Vs Jubilo Iwata (home) 1/12/18 - J League match 34

Kawasaki Frontale 2 - 1 Jubilo Iwata

The season’s over, the #supertitle secured, with us scoring the most and conceding the least in the league. It would be difficult to argue that we aren’t worthy champions.  Although we hardly finished the season in emphatic style, requiring a last minute own goal to defeat Júbilo Iwata. (I'll just say now, that I'm not sure if that accent over the 'u' is correct but the computer is adding it and it looks snazzy so I'm keeping it). Before the match I felt slightly conflicted, as Júbilo did us a huge favour last year drawing against Kashima, allowing us to secure our first title. They also beat Hiroshima a few games ago, but let’s be honest, pretty much everyone has beaten Hiroshima recently. They looked like they were in a little danger due to their dodgy goal difference, but with three teams needing to overtake them to put them into a relegation place and two of them playing each other, it seemed that they’d probably be ok even if we beat them. But as it turned out their last minute own goal dropped them into 16th and now they face Tokyo Verdy in a fight for their J League life. As they’d spent most of the first half trying to kick lumps out of us, I lost any sympathy I might have had for them and when the late winner went in I felt they’d possibly got what they deserved. This was not a nice game of football to watch. They packed the defence, it almost looked like they were playing a back four and a back three simultaneously, and hoofed the ball forward to a returning Yoshito and Kawamata, a forward who I find hard to like due to his constant elbowing of defenders which went entirely unpunished in this game. He, like Yoshito is a classic example of the type of player who you love if he’s on your team, but you can’t help but dislike if he’s playing for the opposition. He did miss a few good chances in the first half though, so maybe you don’t love him that much if he’s on your own team after all. It was a bit of a drab first half for us. We couldn’t really get going and they had the better chances. It seemed that Iemoto has had a word with Kimura and asked him to also give us nothing. As I always admit, I’m hugely biased, but pretty much every decision went against us. The only bright spark was Hasegawa absolutely rinsing Shunsuke Nakamura on a few occasions. I’m not sure if Hasegawa is playing for his future with us, or Oniki just thinks Abe needs a rest. For his sake, hopefully not the former, as he missed a sitter in the second half. Guess we’ll find out soon given that the season is now officially over.

The second half was a bit better for us, and a lot better for fans of entertainment. We had GOALS! Although only three, shared between the two teams and they took a while to come. Júbilo seemed a bit less interested, presumably having seen that Shonan were two goals up against Nagoya. Inevitably though, they opened the scoring and inevitably it was through Okubo. It was a bit of a sloppy goal to concede, Taniguchi lunging and missing his tackle by the touchline, a deep cross to Okubo who’d drifted back off Elsinho at the far post and was in acres of space, and a relatively easy finish. He celebrated wildly and you can’t really hold it against him as the goal seemed like it would be pretty significant for them. The goal gave them something to hang on to and they replaced Okubo shortly afterwards with Musaev, who I have a grudge against, but can’t remember why. This defensive tactical move was immediately answered by us with a long overdue goal from the player who I’m sure everyone acknowledges as the greatest player in our squad, Nara. He hasn’t scored for a while and it seemed to me at least the perfect way to round off a decent season for him. After the goal we continued to push on. I had a feeling earlier in the half that if we scored one we would get going and get another. Admittedly, I hadn’t included conceding first as part of this plan though. The winner came heart-breakingly late for Iwata, and to add to their misery it was an own goal. To be fair, the defender had to do something with the ball as Chinen was right behind him waiting to prod it home, and the accuracy of the pass made it difficult to do anything much apart from deflect it into his own net. Júbilo consequently plummeted into the relegation zone and you have to think that the momentum is all with Tokyo Verdy in the play off. Certainly an interesting game to watch! With an eye on next season, it’s probably noticeable that Ienaga has often been switched into the Kengo role late in games recently. I hope he’s being lined up as the long term replacement and that he decides to spend plenty more seasons with us. Ao presumably is also being blooded with an eye on the future. He’s done ok, but personally I think Shimoda should still be ahead of him in the pecking order. And presumably due to the unexpected injury to Kurumaya, Miyashiro was denied the opportunity of making a late substitute appearance for his debut which is a shame, but hopefully he’s got a long career ahead of him.

So that’s it, all done and with us being out of the Emperor’s Cup, we have a relatively early end to the season. It hasn’t exactly been the most exciting season, but we’ve put in plenty of good performances and are deservedly champions. Whilst some of the play hasn’t been as exciting, the margin of victory in the final table shows we’ve done it a bit more convincingly than last year. But let’s not get carried away. Hiroshima were a long way ahead of us and if they’d kept getting even half of the results they were earlier this year it would have been a lot tougher for us. I’m not convinced we’re as good as the table might suggest and I think we had some luck along the way. I also think we might have a bit of thinking to do before next season. Elsinho has gone and will leave a huge hole in our defense and attack. Plenty of rich clubs have made offers for plenty of our best players and whilst you’d hope they all stay, we might end up losing a few. There are a lot of players who haven’t really seen much pitch time this year as we’ve kept the line up pretty similar all year and we don’t really have a plan B for when things aren’t going our way. It’s hard to believe I’ve found so much to moan about when we’ve just won the league by 12 points, but you know, I do my best! Next up, a rest for the players and an interesting off-season. Next up for this blog, the usual end of season round up posts and I’m going to do the survey again so look out for those in the next month or so. Until then, let’s enjoy the feeling of being champions again! Good work Frontale!

Team

GK 1. Sung-Ryong JUNG
DF 18. ELSINHO
DF 3. NARA Tatsuki
DF 5. TANIGUCHI Shogo
DF 7 KURUMAYA Shintaro
MF 32. TANAKA Ao
MF 25. MORITA Hidemasa
MF 14. NAKAMURA Kengo
MF 41. IENAGA Akihiro
MF 16. HASEGAWA Tatsuya
FW 20. CHINEN Kei

Subs
GK 30. ARAI Shota
MF 2. NOBORIZATO Kyohei (on for KURUMAYA 14')
FW 8. ABE Hiroyuki (on for TANAKA 67')
MF 22. SHIMODA Hokuto
DF 29. MICHAEL JAMES
FW 33. MIYASHIRO Taisei
MF 37. SAITO Manabu (on for HASEGAWA 78')


My Frontale Man Of The Match

I’d love to give this to Nara again, but I’m going to cop out, like they did with the official man of the match and give it to…

THE WHOLE TEAM - can’t really argue with how that table looks at the end of the year.


