suit Wakizaka and it seems that he can’t be dropped. Even in this match when we went 4-4-2 late on, Wakizaka, in spite of him having had another awful game, was kept on the pitch and played on the wing. Are we really that short of players that he was the best option there? Maybe in Hasebe’s eyes. After all, he didn’t even use all of the available subs. When Miura was dropped, (a long overdue benching), he came back with what seemed like a massively changed attitude and has been playing well since then. By contrast when Wakizaka was dropped, (maybe dropped, more likely was slightly injured as he wasn’t on the bench), he came out with some comments saying that the reason we’d lost was because he hadn’t been playing. Totally delusional! I keep giving Hasebe one more chance as we occasionally sneak a win from somewhere, but he’s really got to do something for the next match. Drop Wakizaka and see if that gives him a kick up the backside. Leave him on the bench as an unused sub. Or maybe take him along to the stadium as the reserve player who’ll step in on the bench if there’s an injury in the warm up. On recent evidence, Hasebe seems pretty shit at his job. And exactly the same can be said about Wakizaka. 

Ashima Kantlers - 

Of course they are scum. Of course they cheat. Of course they surround the ref. Of course they win. They are deifinitely one of the most hateable teams in the league. Their disgustingness had for about a decade been slightly tempered by the fact that they kept messing things up. That era was delightful. Sadly now even when they are shit, they more often than not win. Which makes them even more hateable. There’s not much point writing these things though as they are all common knowledge. It’s absolutely rotten that hardly anyone can stand up to them this year. They’re really not that good. So because their rottenness is so evident, let’s instead focus on their stupidity. I always enjoy their ‘Spirit of Zico’ flag. I probably don’t need to explain why it is ridiculous. But on this occasion I saw two variations. For one they’d decided that the ‘of’ was superfluous and that made it look even more like they thought he had died and were celebrating his ghostly form. The more amusing one was the massive flag with a very different message that they unfurled before the game. ‘Zico spirits is not dead’. I guess we always knew that his involvement at Kashima probably didn’t take up that much of his time, but it came as a surprise to find out that he’d branched out into making his own brand vodka, gin and rum, each bottle presumably with some of his own phlegm that he gobbed up onto the ball as the opposition were about to take a penalty, and with hints of sour grapes, vinegar and all round tartness. Not only was the existence of his booze company a shock, it was also a surprise to discover that there apparently had been talk of the company ceasing trading, but that was now being refuted by their big new flag. I think thats the only interpretation that makes sense when you consider the wording on the flag so it must be true. Well that or maybe their fans are just fucking ignorant shitheads. Hmmm, maybe there’s actually a decent amount of evidence for that latter supposition.


Ref -

Sutani was a new name for me. He’s not particularly young and apparently not a new ref. I thought he was shit, but of course I’d say that. Definitely a ref from the ‘let the game flow/let everything go’ school which I believe definitely favoured Kashima. But it wasn’t his fault that we lost. The yellow card that Miura got was ridiculous. He didn’t seem particularly interested in trying to stop Kashima attempting to cripple some more of our players like they did to Ozeki in the away fixture. The tackle in this game on Miyagi wasn’t as bad as the one on Ozeki in the previous match, and given that the useless officials in that game thought that was only a yellow I guess there was no way they were going to get particularly punished for anything in this match. I guess I can at least be grateful that on this occasion we didn’t get any thrilling over five minute VAR breaks. 


So, a game where we weren’t particularly worse than the opposition but one in which we didn’t really deserve anything. There were some shocking misses, as you’d expect. Confidence must be sinking again. If only there was someone whose job it was to motivate the players with enthusiasm and fresh ideas. I think most people expect Hasebe’s days to be slightly numbered, but with the clown chairman we have in charge, I don’t expect this to happen mid season. And presumably he’ll get another win sooner or later to stop the run of awful results and give him a bit of breathing room. I don’t know how dictated it was by injuries, but maybe the one positive from Hasebe in this match was his inclusion of Osa and the fact that he gave him a chance from the bench. I thought he looked quite bright, but probably could have done with some time on the pitch when we weren’t desperately chasing the game. Everybody knows this season is over for us, so why not really shake things up in the next match by getting some more youngsters involved. I fear that much like when Oniki was with us and we were playing out dead rubbers at the end of a disappointing season, Hasebe might be too worried about his stats and the end of season points total to actually take too many risks. I don’t know about other fans, but I’d be much happier to see something different, whether it’s different players or a different formation. Anything is, if not better, at least more interesting than the same old shit with the same old outcomes. And who knows, maybe if you don’t use the same players who aren’t playing well, we might even end up scoring a goal!

 

Team 

GK 49. Svend BRODERSEN
DF 29. YAMAHARA Reon
DF 28. MARUYAMA Yuichi
DF 2. MATSUNAGANE Yuto
DF 13. MIURA Sota (Yellow card 63')
MF 8. TACHIBANADA Kento 
MF 6. YAMAMOTO Yuki
MF 17. ITO Tatsuya
MF 14. WAKIZAKA Yasuto
MF 23. MARCINHO
FW 9. ERISON 

Subs

GK 1. YAMAGUCHI Louis
MF 15. MYOGAN Toya
MF 19. KAWAHARA So (on for YAMAMOTO 82')
MF 24. MIYAGI Ten (on for ITO 65')

DF 27. KAMIHASHI Ryota
DF 32. HAYASHI Shunsuke

MF 34. OSA Ryuki (on for MARCINHO 65')

FW 38. KANDA Soma
FW 91. Lazar ROMANIC (on for ERISON 72')

Man of the match

Nope. And I don’t mean the new extremely hyped soft drink. (I had it, it was ok). Actually maybe I do mean the soft drink. Let’s give it to…

NOPE - a new soft drink that is alright and had nothing to do with this match. It being ‘alright’ makes it a lot better than most of our players were in this match. 

 

Goals

SUZUKI (Kashima) 53' PEN 0-1
LEO CEARA (Kashima) 64' 0-2

Highlights

Vs Kashima Antlers (away) 14/3/26 J League East match 6

 

Kashima Antlers 1 - 0 Kawasaki Frontale

Ah, absolutely gutted. I guess I was expecting disappointment but I hadn’t banked on it coming in this way. I’m sure plenty of people will disagree, but I think Kashima absolutely stole the three points in this game. I guess this is a bit one-eyed though as we didn’t come very close to taking any of our limited chances. But fucking hell Kashima are a bit rubbish and fluked a goal and with it the win. As I sit here on the bus in the car park after the game at the designated departure time, I am fully aware that me writing this blog post will probably take less time than it takes us to get out of the car park here. At least it's something to keep me occupied whilst we go absolutely nowhere. As the reception is so poor in the rural industrial wasteland, (perhaps a slight contradiction there, but anyone who’s been here will probably understand), that the Kashima stadium is in I can’t really check any incidents from the match, and can’t even see the stats. With that in mind, expect some inaccuracies but I’m sure you’d expect nothing else. I also suspect that the WOW! section might be longer than the rest of the post this week. But maybe that’s what some of you come here for anyway. Let the vitriol begin!


First half -

They seemed scared of us for some reason. And maybe if we’d been playing with 11 players they would have had reason to be. Have a guess who the two below par players were on our side this week? Yep that’s right Miura and Wakizaka. Although that’s extremely unfair on Wakizaka who was just a bit below par, in contrast to Miura who did absolutely nothing other than give the ball away and stand around pointing whilst the game went on around him. No, come on, that’s a little unfair. At one point he also left the field to change his shorts. There weren’t many chances for either team but Broderson had to make one good save. 0-0 was absolutely the right scoreline. Thankfully we managed to squeeze in our first shot on target just before half time. We were mostly in control but failed to trouble their keeper. Hang on, I feel like maybe we’ve heard that one before, haven’t we?


Second half - 

We really had them rattled. They looked extremely dodgy at the back and in midfield. We had some good chances which we blasted either high or wide. Miura was still shit. Well up until the final ten minutes when it seemed like he remembered it wasn’t a training session. Their goal was fluky, completely against the run of play and utterly undeserved. Although our failure to trouble their keeper probably suggests that we didn’t deserve much either. But damn it, we really had them wobbling but couldn’t score. Which makes the defeat all the more frustrating. At least we didn’t go to penalties I suppose. That could have caused issues with the buses which were ‘leaving’ at 17:30. Although it is now 17:48 and the wheels of the bus haven’t even gone round once, let alone been able to ‘go round and round’. There are a few things I’d like to look at when I can as I was quite irritated on a number of occasions by the officials. Will add a little ‘In the cold light of day’ section when I’ve done that. 

Good day - 

Good day for fans of certain players. Oshima and Maruyama were unexpectedly back in the side. Apparently Hasebe rewarded the players who’d done well in the training match we played last week. (Bit more on that in the bad day section). On the pitch, Maruyama and Tachibanada stood out for good reasons. Oshima too. He did plenty of things for people to clip up and post as short videos. (I haven’t checked but I suspect the club has probably done this, apparently unaware that we lost the game. Perhaps creating social media content and getting ‘impressions’ is more important to them than us actually winning games). I really hope he can stay fit as he’ll be very important if he can. But I’m totally aware that we’ve said this many times before. Good day for people who like to watch a real battle of a game. And for people who like to watch build ups that never reach the having-a-shot stage. Good day for people who want to scream as there was plenty to get angry about. Good day for whoever apparently bribed the ref as he did exactly what they wanted. 

Bad day - 

Bad day for fans of correct decisions. Bad day for Miura (obviously). Not a great day for Hasebe as we still seem to be stuck in the toothless attack doldrums. It’s good that he rewarded those players who’d done well in training, but it’s a massive black mark against his name for not removing Miura from the team. I know I always moan about this and I know I moan more than most people, but there definitely seemed to be some frustration from others around me in the stand with Miura. Also a bad day for Yamaguchi who once again wasn’t in the match day squad. Apparently in the training match he was the goalkeeper who absolutely gifted the university team opposition their two goals. It doesn’t look good for him. 

Any other business - 

Let’s just go straight to the WOW! Section. 

WOW! - 

The first WOW is a quite all encompassing one. All the Kashima players, staff, fans, ball boys, everyone connected with the club in any way definitely slots into this category perfectly. They’re such a scummy club from top to bottom. Things that irritated me about the team in this match included their fucking infuriating gamesmanship, clogger play, constant whinging to the referee, extreme time wasting, injury feigning, dirty fouling, and most of all spawny luck. Three points for them from this game is an absolute injustice. The ball boys were clearly under instruction from the club to not give us the ball for throw ins under anything except for the most extreme circumstances, just let that time ebb away, even when they were drawing. Don’t think that the fans are going to escape from this. It was an appallingly low attendance for what they seemed to think was an important and tricky game. If it hadn’t been for the Frontale fans I think they would have struggled to get over 15000. Presumably it’s a bit easier for their fans to get to the stadium so they can’t even blame the horrific bus journey. Actually though, the coaches from Tokyo are probably at least 50% full with ‘home’ fans. My contention that Ota-ku, Setagaya-ku and Shibuya-ku are fair game for being Frontale territory is intended mainly to wind up FC Tokyo fans. But I think it takes a bit of a leap though for someone living in Tokyo to choose Kashima over a closer team particularly given that everything about the club is so scummy. Imagine doing that bus journey for every home game. Blimey. These wonderful fans also broke off a song midway before the game in order to boo our goalkeepers coming out. And they’re not even as good at booing as Urawa are. 

Let’s not leave the stadium experience out of this slagging. Now they allow you to retain your PET bottle lid when entering the stadium. Amazing! There’s no longer any re-entry though, so I guess they’ve worked out that any revenue lost from people no longer having to replace spilt soft drink bottles is more than made up for by the fact that none of that food stalls outside the ground will be getting any custom from away fans who are scrambling for the unreserved seats once the ground is open. To be honest, I probably wouldn’t have gone out anyway, as I don’t enjoy wandering around rural industrial wastelands, but their commitment to stamping out any kind of enjoyment or fan mingling from the match day experience is impressive. I guess the mantra is to just keep the experience aggy, like it is on the pitch. And maybe in an attempt to further increase the irritation, the in stadium music was horrendous. The choice of songs was awful but the fact that they even went further and chose cover versions that efficiently stripped away anything that was interesting about the originals shows a real commitment to the cause. Oniki famously had never been to a concert before one of our fan events, and this music selection really had the whiff of being chosen by someone who hates music. Maybe they don’t need to spend as much on royalties for those versions. At least Urawa fully commit to having the original versions of their pre-game gay anthems soundtrack. The Saitama stadium experience wouldn’t be the same without them! (Are you impressed that I am somehow managing to slag off both Kashima and Urawa in the same post and hopefully the fact that I am comparing them will hopefully further irritate fans of both teams).

So, awful club, awful people, awful experience. Surely we can’t go any lower? Somewhat surprisingly all of these things may have been eclipsed by the ref. We’ve now had a couple of dodgy games with him but this one really took the biscuit. He gave us absolutely nothing, showed an almost Jesus like approach when it came to forgiving the sins of multiple Kashima players who pulled and fouled constantly but for the most part avoided cards. When Tagawa attempted to break Ozeki’s ankle, he got away with a yellow. He hassled us for dilly-dallying over a goal kick in the first ten minutes of the game but let Kashima take as long as they wanted to do anything after they’d gone ahead. After a coming together where we won the ball he let play continue till the ball went out and then took it back for a Kashima free kick, apparently playing the advantage for us, but then giving the decision the other way. Maybe he's just a bit simple and it takes his brain a little while to catch up. The linesman at our end was equally bad. But basically, a fucking absolutely useless arsehole of a referee who was terrified of giving any decisions against those scary Kashima guys. I don’t know if the ref has a vineyard, brewery or dairy farm, but he definitely showed that he is an excellent bottler. So not a completely useless human being I suppose. Just completely useless when it comes to football. We didn’t lose because of him because he wasn’t the one who couldn’t hit the target more than once a half, but he definitely affected the way the game played out.