Goals

OKUBO (Jubilo) 78' 0-1
NARA (Frontale) 83' 1-1
OWN GOAL (Frontale) 90+4' 2-1


Highlights

The Frontale youtube channel usually has longer highlights provided by DAZN, but given that a previous year's highlights got wiped when the broadcaster got changed, I'm going to stick with the official J League ones. But you can watch the longer highlights here if you want. And we have that extra footage video again at the bottom.

Vs FC Tokyo (away) 24/11/18 - J League match 33

FC Tokyo 0 - 2 Kawasaki Frontale 

 

Sorry this post is so late. And also sorry it’s brief. Although that might come as a blessing to some of you! With the pressure off us after we sealed the title with a dreary performance in Osaka, I guess we’ve all relaxed a little. It seems that my blogging has reflected this. Although of course that’s not to say that I’m not interested in our final two games. I’m hoping that we can win by as big a margin as possible and also have got this thing in my head, about us scoring the most goals and conceding the least. We’re still on track for this and a decent result in our last game could seal it. It would feel a bit tough on Jubilo though, who have done us some big favours in both this year’s and last year’s title races and who could still go down. This game offered something extra, with it being a tense local derby in which we haven’t done so well recently (at least in the league). Before the game FC Tokyo’s Takahagi was quoted as saying he’d never lost a Tamagawa Classico since he joined FC Tokyo. Well, you have now, and to be honest, they couldn’t really have too many complaints about it. They had plenty of chances, but seemed unable to hit the target. Whilst Sanfrecce’s collapse is of course the most notable one this season, FC Tokyo fans will be relieved that it has put their own slide into mediocrity into the shade. I’m sure they were as surprised as most were when they were putting result after result together earlier in the season. But it’s got to be a disappointing finish to the season for them. And whilst they avoided having us win the title at their ground, they still did have to do their end of season final home game presentations with a backdrop of a jubilant Frontale who’d just taken three points from them. I was actually surprised that we didn’t make more of the fact that we’d won the title during this game. I know it’s undignified to gloat, but this was a local derby and I thought we would have at least reminded them on a few occasions of what we'd achieved. Guess we’re even nicer than I thought! 

To round up the other few thoughts I had about the game, I’ll start with a good moan about the ref. Iemoto is notoriously a good referee for us. I interpret this as meaning that he knows what he’s doing. I suspect that our rivals might have other explanations though. Perhaps unwisely, a section of the fans cheered his announcement as the ref for the game. I imagine that if we are aware, he is also aware of this talk of him being pro-Frontale, and the cheering before the game, along with him probably wanting to show that he is neutral and protect his reputation resulted in what I thought was a pretty pro-FC Tokyo performance from him. Some of his decisions were baffling. But as tedious as it must be for people to read me moaning about refs when we lose, it must be worse for them for me to do it when we win, so I’ll leave it at that. This wasn’t a vintage performance from us, but we did enough I think. Ao starting came as a bit of a shock and he had a shaky start to the game, but managed to get through it and did a reasonably good job I thought. Chinen had another solid if unspectacular game up front, being preferred to Abe. The finish for his goal was decent, even if we were gifted the ball. Our pressing on the FC Tokyo player in possession though clearly contributed to the error, so I’m going to claim it as good play by us, rather than a complete stinker from them. It was good to see Hasegawa get on the scoresheet again. He had a relatively quiet game. I wish he could have a go up front again, as that’s where he was playing when he broke through for us. His emotional goal celebration seemed to suggest the he might possibly be moving on at the end of the season, (and to be honest, I wouldn’t blame him, but equally would love to see him stay), as I feel it’s been a stop-start season for him. Apparently though it might be something to do with the game’s proximity to the anniversary of him losing his mother. In any case, I think he must understand what we think of him from the reaction of the fans. I’ll do a few end of season posts soon rounding up what I think of various people’s contributions this season and what the future might hold for them soon, so I’ll save any more discussion of that nature for then. But for now, I’ll finish up by saying that this was a decent win with a decent enough performance in a dead rubber that was enlivened by it being a derby. I’m glad that we could come into this game with so little pressure as I expect it might have been a bit different if we were still trying to win the league.

Next up, the final game of the season, home against Jubilo Iwata. It will be our first home game since winning the title and it’s sold out I think, so I expect there may be a decent atmosphere. After that, we can relax, enjoy being champions and start worrying about the awful ACL group we have for next season. Hopefully we can score more than Yokohama do and concede less than FC Tokyo and therefore sew up what I from now on will refer to as ‘THE SUPER TITLE’. Bravo Frontale!

 

Team

GK 1. Sung-Ryong JUNG
DF 18. ELSINHO
DF 3. NARA Tatsuki
DF 5. TANIGUCHI Shogo
DF 7 KURUMAYA Shintaro (Yellow card 58')
MF 32. TANAKA Ao
MF 25. MORITA Hidemasa
MF 14. NAKAMURA Kengo
MF 41. IENAGA Akihiro
MF 16. HASEGAWA Tatsuya
FW 20. CHINEN Kei

Subs
GK 30. ARAI Shota
MF 2. NOBORIZATO Kyohei (on for HASEGAWA 67')
FW 8. ABE Hiroyuki (on for NAKAMURA 77')
MF 22. SHIMODA Hokuto
MF 27. SUZUKI Yuto (on for CHINEN 82')
DF 29. MICHAEL JAMES
MF 37. SAITO Manabu


My Frontale Man Of The Match

This wasn’t the most scintillating of performances. Definitely more solid than spectacular. People are going to think I’m biased again but I don’t care. It’s again going to…

NARA Tatsuki - Another great performance. Solid at the back and made some crucial tackles. There was also the amusing scene of Ienaga shoving him away from the ref after Iemoto gave another rotten decision.


Goals

CHINEN (Frontale) 19' 0-1
HASEGAWA (Frontale) 50' 0-2


Highlights

The Frontale youtube channel usually has longer highlights provided by DAZN, but given that a previous year's highlights got wiped when the broadcaster got changed, I'm going to stick with the official J League ones. But you can watch the longer highlights here if you want.

 

Vs Cerezo Osaka (away) 10/11/18 - J League match 32

Cerezo Osaka 2 - 1 Kawasaki Frontale

Well that was all a bit weird! In spite of this game resembling all of our recent Cerezo disaster performances and exposing our thankfully not so common, but all the same, slightly predictable weaknesses if the opposition get the conditions and their tactics right, we ended up leaving Osaka with our second successive title, secured with two games to spare. This was a far from vintage performance. In fact I’d say it was more like a corked bottle of supermarket plonk that had been stored on a windowsill for the whole summer. The pitch was shaggy and dry. It’s not unreasonable to think that if we know we struggle on dry pitches with long grass, the opposition will probably work that out too. And let’s be honest, Cerezo are usually a team who are more interested in destroying the beauty in a game of football to annoyingly eke out a positive result, so it was no surprise they used the conditions to their advantage. But anyway, I’m not going to dwell too much on the result and focus more on the fact that we did it! We are champions again, and although the circumstances of the victory were a little strange, it still feels pretty good!

Unsurprisingly given what we could achieve, this was a game that was very well attended by Frontale fans. We filled the away section and spilled over down the sides of the ground. We were making plenty of noise and seemed to be up for it, both on the pitch and in the stands. Cerezo started the game the way a team whose coach is soon to leave and who have nothing much to play for would. They seemed to be already on the beach, although I guess that cliche doesn’t resonate quite so well given the J League season finishes in December, rather than May. I suppose that their general lethargy, with everyone behind the ball with the occasional hoof forward counter attack is how they normally play though. The middle of the pitch in this game was horrendously congested. We couldn’t get through it, and although it felt like we’d eventually get a break, we were a bit sloppy with our passing, particularly when clearing after one of their infrequent attacks. It was by no means a great first half. We’d dominated on possession, but they’d had by far the clearest and best chances. The stats say we had four shots in the first half, but this seems generous to be honest. I was pleased to see Abe up front in place of the injured Kobayashi. Apparently, the Kashiwa player who smashed his face in with his elbow apologised after the game last week, but it must have been a bit of a bummer for our captain to miss another opportunity to lift the trophy, after having to make do with a cardboard version of it last year. Kurumaya being available again meant that Nobori was able to move forward into the usual Abe position. It’s a shame for Hasegawa and Saito that they didn’t get an opportunity, but it’s probably fair enough given that Nobori’s been doing well recently. He didn’t last that long though, leaving the pitch midway through the first half, when he was replaced with Chinen, Abe moving out to the left. Perhaps this disrupted our game plan a little, but to be honest we weren’t exactly shining before the enforced change anyway.

We started the second half with the bit between our teeth though, and came out firing. Suddenly we were starting to look more dangerous, but still we were overplaying things a little, no one seeming willing to have a shot. However, this momentum we were building resulted in us conceding. It was from a quick Cerezo break and the defending once again looked a bit dodgy. We huffed and puffed our way through the half and were putting them under some pressure but still not really enough pressure. Saito and Suzuki came on with around 20 minutes to go. I was a little surprised to see Elsinho subbed. There has been talk that it has something to do with him leaving us at the end of the season which would be a real shame. Perhaps Oniki is auditioning Suzuki for the job. In the 90th minute we were handed a real gift of a penalty. I think it was the right decision but have no idea why the keeper felt he needed to make the challenge. Glad he did though! Ienaga stepped up and put it away comfortably. If only he’d done that with a couple of our previous penalties we might have had the title in the bag earlier! We were back in the game, and in spite of us presumably knowing Hiroshima were losing we still seemed to push on for the win. Instead it turned out we were pushing on for the loss, and we got it in the 94th minute. The goal came from another quick break, this one started with a Cerezo handball, not noticed by the ref, and finished with an easy pass to a totally unmarked player and a big deflection off a sliding defender. We were then left with the slightly bizarre situation of Cerezo celebrating the win along with pockets of uncertain excitement in our end and amongst the players as we searched for an update from the Hiroshima game. There were no announcements or updates on the screen. I guess Cerezo were not that bothered to be honest, and in spite of us being fairly confident of the score in the other game, we only came to fully realise we’d won when the players began to celebrate and they starred carting on the parts of the stage for the presentation. It was a really weird feeling to be honest and a bit of a shame that we couldn’t have won the title with at least a draw. But the main thing is, we won it, and I guess there it is kind of appropriate when considering recent results, that the title was confirmed with a Hiroshima loss. They really have stuffed it up. I can’t imagine how bad it feels to be a Sanfrecce fan or player at the moment. Full credit to the numerous Cerezo fans who waited for the presentation and generously congratulated our players. Now the title is won, we can probably forget about individual results, but this game was another Cerezo stinker. It would be nice if we could beat them other than at Todoroki some time. Their bogey team status endures and we should probably try to put this performance behind us with a good finish to the season. We are now certain to end up with less points than last year. It would be nice though if we could preserve or even extend our lead, and I also would like us to outscore our neighbours in Yokohama if that is possible. Our next game is against FC Tokyo, so there’s something at stake there, even if the title is already decided.  Fingers crossed for a strong finish and a couple more wins! Go Frontale!

Team

GK 1. Sung-Ryong JUNG
DF 18. ELSINHO
DF 3. NARA Tatsuki
DF 5. TANIGUCHI Shogo
DF 7 KURUMAYA Shintaro
MF 10. OSHIMA Ryota
MF 25. MORITA Hidemasa
MF 14. NAKAMURA Kengo
MF 41. IENAGA Akihiro
MF 2. NOBORIZATO Kyohei
FW 8. ABE Hiroyuki

Subs
GK 30. ARAI Shota
MF 16. HASEGAWA Tatsuya
FW 20. CHINEN Kei (on for NOBORIZATO 37')
MF 22. SHIMODA Hokuto
MF 27. SUZUKI Yuto (on for ELSINHO 76')
DF 29. MICHAEL JAMES
MF 37. SAITO Manabu (on for ABE 76')


My Frontale Man Of The Match

This isn’t sour grapes after a loss, but there weren’t really any good performances in this game. Perhaps it was the tension of the situation, maybe the conditions, maybe we just had an off day. So, in the interests of doing something corny, and not for the first or probably last time, let’s give it to...

THE SUPPORTERS - big turn out, lots of noise and deserve to get something after a very limp performance from the team.


Goals

SUGIMOTO (Cerezo) 55' 1-0
IENAGA (Frontale) 90' PEN 1-1
YAMAMURA (Cerezo) 90+4' 2-1


Highlights

The Frontale youtube channel usually has longer highlights provided by DAZN, but given that a previous year's highlights got wiped when the broadcaster got changed, I'm going to stick with the official J League ones. But you can watch the longer highlights here if you want. And we have that extra footage video again at the bottom.