In the cold light of day - 

So this part has been written at home and not on the bus and I’ve now watched a few things back so can give you the low down about things you probably already know. I didn’t go as far as watching long sections of the game though, (life’s too short, and I don’t want to get the resentment boiling up again), so I’m going to just presume my feelings at the time were correct when it comes to thinking that the ref was generally intimated by the Kashima players. One thing I didn’t notice at the time but irritated me intensely when I saw a replay was Ito being blocked by the ref. Absolutely sums up how bad Kamimura is, body checking a player who’s trying to get to the ball. Ito’s face said a lot. I think the ref’s lack of a backbone and Kashima’s dirty tricks is really displayed when the ref gives Tagawa a yellow. It looked like a dodgy tackle at the time but was a bit too far from me to be able to really see it properly. The replay is damning though, both players sliding in, Ozeki pulls out and puts his boot down as it clearly is going to be a dangerous collision and Tagawa slides right into his ankle, boot off the ground, no intention of stopping himself. The ref gives a yellow, but I have no idea why VAR didn’t suggest he have another look at it. To be honest, we should be thankful for the yellow. As soon as the ankle-break attempt is complete Kashima players surround the ref, suggesting he’s given the foul the wrong way and that Ozeki should be sent off. Even the prick Tagawa seems to be suggesting that Ozeki has made a grievous attempt to injure him by attacking the sole of his boot with his ankle. That one small incident sums up the whole game really. The ref making a mistake in favour of Kashima who were intensely irritated that the mistake doing go even more in their favour. It wouldn’t have made a difference if he’d sent him off as it was probably too late anyway. It might have made a difference though if he hadn’t let them get away with their shittiness for the whole match.

Looking for the yellow card incident in the highlights I’ve inadvertently stumbled across one of the absolutely mind-numbingly bad decisions from the ref. It’s around 89 minutes and the defender has his arms completely round Erison and pulls him to the floor and the ref isn’t interested at all. It says a lot that our players didn’t complain more. They presumably knew by this stage that we weren’t getting anything from the ref. After all, the same thing happened throughout the game and he wasn’t interested on any of the other occasions. Maybe he also officiates in Judo matches so thinks that throwing opponents to the floor is all part of the game. I think it’s not an accident too that Oniki walks out of his technical area and almost directly in front of us taking the throw. Anyone who is still of the opinion that Oniki is a nice guy probably needs to rethink. It seems that anyone that is touched by Kashima turns to the dark side.
 

So, in the cold light of day, my thoughts that the ref was useless and that Kashima are a despicable bunch of pricks was exactly right. Bravo to me!


What a crappy end to what at some stages looked like it could be a good day. If we want to take some positives it must be that we really had them wobbling on a lot of occasions. If we want to undermine those positives, well, two shots on target in 90 minutes and we lost. It’s now 66 minutes since our buses departure and we still haven’t made it to the expressway. But to be honest, I think we’re a bit ahead of schedule compared to previous years. I’m intending to have a few drinks when we get back to civilisation so that should soften the blow a bit I think. It’s a shame the season is so totally over so early. But equally, it’s a relief that we’re farting around like this in an utterly meaningless season. I think it’s time for the club to admit we’re not going to win the league and start trying some new things. It seems that there has always been a reason why the time wasn’t right to try something new. Clearly now there’s nothing to lose. Please let us see some new faces and maybe, shock horror, some new tactics…. Lot’s of people are talking about how Miura and Ito don’t play well together but still Hasebe is still persisting with it. Personally I think that this year Miura and no-one plays well together and that is mostly because Miura is in horrific form. For god’s sake change something Hasebe! Bet he won’t. Well, aside from the normal tiny changes of the midfielders and attackers who dropped out of the team for this match coming back in for the next match. There have been a few minor changes but he basically seems to go from line up A, who don't do the job and are dropped, to line up B, who don't do the job, so are dropped for line up A, who... you get the message here I'm sure. He has experimented with line up AB at times, but to be honest, that just seems to be a way of him demonstrating he's doing something. And given that whoever plays we have the same shittiness problems, is it not clear that there it's a bigger problem than personnel? Next up Tokyo Verdy away on Wednesday. I’ve just seen that they’ve beaten Urawa today. LOLZ! They’ve had some good results and fun so far this year, so maybe they’ll be good neighbours and let us have some. We’ve now played five games, over a quarter of this mini season, and in a normal season we’d be sitting here with just five points, having failed to win since the first fluky game of the season. It’s not massively encouraging, is it? But somehow I don’t feel massively disheartened. Might be feeling that way soon though. I feel like every week I’m coming away with the impression that we just need to make a little change and we’ll be off and flying. But every time the following game comes round, the little change we need to make hasn’t been made. I’d love to sign off here with some kind of optimistic flourish. Clearly we’re not rubbish and there are plenty of teams in a worse position than us. At the start of the year on the J Talk Podcast I said that we could have a great season as all the pieces of the puzzle were there but Hasebe just needed to put them together. Sadly, it seems like he just can’t stop using the instructions Oniki left behind instead of doing what he knows best. If things carry on like this, I don’t think it will ruin us, but I can’t see it’s going to help Hasebe get another job after he leaves us, (which presumably will happen after the next full season unless there is a massive change in fortunes). There is a certain irony that in looking for something positive to finish this post on, I’ve ended up making things even more depressing. The feeling straight after the match was that we’d been unlucky, but a little reflection made me think that the best we could have hoped for was a 0-0 anyway. So given that even when I felt like we’d done quite well it was basically a backhanded way of displaying we’re not very good, perhaps keeping things depressing at the end is exactly the right way to finish. 

Team 

GK 49. Svend BRODERSEN
DF 29. YAMAHARA Reon
DF 3. TANIGUCHI Hiroto
DF 28. MARUYAMA Yuichi
DF 13. MIURA Sota
MF 8. TACHIBANADA Kento
MF 10. OSHIMA Ryota
MF 41. IENAGA Akihiro
MF 14. WAKIZAKA Yasuto 
MF 17. ITO Tatsuya
FW 91. Lazar ROMANIC

Subs

GK 21. HAYASAKA Yuki
DF 2. MATSUNAGANE Yuto
MF 6. YAMAMOTO Yuki (on for OSHIMA 66')
FW 9. ERISON (on for ROMANIC 83')
MF 16. OZEKI Yuto (on for TACHIBANADA 83')
MF 18. KONNO Kazuya (on for ITO 83')
MF 19. KAWAHARA So
DF 22. Filip UREMOVIC
FW 23. MARCINHO (on for IENAGA 60')


Man of the match

Kind of a shock that I’m doing this given the result and my inherent sulkiness, but I like to think this shows that I’m at least a little bit fair. We weren’t great, but some people deserve a mention. Lots of people have said Oshima, and whilst I’d agree with that to some extent, I think he was slightly outshone by two others whose good performances were more surprising. So I’ll give it to…

MARUYAMA Yoichi and TACHIBANADA Kento - probably neither of these players would be in most people’s preferred starting lineup, but both put in full effort and showed some of their underperforming team mates the way to go. Extra props to Tachibanada as he was not only playing in midfield but also left back in the first half whilst Miura strolled around doing nothing.