 

Vs Kashiwa Reysol (home) 3/11/18 - J League match 31

Kawasaki Frontale 3 - 0 Kashiwa Reysol

Another game ticked off, and unbelievably Hiroshima lost again. We now find ourselves one win away from a second consecutive title. This excitement is so all-consuming that once again, I don’t have a lot to say about the game. At least when it comes to talking about things in detail anyway. Due to his red card in the Emperor’s Cup we had to face Kashiwa without Sung-Ryong in goal so Arai took his place. Oshima dropped to the bench with a slight injury and was replaced by Shimoda. And Abe was back, with Saito making way. Other than these changes it was as you’d expect. Kashiwa came into the game in a rotten league position and you’ve got to think that afterwards they were left hanging on to their J1 life by only a thread. The defeat to us was a blow for them, but probably one they might have been expecting. Jubilo’s 98th minute winner after coming back from 2-0 down with 30 minutes to go must have been a real kick in the guts though. People rave about them being a great team with great support and a great ground. Presumably not so many of these people have attended a match in a sold out away end in rotten weather conditions. Sure, you’re close to the pitch, but it can get pretty punishing if it’s raining or if it’s sunny, as you’re completely exposed. Also, not so much fun if you’re a non-Japanese goalkeeper as Cerezo found out earlier this season. All of this adds to the fun of their always hilarious ‘We’re Kashiwa Stupid’ banner. To amp things up, they decided to cover the Kashiwa part, leaving only ‘We’re             Stupid’, which I’m guessing wasn’t exactly the message they were aiming to impart. They also charmingly had a ‘Play Dirty Go Hard’ flag, a message which some of their players took to heart in this game. I’m pleased the worst we have to put up with is ‘Go Sensational’, which at the start of the year felt pretty embarrassing, but when compared to some of the other abuses of the English language on teams flags actually seems quite quaint and charming! Have no idea if the same problem blights the other foreign language flags, but let’s be honest, it wouldn’t really be a surprise, would it? Much like with some of my recent posts, I’m going to just try to mention a few things I noticed from the game and then slip away quietly, eagerly awaiting the coming of the next match.

The result makes us look good, and we played some nice stuff in this game, but I think it probably more accurately reflects the depths that Kashiwa have sunk to. They looked pretty shaky at the back, but maybe this was our great attacking! Up front they had Olunga, who, at least in this game, fitted beautifully into the ‘big lump, with not much else to his game’ mould. Nara dealt with him pretty comfortably I thought. Ito hit the post for them, but aside from that and a few other chances, that was about it for them. After the first goal went in (lovely finish from Ienaga again!), I had a feeling that if they conceded again before half time, they’d probably be on a fast train to J2. And concede again they did, when we scored from a corner! A few seasons ago, that was a really rarity, but I feel that at the start of this year it was something we were doing quite regularly. That definitely dropped off though and I can’t recall the last time we did it. Pleasingly, it was Taniguchi who scored. He’s had a bit of a dodgy time recently with some real clangers in defence. You could say all three goals against Montedio were his fault if you were being harsh, or perhaps also if you were being fair. He didn’t start this game particularly well either, but the goal seemed to give him some confidence and we looked a lot more solid in the second half. You could probably say something similar about Arai. When he’s had his chance in goal he’s done ok, but I think the defeat against Kashima in the Levain Cup was a bit of a low point for him. Nice to have him back with a clean sheet though, and he made some good saves in the game.

As I said, going forward we were looking decent. If it wasn’t for the (unfortunate for us) return of Nakamura in goal for them, I think we would have scored a few more. I can’t imagine he’ll be staying at Kashiwa next year if they go down. We had quite a lot of possession and created quite a few chances in the first half and started the second half by coming flying out of the traps. Things did drop off a bit though. Understandable I guess, especially after the third goal, as it looked unlikely we would lose and could take our foot off the gas in view of the upcoming games. It did seem a shame though as we had some good breaks where there was absolutely no support. A few times a player would speed towards goal with the ball, hotly pursued by a couple of Kashiwa defenders and then the attack would fizzle out with a pass backwards and into our own half. Kengo looked a bit tired in this match and was lucky to last 80 minutes I thought. I guess his versatility and the absence of Oshima meant that he was left on the pitch a bit longer than he might have been otherwise. But it did feel a little like his recent 38th birthday might have had a psychological effect on him. Probably it’s more likely that another long season of being a first team regular has tired him out, or perhaps he was just having a quiet game.  One of those four possibilities anyway! One big downside of this game was the injury to Kobayashi. He took an elbow right between the eyes and has apparently broken a bone. Guess this means he’ll either miss the next game or be wearing one of those Phantom of the Opera style masks that have become common recently. The incident was completely off the ball and looks a bit naughty from the Kashiwa defender. He clearly knew Kobayashi was there as he could probably feel him having a little pull of his shirt. The ref and linesman both completely missed it though. To be fair to them, I also did, but as I said at the time, I’m not getting paid to watch the match and they are. Kashiwa weren’t the nicest team. It seems their tactics are to try to kick and elbow their way to J1 safety. After this display, I won’t be particularly sad to see them go down.

In a slight change from my previous positives and negatives, I’ll go for good day and bad day instead. A good day was had by the fans as this is a big step to the title. There was significant excitement even after the final whistle as events in the Jubilo/Sanfrecce developments filtered through the crowd, unfortunately resulting in most people not listening to what Ienaga or Tanuguchi had to say in the post match interviews. I think most of the players had a good day too. Kobayashi wasn’t exactly firing on all cylinders in front of goal and his unfortunate injury meant that he had to be replaced just as he was working towards getting some shots on target. Also Kengo was quiet as I said above. But you couldn’t say either had a bad game. The people it really was a bad day for have got to be anyone connected with Kashiwa who now look cooked and Sanfrecce, who seem to be finding a new and original way to flop each week. Their collapse has been astonishing and we shouldn’t forget, (if we win the league), that we’ve had some dodgy results this year and if Hiroshima hadn’t so completely imploded, we would probably be fighting it out for second place. Feels nice to be seven points ahead of them though, particularly after that horrendous decision they got against us earlier this year!

Next up, three matches, of which we have to win at least one to take the title. First Cerezo Osaka away next Saturday. I feel we still owe them a pasting for our horrendous performances when it mattered against them last season. The weekend after, we’re away again, this time to FC Tokyo, who recently have remembered how to win football matches and would be delighted to put the brakes on any title challenge of ours. Then finally a home game against Jubilo, who did us a huge favour in the last game of last season holding Kashima and did us a huge favour this weekend by beating Hiroshima. Three games, one win required. The away game at Cerezo has now sold out, so presumably there are a few confident people around. I’m still not going to jinx anything though. Fingers crossed, and keep it up Frontale!

Team

GK 30. ARAI Shota
DF 18. ELSINHO
DF 3. NARA Tatsuki
DF 5. TANIGUCHI Shogo
DF 2. NOBORIZATO Kyohei
MF 22. SHIMODA Hokuto
MF 25. MORITA Hidemasa (Yellow card 28')
MF 14. NAKAMURA Kengo
MF 41. IENAGA Akihiro (Yellow card 45+1')
MF 8. ABE Hiroyuki
FW 11. KOBAYASHI Yu

Subs
GK 24. ANDO Shunsuke
MF 10. OSHIMA Ryota
MF 16. HASEGAWA Tatsuya
FW 20. CHINEN Kei (on for SAITO 76')
MF 27. SUZUKI Yuto (on for NAKAMURA 80')
DF 29. MICHAEL JAMES
MF 37. SAITO Manabu (on for IENAGA 90+1')

My Frontale Man Of The Match

There are quite a few contenders in this match to be honest. Nobori was great going forward and at the back, so much better than against Montedio. The middle two of Shimoda and Morita also did a good job. Morita really is a talent and it’s nice to see that he’s not trying so many tricks as he was a few games ago as these never look good when they go wrong and you probably shouldn’t be doing them in your first season proper. Ienaga and Abe did their usual high quality stuff. Abe’s chipped finish after Chinen’s shot was saved was very nice. Arai picked up the defensive man of the match award after the game and he did well too, his ball control and distribution even looking a bit better than usual I thought. But, and I have no qualms about saying this, for me it has to go to…

NARA Tatsuki - not just because I am a Nara superfan, but because he totally bossed Olunga, tidied up after a few players mistakes, was like a rock at the back and did a fantastic goal celebration for our third which I retweeted on twitter. Great stuff! Oh, and believe it or not, apparently he hasn't been booked all season. I should probably check this before posting it, but, oh well...

Goals

IENAGA (Frontale) 21' 1-0
TANIGUCHI (Frontale) 33' 2-0
ABE (Frontale) 89' 3-0

Highlights

The Frontale youtube channel usually has longer highlights provided by DAZN, but given that a previous year's highlights got wiped when the broadcaster got changed, I'm going to stick with the official J League ones. And we have that extra footage video again at the bottom.

Vs Vissel Kobe (home) 20/10/18 - J League match 30

Kawasaki Frontale 5 - 3 Vissel Kobe

This is a blog post that is once again low on details and high on emotion, this time with the bonus of being fueled by alcohol! The potential presence of a certain Mr. Iniesta has driven J League attendances into something of a frenzy recently, and our home game against Kobe was no exception. If you add into this the fact that our attendances have been steadily creeping up and we’ve had sell outs on a few occasions, this was always going to be a tricky game to get a good seat for. Our good attendances are leading to increasingly crazy pre-game queuing rituals. It’s great for us to be getting big crowds, but it’s not so great that now you have to get to the ground a good five or six hours before if you’re looking to get the view you want. And personally speaking, we’re comparatively lucky, being in the SG section with its different entry gate meaning that we don’t have to join the crazy early morning lottery that some have to take part in each home game. Anyway, all of this is a big preamble to basically say, we had plenty of time to kill before the game and I decided to fill it almost entirely with booze. This definitely added to the excitement. And to be honest, this was a game that could have made even the most sober of fans imagine that they’d been on the sauce. Looking at the scoreline you might think that Oniki Frontale had been swapped with Yahiro Frontale for a week, but it probably made it sound more of a contest than it was. Kobe scored a couple of crackers from long range, one of which was celebrated in particularly obnoxious style by Mita, (no Schadenfreude in seeing him get booked for petulantly kicking over a water bottle as he was being substituted. None at all. Honest…), and got a real gift of an own goal from us, probably delighting fans of clanger defending worldwide. But we came back. And in the second half, you can say Kobe got away lightly with us ripping them to shreds time after time. There was a lot of talk before the game of this being Fake Barcelona vs the Real Barcelona. Although I’m not sure quite how the presence of one ex-Barcelona player elevates the rest of the Kobe squad to that level. I suppose though that was the thinking behind the Iniesta transfer. Also no Schadenfreude seeing a total moneybags team who are attempting to thwart their opponents by buying every football player in Japan and a few from overseas too, fail again in their quest to be Asia’s number one football team and instead have to look over their shoulders at the bottom of the table as they slip further and further down towards J2. Anyway, enough of this and on with talking about the few things that happened in the match that I can remember, in no particular or rational order.

The Iniesta factor! I think we kept him pretty quiet, or perhaps, his teammates kept him quiet. We definitely didn’t put him under that much pressure and we stood off him quite a lot. Kengo didn’t clatter into him like he did with Neto a few weeks ago. It seemed like Iniesta and Podolski mainly wanted to pass to each other, and who can blame them really. Sure, Kobe scored some good goals, but they only had four shots on target in the game and their defensive frailties have got to be a concern for them. Apparently this is the first time Iniesta has been on a team that have conceded five in his career. I guess that’s shows there’s a big difference between Barcelona and Kobe! He praised Frontale in his post match comments and I now wonder if he might be regretting joining Kobe. Although the full to bursting bank account must compensate a little! It’s good that we performed so positively in what could have been a tough game (if Kobe weren’t rubbish…). I’d say that they probably need quite a few more players if they’re serious about building a team that wants to challenge. In spite of the score in the first half, I think their keeper kept them in it. He made a couple of good saves and it looked like we could be in for a frustrating evening, particularly when we conceded the third. But we really stepped it up in the second half and it was lovely to watch. I guess Hiroshima taking one point from their last five games, and generally speaking, this happening before we started our games, has got to be a big morale boost for us. And this comeback will also be a big boost, along with the knowledge that we were playing some great football in the second half. The fourth goal was a beauty, and once again we had different goalscorer for every goal. Quite a few of these goals were pretty significant too. It was great to see Manabu get his first league goal, taking his chance due to Abe’s suspension. I suspect that this might help him push on, as he hasn’t quite got going for us yet. Funnily enough, I thought he was probably about to get subbed just before he scored but he had another 15 minutes after his goal where he looked very dangerous and was unlucky not to get a second. What a time to come into some form! Kobayashi also finally scored a penalty! It took some guts to step up after missing his last two and it was great to hear that Oniki had asked Ienaga to have a word with him if we were awarded a penalty. Apparently the conversation was something along the lines of ‘You’re Frontale’s ace, you can do it, but if you don’t want to, I’m fine with taking it’. I think it’s probably an unseen side of Ienaga that he seems to really support the other players in the team. Which makes me once again remember the marvelous shoulder flick at Yuma Suzuki who had messed with Nara. Someone please make a gif out of that! Lovely memories! Oshima and Elsinho also deserved their goals. It’s been a while since they last scored so they were long overdue. Elsinho seems to have really upped his game in the last few matches after a bit of a low spell, perhaps something to do with the plight of his fellow Brazilians. Oshima finished the game with two assists and a goal which is a pretty good performance doing the things that get noticed, alongside the usual less noticeable but perhaps more important work he does in the midfield. And all of this was achieved without Kurumaya (injured), Abe and Morita (both banned). Finally, Nishimura was the ref, and once again he was rubbish. His name was probably the one I screamed the most during the game as he, from my biased point of view, messed up decision after decision. But just to show you I’m not biased, I think we were a bit lucky with the penalty decision. Sorry this post is extremely jumbled and rambling. But that’s how my head has been today.