 

Goals

LEO CEARA (Kashima) 79' 1-0

 

Highlights

 

Vs Kashima Antlers (home) 5/7/25 J League match 23

 

Kawasaki Frontale 2 - 1 Kashima Antlers 

Ahhhhh. This was a lot of fun, wasn’t it? I’ve long been saying that Kashima aren’t as good as their league position suggests. When we played them at the National Stadium they were pretty bad, and were fortunate to catch us on a day when we were terrible. And don’t forget that they have had an unbelievable amount of penalties whereas we’ve had just the one in 23 games. Some might say that their luck turned in this match and I’d agree to some extent but I’ll go into that in more detail later. So it’s great to win and it’s also great to enjoy defeating a horrible club. Some Frontale fans might have mixed feelings given that they have our old manager. They seemed again to think that they’d stolen him from us given the way they were chanting his name before the game. I expect they weren’t chanting his name in the same way afterwards. I don’t have any personal enjoyment from beating the new team of our old manager per se, but when that team is a scummy one who have seemed to get the rub of the green more often than not this year, (something which continued to a certain extent in this match), well then, I actually do enjoy it a lot. Perhaps the one big downside was that everyone else won in the top five, so it hasn’t helped us out when it comes to the title race. But I don’t really believe we’re seriously in that anyway. Particularly when you consider that Takai has just left and Ito is now injured. We need reinforcements fast I think. But the rest of the top five winning meant that it was a bigger blow to Kashima so I guess that’s a good thing. Hopefully the other scummy teams who are up there, (looking at you Kobe), can experience similar big blows for the rest of the season. We’ve now got a bit of time off till our next game. Time to recuperate and hopefully get some players back from injury. Although Ito wasn’t at the Fan Event yesterday and was on crutches after the game on Saturday, Erison was there and was dancing, so fingers crossed we’re using that as part of his recovery schedule. 

Us -

It was a bit of a mixed start for us in this game. Whilst we looked a bit brighter and were definitely getting the ball forward more quickly and causing them problems, we were blighted by the usual awful finishing that seems to be a Frontale thing recently. The stats look kind of positive with ten shots but the reality is that only four were on target and I think all of them were about as powerfully and accurately hit away from the keeper as a back pass from a defender would have been. Kashima were even worse in attack but naturally managed to score after they were gifted a goal by some dodgy defending by us. If we ever manage to stop shooting ourselves in the foot we might make some real progress. Thankfully we scored at the end of the first half though, as to have gone in one down after having so many chances would have been a real gut punch. We did our best to mess it up though as Yamada almost got the goal canceled due to him being offside. Yamada still isn’t playing particularly well, and his call up to the national team is absolutely baffling, but maybe there are some green shoots of recovery starting to show. He seems to pass a bit more than previously. Admittedly previously he didn’t pass at all though. I have to admit, I don’t really have that many strong memories of our performance in the rest of the game. Well, apart from the massive let off when Jesiel’s red card which he revived very soon after coming on at half time was canceled. Phew. I don’t think we were mind-blowingly good in this game, but we definitely did enough to win. We ended up with fifty percent more shots and possession than Kashima so I think they’d be clutching at straws to think they deserved to get anything. 

Them - 

Sure they’re going to complain about the ref and I am going to do the same in the section below. I think their big problem is that they didn’t get a penalty in this game. That seems to be what normally happens. They didn’t look that good and hopefully they’ll tumble down the league. I’m not sure they’d have scored if we hadn’t put a goal on a plate for them. Perhaps they might think they’re going through a slump but I suspect that they’ve been massively lucky so far this year and are now getting what their play deserves. In spite of the massive wealth the club has and employing the most successful manger in the league, they still might struggle to crawl out of their usual spot in third or fourth. There is a classic Oniki way of playing, (note the singular here. There really is only one), but for some reason he isn’t using it at Kashima. Some might say if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it, but recent results make it look like it is broken. Whether he has the character or the power to change things, I don’t know. Kashima is one of those teams where it seems that whoever they hire or buy, things rarely change that much. I’d put Urawa and FC Tokyo in that category too. They seem to have some scumbag players and some scumbag fans so I guess that works out quite well. I still remember with great amusement that video clip of a group of furious Antlers fans being held back by a thin plastic fence so low that it could be stepped over by a Dachshund and so poorly supported that it could be toppled by someone turning on the extractor fan in the changing rooms. I guess it was the single old man security guard that repelled them. Somehow though this fearsome reputation of their tough guy fans seemed to convince the ref that things should go their way though. 

Ref and VAR - 

Ahhhh, Araki. Last time we had you there wasn’t much to moan about which was an absolute miracle. Thankfully for the sake of consistency he was back to his awful… best… worst in this match. Maybe it was the rolled up shorts and blonde dye job that terrified Araki so much but Suzuki should absolutely have been sent off for a second yellow card. There was another very dodgy decision from the ref at the end of the game, when someone absolutely clattered (I think) Sasaki off the ball and off the pitch and the ref did nothing. Maybe by that stage he already thought he was in enough trouble with the Kashima fans. He’d really done his best to please them only to have his decisions overturned by VAR. I suppose I have to give him some credit for listening to the VAR though. But he was an absolute bottler when it came to doing things that Kashima might not like. Praise the lord though, we had someone good on VAR. I recently praised Kawamata and he’s done well again. I haven’t really dared look back at the Jesiel red card he canceled as it looked a cert at the time. Thankfully we were saved by offside. And Kawamata also allowed the Ito goal. From the first replay it did seem like it might get canceled due to Yamada looking like he was in the way, but from another angle, he’s not really anywhere near the keeper and to his credit he tries to get out the way of the ball rather than trying to nick the goal for himself and get it ruled out in the process. Even when we praise the VAR guy though, we shouldn’t forget that for one of these decisions he was having to correct an error that the twerps on the field made. I think the thing that made me most angry towards Araki was when two Kashima players tackled each other, ending up in a heap on the floor. Araki apparently thought that counted as a half foul on them and decided to stop the match to let them get treatment, (neither of the players were actually injured), and then gave them the ball from the restart. Truly baffling nonsense from a predictably bad referee. Araki, go and do one. Kawamata, thank you again for your skills and knowledge.

Ahhh, lovely stuff. A win against horrible opposition a good old moan about the ref! Great times! Next up, Sagamihara at home in the Emperor’s Cup the Wednesday after next. I would say that presumably we’ll see some rotation in that match, but I’m not sure we have that many players to rotate right now. Hopefully we can all enjoy the little break and preserve the little bit of form we got back in this match. 

 

Team

GK 98. YAMAGUCHI Louis
DF 31. VAN WERMESKERKEN Sai
DF 2. TAKAI Kota
DF 35. MARUYAMA Yuichi 
DF 13. MIURA Sota
MF 19. KAWAHARA So
MF 6. YAMAMOTO Yuki
MF 14. WAKIZAKA Yasuto
FW 41. IENAGA Akihiro (Yellow card 80')
FW 20. YAMADA Shin
FW 17. ITO Tatsuya 

Subs

GK 21. ANDO Shunsuke
DF 4. JESIEL (on for MARUYAMA 46') (Yellow card 82')
DF 5. SASAKI Asahi (on for MIURA 84')

MF 8. TACHIBANADA Kento (on for YAMAMOTO 78')
FW 11. KOBAYASHI Yu
MF 16. OZEKI Yuto
FW 23. MARCINHO (on for ITO 46')
FW 24. MIYAGI Ten (on for IENAGA 90+3') 

FW 38. KANDA Soma

Goals

LEO CEARA (Kashima) 25' 0-1
ITO (Frontale) 25' 1-1
MARCINHO (Frontale) 58' 2-1

Highlights  

Vs Kashima Antlers (away) 11/5/25 J League match 16

 

Kashima Antlers 2 - 1 Kawasaki Frontale

Back down to Earth with a bang in this game which at times looked like it was going to be marvellous but turned out horribly. People have talked about their being a Kokuritsu curse with teams who move their games there not being able to win. Equally I think we have a Kokuritsu curse, as we never seem to play particularly well there. Judging by this game, our curse is stronger. With another game coming up on Wednesday, let's get this done, under the usual headings.

Us -

Not so many surprises in the line up. I guess Miura’s injury situation isn’t good as he was nowhere to be seen. As was Wakizaka, which was a bit strange as I wasn’t aware of any injury to him. Aside from those two it was business as usual really. One possible downside of that is that the people who played the most minutes in the ACL were once again starting and maybe could have done with a rest. In the ACL our defence looked quite solid, but on this occasion it looked quite tired. In the first half I thought we were pretty good. We were all over Kashima and really should have scored more than once. I said towards the end of the half that if we didn’t take our chances we might come to regret it and sadly we did. There were a lot of good chances missed. In the second half we noticeably tired and even though we could make some changes, I don’t think those changes made much of a difference to either our making or taking of chances. Hopefully this game was just a blip, with us still being tired from our ACL endeavours. Ozeki had a good game which was slightly blighted by him missing a pretty good scoring opportunity. Erison and Marcinho both shot rather than passed when the other was in a better position so I guess that equals out, but sadly equals out at two missed chances rather than two goals. Yamaguchi didn’t have a great game. I guess he must be tired too. Until now I think he’s done pretty well, but on this occasion he wasn't really up to the same standard. I'm not singling him out though, as even having conceded two, we could have won comfortably. But of course you’re never going to win when you mess up your shots and concede soft goals. I suspect that Hasebe knew how much we all wanted to win this game and with that in mind didn’t rotate. But looking back, you’ve got to wonder if maybe we would have done better with a few more changes. The clear drop off from the first to second half suggests that we ran out of steam.  With midweek and weekend games coming consistently for the next few weeks, you’ve got to hope we can get rid of that lingering fatigue a bit. Definitely not panic stations yet, but this was definitely a disappointing outcome after a promising start.

Them -

Recently, when it comes to hatability, Kashima have gone under the radar slightly, with other apparently more dislikable teams over shadowing Kashima’s grottiness. But clearly they had a point to prove when it came to showing us what a bunch of shits they are, and they did in spades. They have a surprising number of unlikeable players. I’m not including Suzuki in this. It seems that plenty of people hate him, but I don't mind him. It seemed that the ref quite liked him too, but more on that later. Their fans are quite irritating and this was demonstrated with the absolute silence in the stadium pre-match, right up until we sang a song, waking them up and starting a chorus of boos, only for them fall back into silence moments later. First class booers apparently. Their lengthy but ultimately dull chanting of Oniki’s name after their team announcement was presumably intended to make us Frontale fans cry, as it seemed they thought we’d be distraught that they had prised Oniki away from us. Not sure that's really what happened. Us giving his name a clap is probably quite at odds with what they’ll do after they inevitably dump him when things start going wrong. Even though he’s a former Kashima player I seem to remember that his name always got a chorus of boos when he was in charge of us. This might sound like sour grapes but I thought they weren’t very good. When Suzuki didn’t have the ball they did nothing. It was classic Oniki pointless possession. After about 30 passes along the defence line someone finally realised that the game plan was ‘give it to Yuma’ and only then did they threaten. This is not entirely accurate as they also had another tactic which was to hoof the ball forward. And those yucky long throws too. It seemed that when Oniki was our manager and had Sai to do long throws, the long throw tactic was beneath him. But now it seems to be the only way they take throws. I guess he feels that he has to win at all costs. I reckon if Suzuki gets injured, Kashima are going to fall apart. I don’t want to wish injury on him, but I do want them to fall apart. I haven’t even mentioned the dark arts which have always been a Kashima thing, (spirit of Zico perhaps), and are still very much on show. Horrendous time wasting from them from the moment they went ahead. Feigning injuries all over the pitch. I would say that I was surprised to see their centre back go down injured, require treatment, the physios signalling to the bench that he couldn’t carry on, the bench realising that they had used all their subs, the player leaving the pitch absolutely destroyed only to make a miraculous Lazarus like recovery, but the fact is it was just another example of their shithousery, so was not surprising at all. They are a thoroughly unlikeable team and hopefully they'll fall to pieces soon. One good thing though was that they moved the game to the National Stadium. Whilst, as I said above, we’re almost always shit there, at least we didn’t have to go to and come back from Kashima on that rotten bus. It was probably extremely convenient for the majority of their fanbase too as I think most of them live much closer to the National Stadium than to Kashima.

Ref -

Still the quest for me to say a ref has had a good game in a defeat for us continues. Perhaps this demonstrates the true level of my prettiness. I guess you can judge this for yourself. Nakamura was back in town and much like the last time I saw one of our games that he was in charge of, he was an absolute joke. I’ve said it before but the transformation in his refereeing skills since he won ref of the year a few years ago is shocking. Of course Kashima are prize shithousers, but we all knew this before the game and I’m sure he did too. But he seemed to fall for all of it. Almost every challenge with Suzuki involved ended up with a free kick for Kashima. Actually, it even seemed like the ref was taking instructions from Suzuki. If he did something bad, just let the game continue. Any time he was tackled, give him a free kick. He gave them a very soft free kick which lead to their second goal. Maybe they’ll pay him an indirect assist bonus for it. Also, if a Kashima player got right in the face of the ref shouting at him, no problem at all. Who needs to give out yellow cards for obvious dissent after all? Plenty of times he’d stop the game because one of their players had cramp. I’m not sure it really counts as something your supposed to stop the game for, but it seemed to be part of the Kashima game plan, and therefore the ref had to follow it. The thing that annoyed me the most was the nonsensical decision, (but not nonsensical when you consider it was given by Nakamura in Kashima’s favour, I guess), when their keeper jumped to catch the ball, fell over and dropped it, Kanda took the loose ball and the ref gave them a free kick. I don’t think there was any contact apart from perhaps a brushing of shirt on shirt. Totally predictable outcome though. I didn’t mention this in the Kashima section, but one of the major pricks in the Kashima team is clearly their meathead of a keeper. Gutted we couldn’t score past him more, and doubly gutted that was due to our poor shooting rather than anything good he did. Anyway, Nakamura has become awful and continued to be awful in this game. If he’d been the ref for legendary spirit of Zico moment, when Zico, upset about the opposition being awarded a penalty, spat on the ball, Nakamura probably would have sent off the penalty taker for being irritated at Zico’s attempt to clean the ball for him. Nakamura is the perfect ref for a Kashima game as they are arseholes and he seems to be trying his best to also be one.

So a massively frustrating game. Kashima aren’t that good, but us fucking up has given them a decent lead at the top. Even if we win all of our games in hand they’ll still be seven points ahead of us. Please some other teams give them a pasting. They are extremely unlikeable and I’d love them to mess up another season. People have said that they’d like to see Oniki do well. and whilst I understand this sentiment, you’ve got to realise that he’s now the manger of Kashima so the only reasonable wish is that his season goes terribly wrong. Sorry Toru, but you are working for Satan now so I’ll give you a little clap before the game, but hope that your despicable team loses every match. Next up, Yokohama FC at home on Wednesday. It’s a must win game, not only because we need to get some form back, but also because our ACL absence has left us quite close to the teams at the bottom of the table. YFC quite often seem to frustrate us. Their goals scored total is the lowest in the league and even the shitbags at YFM have scored more than them having played two fewer games. I suspect we’ll see some rotation, and hopefully a few fresher players might be able to inject a bit of fizz into our play. Fingers crossed we can get a result, climb up the table a bit, and get ourselves back to the level that we know we can play at.
 