There are now four games to go and we have a four point lead. Things are looking bright, especially given Hiroshima’s current form, but I’m not counting my chickens yet. In normal life, I’m not particularly superstitious, but when it comes to football I’m terrified of jinxing things, so I’m just keeping my mouth shut right now. It seems that we’re coming into form though, (but not wanting to jinx it, I’ll say that we could lose our next match. Is that enough to cancel out the slight confidence I expressed?).  Two more wins in the last four games should be enough to seal it. Three would confirm it. Depending on Hiroshima though, we might be able to get away with less. It would be nice to carry on in this style though. Our remaining fixtures, in order, are Kashiwa at home, Cerezo away, FC Tokyo away and Jubilo at home. Hiroshima have Jubilo away, Sendai at home, Nagoya at home and Sapporo away. This week saw ex-Frontale player Chong Tese do us a big favor scoring against Hiroshima. Hiroshima’s remaining games see them face Neto and Okubo and current loanees Miyoshi and Itakura. I’m sure they are all playing 100% for their sides, but think that maybe they’d also like to do us a favour and give Hiroshima a thumping for us. Frontale family!

Next up though is Montedio Yamagata away in the Emperor’s Cup on Wednesday. I’m quite looking forward to that trip! There’s no league game next weekend though, so we’ll have to wait till the week after to see if we can take one step closer to a second consecutive league title. It looked so unlikely earlier in the season, particularly when they bought out the latest fixtures poster with the slogan ‘to consecutive title’ just as we lost to Gamba and put in a stinker of a performance. But, one step at a time, fingers crossed and keep up with all those pre-match rituals that seem to be working at the moment. Go Frontale!


Team

GK 1. Sung-Ryong JUNG
DF 18. ELSINHO
DF 3. NARA Tatsuki
DF 5. TANIGUCHI Shogo
DF 2. NOBORIZATO Kyohei
MF 10. OSHIMA Ryota
MF 14. NAKAMURA Kengo
MF 41. IENAGA Akihiro
MF 37. SAITO Manabu
FW 20. CHINEN Kei
FW 11. KOBAYASHI Yu

Subs
GK 30. ARAI Shota
MF 6. TASAKA Yusuke
FW 9. AKASAKI Shuhei
MF 16. HASEGAWA Tatsuya (on for SAITO 81')
MF 22. SHIMODA Hokuto (on for OSHIMA 86')
MF 27. SUZUKI Yuto (on for CHINEN 87')
DF 29. MICHAEL JAMES


My Frontale Man Of The Match

It seems a bit unfair to single anyone out in this game as it was such a great team performance in the second half so...

EVERYONE - they can all have it, and why not, us fans can have it too. It was a great performance and a great atmosphere. Lovely!


Goals

KOBAYASHI (Frontale) 13' (PEN) 1-0
OWN GOAL (Kobe) 15' 1-1
FURUHASHI (Kobe) 28' 1-2
MITA (Kobe) 35' 1-3
IENAGA (Frontale) 43' 2-3
SAITO (Frontale) 65' 3-3
OSHIMA (Frontale) 70' 4-3
ELSINHO (Frontale) 76' 5-3


Highlights

The Frontale youtube channel usually has longer highlights provided by DAZN, but given that a previous year's highlights got wiped when the broadcaster got changed, I'm going to stick with the official J League ones. But you can watch the longer highlights here if you want. And we have that extra footage video again at the bottom.

 

Vs Kashima Antlers (away) 7/10/18 - J League match 29

Kashima Antlers 0 - 0 Kawasaki Frontale

As the end of the season approaches, things are getting serious. It’s a tense time. We are leading the league for the first time this year. Some people have put as down as nailed on champions but I wish I had the same confidence. I think I said a few games ago, that I thought that there was no way Hiroshima would win all their remaining games and it looks like their form is disintegrating. Likewise, I didn’t think we would win all of our games, and we didn’t won this one. But it was a decent point to pick up in a tough game against rapidly improving opposition. I was hoping that they would play the kids, given that they are still involved in four competitions. Sadly they didn’t, and this was a battle. In keeping somehow with the increasing tension, these blog posts seem to be getting more jumbled and lighter on detail. I’d be delighted if the season finished now (unsurprisingly, given that we’re top). This tension is affecting the way I’m watching games. And I think perhaps there was an element of the pressure being on us rather than Hiroshima and this adversely affected our performance. I guess we’ll see if this manifests in the next game too. This was a frustrating, irritating, yet somehow satisfying afternoon. I think, looking back in a positive way, we’ve come through what looked like being, and turned out to be a challenging fixture. Obviously, three points would have been lovely, but I think on balance, we should be satisfied with one.