Team

GK 98. YAMAGUCHI Louis
DF 31. VAN WERMESKERKEN Sai
DF 2. TAKAI Kota
DF 35. MARUYAMA Yuichi
DF 5. SASAKI Asahi (Yellow card 44')
MF 19. KAWAHARA So
MF 6. YAMAMOTO Yuki
MF 17. ITO Tatsuya
MF 16. OZEKI Yuto
MF 23. MARCINHO
FW 9. ERISON

Subs

GK 1. JUNG Sung-Ryong
MF 8. TACHIBANADA Kento (on for VAN WERMESKERKEN 87')
DF 15. TANABE Shuto
FW 20. YAMADA Shin (on for ERISON 76')
FW 26. YAMAUCHI Hinata (on for OZEKI 58')
FW 18. SEGAWA Yusuke (on for IENAGA 82')
FW 38. KANDA Soma (on for MARCINHO 76')
MF 41. IENAGA Akihiro (on for ITO 76')
DF 44. CESAR HAYDAR

My Frontale Man Of The Match

There were probably contenders for this in this match, but given that the second half was so crap compared to the first and I left the game feeling quite pissed off, I'm going to give it a miss.

Goals

SASAKI (Frontale) 7' 0-1
FUNABASHI (Kashima) 45+1' 1-1
TAGAWA (Kashima) 65' 2-1

Highlights

Vs Kashima Antlers (home) 1/11/24 J League match 35

Kawasaki Frontale 1 - 3 Kashima Antlers

This truly has been a season of superlatives for us. However, unlike previous seasons where we’ve struggled to find the right words to express how exciting our football was or how well we were doing, this year it’s a case of finding an endless amount of synonyms for ‘shit’. There are plenty of options to choose from when it comes to deciding what the worst game of the season is, but this one has definitely got to be right up there. After having lost 3-1 at home to a team we’ve spent the last five of six years beating pretty easily, when you hear me say that the 3-1 score line didn’t reflect the game you might think that it’s going to be a tale of refereeing howlers and us getting absolutely robbed. On this occasion 3-1 didn’t reflect the game accurately because we didn’t really deserve the one, and we should have conceded more than three. To sum things up concisely, this was another game where we didn’t bother turning up for the first half, conceded for fun and then tried really hard for the second half. So hard that I think their keeper only had to make one save in the whole game. In hindsight, the fact that the half time entertainment consisted of not only a comedian taking on the mystery runner but also the former Guinness World Record holder for running on all fours, it looks like some world class satire from the behind the scenes people who organise these things. Yes, in 2024 we are a joke of a team. And one whose manager’s involvement is basically the equivalent of running the 100m on all fours; it makes the task a lot more difficult and a lot less effective. I’m not going to spend too much time writing this as every minute I spend thinking about this game is a minute that could be better spent… erm… punching myself in the face, maybe. Anything right now is preferable to having to watch the crap we’re playing. Bring on the end of the season. It can’t come soon enough.

Oniki went back to 4-3-3 again, still apparently not having noticed that when he doesn’t play 4-3-3 we do a bit better and sometimes even win. But no, back to 4-3-3. But give him some credit, this time he managed to play two of the back four in their preferred positions, so some progress on that front. ‘Tachibanada at right back’ really does seem to be a phrase that is quite the often associated with ‘terrible performance and result’. But I don’t want to blame him as he is of course being played out of position. In the second half Oniki moved him and instead played Segawa out of position there. Godlike insight. I could start moaning about other selections but the fact is that whoever plays at the moment, we’re awful. As I continue to say throughout this extended period of misery, if one player has a bad game you can blame the player. If almost every player has a bad game pretty much every week, you’ve got to blame the manager. There was some bullshit in Oniki’s post match comments about how at half time he maybe felt that the players didn’t believe we could win whereas he was encouragingly confident that we could. Perhaps it was more a case of them being irritated that the tactics of the idiot in charge mean that every week we’re terrible in the first half and give ourselves a mountain to climb in the second. I mean, sometimes in the past when I’ve played Tetris on a long plane journey, I occasionally randomly fill 2/3 of the screen with blocks to give myself the challenge of trying to clear it up nicely. This is alright when you’re playing Tetris on a plane with absolutely nothing at stake, but if Oniki is intentionally trying to get results from difficult positions just for kicks, he should be booted immediately. At the same time, if that same idiotic approach to the first half of most games is how he thinks we’ll win matches, he should also be given the boot. I know he’s leaving at the end of the season but I’m starting to think that we should fire him before then. We should have done it at half time. We wouldn’t have much contract to pay off and it would significantly improve our chances of not being out of the ACL by Christmas. This time, he didn’t even take the blame in his post match comments as he has done recently. As for his job prospects, it seems that this was perhaps the worst possible result for him. It was widely reported that he’d maybe be going to Kashima next year. But jeez, he’s fucked that up, hasn’t he? If we’d beaten them or even put up a decent fight they might have still been interested. But consider the fact that their stand-in manager totally out-thought the guy who some seem to feel is the greatest manager in the world ever. I know Kashima are one of the bonkers teams in the league when it comes to insane decisions behind the scenes, but how could even they look at that game and think that Oniki would be a better option than the guy who’s keeping the seat warm right now?

As I said above, everyone was pretty bad in this game. The best encapsulation of this was when Yamada managed to miss two open goals within a minute. I haven’t watched the highlights because… well, why would I? I know I’m an idiot, but that’s taking things too far. Another perfect demonstration of this game and 2024 Oniki Frontale is us having 63% possession and only two shots on target. One save from their keeper in 90 minutes! Utterly pointless. The amount of people who left pretty quickly on the final whistle was definitely more than usual which suggests that there are plenty of people who are getting a bit cheesed off with this shite. Equally though, the fact that some of our supporters sang the players into the tunnel at half time after what must have been our worst 45 minutes of football all year, and the fact that they also continued singing after the final whistle still continues to bemuse me. I didn’t really hear any booing either. They got the silent treatment from me. I know I keep saying it’s not the players’ fault but at the same time, I don’t think that means they should be congratulated for what they served up. The highlights of the few notes I made in this game basically amounted to the following:

- Trailing before we’ve had a shot

- And two down before we’ve had a shot

- 20 mins we had a massively deflected shot!!!

- Three goals down before we’ve had three shots

- First shot on target on 50 mins from Kobayashi who Oniki’s playing in midfield.

This photo sums up how dangerous our
attack was for most of the game

This felt like what Oniki considers to be our best eleven which is a bit confusing too. Whether or not you agree with that, we have nothing to play for in the league. I don’t think anyone cares whether we finish in 9th or 14th. We theoretically have something to play for in the ACL, the next game of which is coming up on Tuesday. Why did he play his first choice team?! He won’t have that luxury on Tuesday though as Wakizaka is probably injured. Notably, we conceded the third goal whilst down to ten men, when a clearly unfit to continue Wakizaka was getting treatment right in front of Oniki after hobbling off the pitch, but Oniki didn’t bother to start warming someone up to make a change beforehand. Perhaps he didn’t have time to get the magnets sorted. We spent most of the second half racking up the passes rather than trying to score. And don’t forget, the second half was much better than the first! God it was a fecal match.