The most notable thing about this game was the insane weather. It’s October, but it was very hot. We were totally exposed to the sun in the stand behind the goal, so much so that most people spent the majority of the three hours before kick off, hiding in the concourse area. I had left a sandwich in my bag on my seat and when I returned to eat it, it seemed that it had been slightly toasted. These conditions may have contributed to the general lack of quality in the game. There was a lot more grit than style in this match. Kashima were a very dirty team, (of course I’d say that...), and Leo Silva and Jung were both lucky to have not been sent off. Jung in particular, as he spent the majority of the match kicking lumps out of Kobayashi and gave away the penalty which he can have no complaints about. His only yellow though was for a push at a corner. Again, no surprise for me to say this, but Kashima are a very unlikeable team. And their fans aren’t much better, spending the majority of the first half booing our possession. We started pretty well, hitting the post early on and with plenty of the ball. Sadly though we were lacking a cutting edge up front. I think Oniki made a mistake putting Abe on the right and Kobayashi up front. The opposite would surely have made more sense, but like with his undroppable favourite players, Oniki also seems set on playing Kobayashi up front at all costs, in spite of the evidence that Abe up front and Kobayashi on the right always works better. It wasn’t really Kobayashi’s day. The penalty miss was another rotter. If you’re going to put it low into the corner, you’ve got to find the corner and he made it far too easy for the keeper. Admittedly not as easy as last time when he kicked it straight at the Shonan keeper who didn’t even have to move, but still it wasn’t exactly a tough save if the keeper guessed the right way. There was a ridiculous amount of interference and mind games from Kashima as Kobayashi was waiting to take the penalty which can’t have helped. The keeper in particular was really taking the piss but the ref did nothing. Perhaps, however these misses can be blamed on me. I’m never confident when we win a penalty and always hope that someone else will take it rather than Kobayashi. Surely there must be another option? Fair play to him for stepping up after the last miss, but I’m not sure where we go from here. Do we keep letting him step up until he scores one? Personally, I’d rather someone else took them. It would be fair to say that his penalty misses have cost us four points in the last month. Kashima felt cheated that they didn’t get a penalty for a Taniguchi handball. It was at the other end of the pitch so I’ve only seen it on replays and I’ve seen them given and not given. I think the ref was right on this occasion, as his hand is in front of his body and the ball is blasted straight at him. Kashima disagreed though and at the end of the game booed the ref off. I laughed as I thought he had given pretty much everything else their way. It was another rotten refereeing performance to be honest. He lost control of the game early on and if he was consistent with his decisions Kashima would have been down to nine men for a significant portion of the game. Instead it was us who had a player sent off, (that notorious bad boy Abe...), and although it was pretty late on, it made for a nervy end to the game. Can’t argue with either of the yellow cards. The first was a bit silly and for the second, he took one for the team, stopping a potentially dangerous break with a foul. Unfortunately, this means he won’t be available for the next game. Neither will Morita, who picked up his fourth yellow, so we’ll have some changes again. Ienaga will be back though.

Briefly returning to my old ‘positives and negatives’, with positives first. We took a point from a tough game and one in which we were really under pressure in the second half. And Hiroshima lost again. Negatives, the penalty miss, the lack of chances and some weird subs. Given the booking and the fact he was playing out of position, Oniki should have probably have taken Abe off when Suzuki came on. I guess though his hand was forced a little by the two previous subs given that both Morita and Kobayashi had to leave the pitch due to injury. Hopefully neither of them are serious and Morita will at least have some time to recover given that he’ll miss the next game due to suspension. I feel for Abe though. He can play either on the left or up front, but he spent almost the whole game on the right out of position and then when he finally made it onto the left, got sent off chasing back to cover from one of our own corners which we’d fluffed. It seems like I’m moaning a lot again, but I was fairly satisfied with the result, if not the manner in which it came about. Guess it’s just that I really don’t like Kashima!

Next up, Kobe at home but it’s not for a couple of weeks so hopefully we can all have a bit of a rest! Whether a certain Mr. Iniesta will play, I’m not sure. I hope so, for Kengo’s sake, as he is apparently a big fan of him, but I’d rather he didn’t and they continue their fantastic run of six defeats in their last seven matches. That game is a must win. They are a club in some turmoil and we need to get back to winning ways. Hopefully the two weeks will do us good and we can turn in a good performance. Go Frontale!

 

 

Team

GK 1. Sung-Ryong JUNG
DF 18. ELSINHO
DF 3. NARA Tatsuki
DF 5. TANIGUCHI Shogo
DF 7. KURUMAYA Shintaro (Yellow card 89')
MF 10. OSHIMA Ryota
MF 25. MORITA Hidemasa (Yellow card 52')
MF 8. ABE Hiroyuki (Yellow card 28', second yellow/red card 90+1')
MF 14. NAKAMURA Kengo
MF 2. NOBORIZATO Kyohei
FW 11. KOBAYASHI Yu

Subs
GK 30. ARAI Shota
MF 16. HASEGAWA Tatsuya (on for KOBAYASHI 82')
FW 20. CHINEN Kei (on for MORITA 66')
MF 22. SHIMODA Hokuto
MF 27. SUZUKI Yuto (on for NOBORIZATO 85')
DF 29. MICHAEL JAMES
MF 37. SAITO Manabu


My Frontale Man Of The Match

This wasn’t the most dynamic of attacking performances so I’m looking at the other end of the pitch for this. Taniguchi didn’t have the best of games again, and I think he’s being carried by Nara at the moment. Perhaps he’s tired. I’d love to give it to Nara, but everyone would think I’m biased so it will go to….

OSHIMA Ryota - did a great job in the middle of the pitch, winning the ball fairly and not having to resort to the dirty tactics Kashima’s midfield used. Shows much more strength than you’d imagine he has and his control was perfect in this game. Bravo!


Goals

None


Highlights

The Frontale youtube channel usually has longer highlights provided by DAZN, but given that a previous year's highlights got wiped when the broadcaster got changed, I'm going to stick with the official J League ones. But you can watch the longer highlights here if you want.

Vs V-Varen Nagasaki (away) 29/9/18 - J League match 28

  V-Varen Nagasaki 1 - 2 Kawasaki Frontale 

 

This will be a pretty short post as I think I’ve said before that I don’t particularly want to write much about games that I haven’t attended. This was the away trip I was most looking forward to this year, and we were all booked and ready to go before the monster typhoon intervened. You could say we’re quitters, but with a cat at home, we couldn’t really risk getting stranded in Kyushu, as I believe quite a lot of Frontale fans are as I write this. Putting aside those stranded fans’ feelings for a moment, I was quite pleased this morning to find out that our gut instinct had been right, and we wouldn’t have been able to get home. I’m still gutted I missed the game though, as the way things stand, we might not be visiting Nagasaki next year. Hopefully, they can get a run going and escape relegation. Things are pretty tight down there, but V-Varen are bottom, so obviously have most to do.