A little bit of the ref, officials and the opposition. Tanimoto is a ref I’ve described in the past as useless. Didn’t particularly get that feeling in this game, but I would say that he’s someone who is determined to give a free kick for everything but equally determined not to give a yellow card for almost anything. We didn’t lose because of the ref though. The lino on our side was pretty crap I thought, endlessly doing the delayed flagging but at the same time missing some clear offsides, one of which lead to the corner they scored their first goal from. But we didn’t lose because of the lino though. Kashima, well, they’re just a bunch of wankers aren’t they? Perhaps the ‘Spirit of Zico’ thing means waste time endlessly even when you’re 3-0 up against a team who are utterly hopeless. If I was a Kashima fan I would have been furious they didn’t score double figures. Their keeper spent so long adjusting the turf in front of his goal in the second half that I started to think he’d planted some potatoes there. And let’s be honest, he would have had plenty of time to do so given that we only hit the target once before the 92nd minute. Misao is a prime arsehole for his celebration in front of our fans. But then again, I knew he was a prime arsehole before he did that so I guess no change there.

Preparing for our second shot on target
(in the 92nd minute)

Next up, potentially another turd of a match, at home against Kevin Muscats’ new team in the ACL. They’re only marginally ahead of us in the table, but we’ve scored one goal in three ACL games, so don’t expect too much, eh? Almost certainly 4-3-3 with as many players out of position as possible. Now I understand why they sold tickets for the home ACL games in a batch of four with a special present. If people hadn’t bought them already, I’m pretty sure they’d think twice before attending. Perhaps even those who’ve bought the tickets still will think twice. After that, we’re away to Kyoto next weekend. At least we’ve got something nice planned for before and after that game.

Team

GK 1. JUNG Sung-Ryong
DF 8. TACHIBANADA Kento
DF 5. SASAKI Asahi
DF 2. TAKAI Kota
DF 13. MIURA Sota
MF 19. KAWAHARA So
MF 77. YAMAMOTO Yuki
MF 14. WAKIZAKA Yasuto
FW 41. IENAGA Akihiro
FW 20. YAMADA Shin
FW 23. MARCINHO

Subs

GK 98. YAMAGUCHI Louis
FW 9. ERISON (on for YAMADA 70')
MF 10. OSHIMA Ryota (on for KAWAHARA 70')
FW 11. KOBAYASHI Yu (on for WAKIZAKA 29')
FW 17. TONO Daiya (on for MARCINHO 82')
DF 30. SEGAWA Yusuke (Yellow card 90+5') (on for TACHIBANADA 70')
DF 35. MARUYAMA Yuichi
(on for YAMADA 68')

Goals

CHINEN (Kashima) 10' 0-1
HIGUCHI (Kashima) 18' 0-2
MISAO (Kashima) 28' 0-3
YAMAMOTO (Frontale) 90+2' 1-3

Highlights

Vs Kashima Antlers (away) 17/3/24 J League match 4

Kashima Antlers 2 - 1 Kawasaki Frontale

Well, what is there to say? Another loss, this time away from home, just to inject a bit of variety. After keeping a perfect 0% home record in 2024 it seems that Oniki wants to get to work and change that away result success rate. In recent years we never lose away at Kashima. But recent years haven’t been years when Oniki was at his completely-out-of-ideas stage and that’s clearly where we are now. Plugging away with the same tactics which haven’t worked for about three years. Keeping all the same players in, some of whom who have been playing like they’re recently new to the sport. Making sure that the one certainty is that there will be a midfielder playing out of position at full back. To be honest, I’m not sure I need to even write this post, do I? You know what I’m going to say and even if you have never agreed with my opinions, you’ve got to say there is some evidence for them being accurate now, isn’t there? I’m going to try to keep this as brief as possible as the only people who could get any joy out of reading this are Frontale haters and I’m not going to waste any effort pleasing them. So here we go.

First half we got a bit battered down our right hand side, as was expected with us playing a midfielder there and as has been the case every time we’ve done that recently. We scored a goal, slightly against the run of play and not via the method that Oniki seems to be wedded to using. He must have been furious! In the second half, after a classic Oniki half time team talk, we conceded twice in the first five minutes and then proceeded to get a red card. We had a marvelous 59% possession and had a momentous two shots, both of which were off target. Much like in the last game we’re averaging around 200 passes for a shot on target. It’s truly turgid stuff. The second half was a perfect demonstration of Oniki’s master plan. Even trailing and with hardly any time left, we were still fucking around passing the ball along the defence line. But it wasn’t really a surprise, was it? Oniki’s subs were just bizarre, deciding to remove our better midfielders and leave his favourites on the pitch. The bench was just weird, basically leaving us with no real way of changing the game given that we are apparently playing wearing the virtual handcuffs of always, no matter the situation, having to stick to Oniki’s master plan. But to be honest, I’m not that upset. I totally expected the game to go this way and in the end we were lucky that we only conceded twice. But, just one more reminder that in the whole game we had two shots on target, managing to do even worse than the three we had against Kyoto. And the worst thing is that the two shots we had on target in 90 minutes against Kashima came in the same attack! Basically, aside from our goal, we didn’t even come close. An absolute waste of time!

 A rare foray into the opposition half

Here’s what I think are some of our issues, basically stated as I feel there’s no need for me to spend time trying to justify them particularly:

- The defence is a mess, as you might expect given that most weeks we’ve had at least one player in there who’s not a defender or at least one player playing out of position. I think we’ve now tried pretty much all of the possible combinations of Jesiel, Takai, Ominami and Maruyama. The one that looked reasonably steady was of course Oniki’s idea of what is our second string and was naturally changed for the following match and that back foru combination has not been seen since. I think pretty much everyone who’s played there has had at least one nightmare game. In this game their first goal came from Maruyama charging half way up the pitch to beat Yuma Suzuki to a header and totally missing it, leaving the ball to run through to an almost empty defence. That was probably another Oniki tactical innovation though so maybe it's a better idea to point the finger elsewhere? I guess you know where I'll point it?

- Probably neither Kamifukumoto nor Sung-Ryong are the answer in goal sadly. The endlessly repeated myth of Kami being crucial for our build up is, as far as I can see, total nonsense. He’s not really much better than Sung-Ryong on the ball, but seems to have an endless appetite for trying to do things he’s not quite capable of, like when he raced out of goal to reach one of the many Kashima hoofed long balls and messed up his header, glancing it behind for a corner. I haven’t watched it back, but Kami looked absolutely bewildered for their second goal. (Actually this is a bit unfair now having seen it as the ball bounced weirdly off the bar from the cross. The Kashima player celebrated as if that was his intention… To be honest though, I think there’s a chance that even if it hadn’t, Kami would have still been watching the ball sailing over his head). And not long after that goal he booted the ball off the pitch from a totally miscued goal kick. That’s what he’s in the team for! Apparently... I love Sung-Ryong but I think time is catching up with him a bit. I don’t think either keeper can be blamed too much though as the mess that’s in front of them can’t help and can't give them much confidence. So until that’s sorted out, it probably doesn’t matter that much who’s playing in goal.

- Oh my god, the endless ridiculous insistence on playing 4-3-3 with Ienaga in a free role. Particularly dangerous when we have a midfielder behind him at right back. (For some reason a lot of Kashima's attacks were going down that side. I wonder why...). And never thinking of trying anything else. And even if he is wedded to the formation and the same players, why does he never even consider that he could change our approach? The absolute arrogance of the man! Against Kyoto we went with that plan and Tachibanada at right back. Until we abandoned it because it wasn’t working. And then in the next game, went back and gave it another go! And it didn’t work again! Good thing Oniki changed it, right? After a terrible first half it might have made sense to change it at half time, but instead he decided to leave it till after we’d conceded twice. Genius level stuff! The mid-half triple change was perhaps even stupider, completing his mission to remove the midfielders who were playing the best, leaving the others on the pitch and adding a striker to the midfield. To an extent he’d hamstrung himself by bizarrely choosing the players he put on the bench. There was a bit of trouble in our end at the end of this game with a couple of our supporters scuffling. Presumably this was down to one of them saying we’d been totally shite and someone else going with the usual, ‘well done guys, let’s try again next game and definitely not complain’ mantra. I’m sure you know who I think is right. Of course, I'm not saying that fighting about it is the right thing to do as it obviously isn’t. But I do think we should stop celebrating awful performances because we are nice guy supporters. Instead much better to just fuck off out of the stadium at the final whistle. Equally, I can’t see any real benefit in booing the players, especially as I think the problem stems from elsewhere, but at the same time, I’m not going to give them a good old clap for losing yet another game.

- Pass, pass, pass, pass, pass, pass and pass. Repeat. And repeat again. Don’t even think about trying to attack. All any fan wants is completed passes! Pass and pass and pass. Don’t try to score as moving the ball forwards makes it more difficult to rack up the completed passes. Far better to do it in front of your own goal, particularly if you're losing as the opposition aren't as bothered about trying to get the ball off you. So we can carry on with the pass, pass, pass, pass, pass, pass...

Bit of positivity, the bus back wasn’t so bad! On the way it took about two and a bit hours and on the way back, around three hours. Obviously it’s a significantly worse journey when you’re coming back with no points but at least it gave me the opportunity to start writing this shitty post. I think perhaps they have alleviated the traffic situation slightly by changing the departure time of the buses to more than an hour after the game was due to end. I guess if we’d won we could have enjoyed this extra hour celebrating in the stands, but as it was, instead of spending the extra hour sitting in traffic, we instead spent it sitting on a bus which wasn’t due to depart for about 55 minutes. So much of a muchness really, but you know, I’m just trying to draw out any kind of positivity that I can right now.

Kashima were Kashima-esque. Unbelievable play acting for most of the game, definitely a focus on the dark arts. I think they aren’t that good this year. But not as bad as us, obviously. Yuma Suzuki did Yuma Suzuki things. And his teammates also did Yuma Suzuki things. At one stage one player fell to the floor and seemed to be confused as to whether he should be clutching his face or his leg. The ref bought it. In the past I’ve thought that Nakamura was one of the better refs but he was all over the place in this game. Somewhat amusingly the big screen seemed to be proactively highlighting his mistakes by playing replays that showed he’d obviously cocked up. He lost control of the game later on and seemed to be intimidated by the Kashima players. He was pretty shit. The thing he did that annoyed me the most was that after a long run of giving them a free kick every time we made a tackle, he decided to give us a free kick for a Kashima offside, just as we were racing up the pitch counter attacking, not even considering playing the advantage. But maybe he did us a favour, as it allowed the Kashima players to retreat back into defence and therefore we were in a much better position to be able to rack up some more passes! It’s all we fans want to see! Not saying he was biased at all. I think the big screen replays demonstrated that his stupid decisions were going both ways. Although it perhaps hurt us more as both of Marcinho’s yellows looked a little borderline, at least with my Frontale hat on. No need to blame the ref. No need to blame the players. There’s only one person to blame when it comes to this defeat and that is the clown prince of Kawasaki, Oniki.

Can say with confidence that this did not lead
to a shot on target as it happened in the second half

Four games done and after a lucky first win we have three defeats in a row. We’ve played three teams that could be troubling the bottom third of the table and even though we usually play badly against these kind of teams, we’ve done extra badly this year. Against Kashima, perhaps we had a chance to play a bit better as they probably would try to attack us a bit more. But no, we just carried on playing badly. There is nothing to feel even slightly optimistic about. The one goal head start that we got from Erison playing has disappeared now he’s injured. Well, at least that’s what we believe is the case. I don’t think the club officially said he is, and therefore we’ve had no hints to the possible length of his absence. Maybe Oniki’s decided we have better routes to goal. There has been some talk online lamenting how many important players we've lost since last year and blaming that on our 2024 malaise. I think this is hugely off the mark though. I think our squad is better than it was last year but is just being chronically mismanaged. Some might say that we're much weaker at right back but I think that ignores the fact that Yamane really dropped off last year and the fact that we keep playing people who aren't right backs there. Nobori was also slightly on the slide, and whilst I think Miura isn't quite with it yet, he will be better when he settles in a bit more. Perhaps Miyashiro is the biggest loss, but then again we never used him properly anyway, so the loss is more of a conceptual one than anything to do with reality. Once again for me it comes down to how the players are being instructed and managed and surely no-one can think that's being done well at the moment, can they? Next up, FC Tokyo at home, but !!PRAISE THE LORD!! that’s not for two weeks. I’m looking forward to next weekend already as there is no football, which suits me fine at the moment. I would say that if Oniki’s legendary skills make it four losses in a row he should be under some pressure, but who am I kidding, there’s no way he’s going anywhere. I wish he would go… anywhere. We’re fifteenth right now, and I get the feeling that he won’t be under any pressure until our relegation is mathematically confirmed. Then the geniuses up top in the club, might decide they need to have a word with him and will probably end up accidentally giving him a new contract because he won our final dead rubber match of the season. And can you imagine how bad Oniki's tactic, (the singular is intentional here and not a typo), would be in J2? That's truly the stuff of nightmares.

 

Team
GK 99. KAMIFUKUMOTO Naoto
DF 8. TACHIBANADA Kento
DF 4. JESIEL (Yellow card 34')
DF 35. MARUYAMA Yuichi
DF 13. MIURA Sota
MF 77. YAMAMOTO Yuki
MF 14. WAKIZAKA Yasuto
MF 16. SEKO Tatsuki
FW 41. IENAGA Akihiro
FW 20. YAMADA Shin
FW 23. MARCINHO (Yellow card 54', second yellow/red card 75')

Subs
GK 1. JUNG Sung-Ryong
DF 2. TAKAI Kota
DF 3. OMINAMI Takuma (on for JESIEL 64')

DF 5. SASAKI Asahi (on for YAMAMOTO 53')
FW 11. KOBAYASHI Yu (on for YAMADA 64')
FW 17. TONO Daiya (on for SEKO 64')
FW 30. SEGAWA Yusuke (on for MIURA 81')


Goals

MARCINHO (Frontale) 36' 0-1

CAVRIC (Kashima) 47' 1-1
SUZUKI (Kashima) 50' 2-1

 

My Frontale Man Of The Match

 

I don't think so, do you? Oh actually, he's probably got nothing to do with Frontale, but I'll give it to the guy sitting in the weird hut by the touchline. No idea what's going on in there. But even if he totally messed up whatever he's supposed to be doing, he still did better than any of our players.

 

Unusual place to put a shed, but why not, eh?

 

 

Highlights