After the disappointment of Wednesday’s performance and result against Shonan, this was a welcome, and crucial return to winning ways. Once again, we were in the slightly fortunate position of playing later than Hiroshima, so were no doubt boosted by the fact that they lost again, knowing that we could potentially go top if we won. I was wondering how Oniki would respond to Wednesday’s game. I’m still not really sure what happened there to be honest, but I think it was just a combination of us still not knowing how to best play against super defensive teams and plenty of our players concurrently having an off day. Dropping Shimoda and Abe seemed a bit weird though, but I’m not trying too hard to understand Oniki’s decisions now as he clearly knows a lot more than I do about football and us sitting top of the table makes it difficult to criticise what’s going on without sounding slightly insane. Surprisingly, we switched to two up front with Chinen alongside Kobayashi, I guess to combat the increased numbers of defenders. If only he’d thought of that against Gamba! It all seemed to work anyway, as we cruised through the first half scoring twice, well in control. I don’t know if we thought the job was done by half time or whether Nagasaki sticking the big man on up front threw us, but we were woeful in the second half. But we hung on, in spite of conceding a late goal, and took the three points back to Kawasaki. Not the most exciting of games, but an effective result and given that we’re now sitting on top of the pile, I think we’d all take six more lacklustre wins. But now we are leading, we’re the target. Hiroshima’s form has been pretty bad recently, but dropping behind might just give them the kick up the backside they need to get back in gear. And I can’t say with confidence that I think we’re going to win the rest of our games this season! It has certainly got interesting now though, and we managed to avoid falling foul of any clangers from Tojo, back refereeing us for the first time since that Hiroshima game ‘offside’.

Next up, Kashima away, who unfortunately have just moved into third place, so now have something to play for. We just have to hope that still being involved in four competitions means that even their moneybags squad gets a touch thin and they gift us the three points. The game is sandwiched between the first leg of their ACL semi-final and the first leg of their Levain cup semi-final. Who knows where their priorities lie, but the league is the competition they have the least chance of winning, isn’t it? I’m sure they’d be happy to derail our chances though, given what happened last season. We go into this game without Ienaga, who somewhat foolishly picked up a late yellow for kicking the ball away and now will miss a match due to accumulated bookings. Probably could have done with having him play as, with a few exceptions, he’s been great recently. It doesn’t seem popular with Oniki, but I think we could play Kobayashi on the right and maybe continue with Chinen up front or play one of the many attacking left midfielders we’ve got up top. Or even Akasaki as I know Oniki likes to get players involved against their former clubs. I guess he’ll probably go with Suzuki on the right, but personally speaking, I’d like to see Kobayashi out their again as he always looks dangerous in that position. Fingers crossed that the interminable post match coach journey back from Ibaraki is a positive one! Go Frontale!

Team

GK 1. Sung-Ryong JUNG
DF 18. ELSINHO
DF 3. NARA Tatsuki
DF 5. TANIGUCHI Shogo
DF 7. KURUMAYA Shintaro
MF 10. OSHIMA Ryota
MF 14. NAKAMURA Kengo (Yellow card 64')
MF 41. IENAGA Akihiro (Yellow card 89')
MF 2. NOBORIZATO Kyohei
FW 20. CHINEN Kei
FW 11. KOBAYASHI Yu

Subs
GK 24. ANDO Shunsuke
MF 6. TASAKA Yusuke
MF 8. ABE Hiroyuki (on for NOBORIZATO 71')
MF 22. SHIMODA Hokuto
MF 27. SUZUKI Yuto (on for CHINEN 75')
DF 29. MICHAEL JAMES
MF 37. SAITO Manabu


Goals

CHINEN (Frontale) 35' 0-1
KOBAYASHI (Frontale) 41' 0-2
JUANMA (Nagasaki) 90+3' 1-2


Highlights

The Frontale youtube channel usually has longer highlights provided by DAZN, but given that a previous year's highlights got wiped when the broadcaster got changed, I'm going to stick with the official J League ones. But you can watch the longer highlights here if you want.
 

Vs Shonan Bellmare (away) 26/9/18 - J League match 18

Shonan Bellmare 0 - 0 Kawasaki Frontale

I’m going to knock this post out quickly as there’s not much I can remember from the game. And I say that, writing this on the train home. This is always a fun away game given the fact that it’s a local derby, but if we’re being honest, it’s not a great view, with the stadium being a very shallow bowl, and we never seem to do very well against Shonan. Also, during this game, the rotten weather added an extra level of obscurity to what was going on on the pitch. This match was postponed last time due to a typhoon. It seems that the typhoon like conditions had also been postponed till today. The first half wasn’t so bad with the rain stopping on occasions and otherwise varying from a sprinkle to a shower, but the second half was unmitigated misery from a weather point of view. Just about the most exciting thing I can say about this game is that among the officials, we had one called Kawasaki and one Fujisawa, which I found pleasantly amusing whilst at the same time being a perfect impartial balance.

In spite of league positions, this game was always going to be a tricky one. Shonan were not going to play the way we wanted, and this could well be a situation that we find obstructing us again this season. Some people seemed to be presuming that the game in hand was effectively three points in the bag, but as Shonan seem to delight in doing, they ruined our evening. At least we didn’t lose, I suppose. In spite of us controlling the game, we did give them a few chances to nick a goal and destroy all our built up confidence. Thankfully, they didn’t manage to get the goal, but I fear they might have taken a hammer to our morale. The fact is, whilst we dominated possession and chances, we didn’t really do enough to test their keeper. The penalty looked like an opportunity to snatch a win in unlikely circumstances, given that we didn't look like we'd ever score, but, and I think I’ve said this before, Kobayashi probably shouldn’t be taking them. He never looks particularly confident, has missed a few and has been very much off the boil recently. Both Chinen and Abe looked a lot more assured when they have taken recent ones, but Abe was off the pitch, and it was never going to be handed to Chinen ahead of Kobayashi. Hopefully, we can find someone else in the squad to take the next one we get, and hopefully Kobayashi is happy to pass on the mantle. Can't blame it all on the penalty miss though, the whole performance was very subpar. We didn’t really deserve to win and this game was us back to our ponderous worst. I don’t want to jump back on Oniki, but the subs were a bit confusing. We seem to be back to the old shuffle half the team with every change technique. Why we didn't bring on Manabu, I don’t know. We weren’t succeeding at passing it through their defence and the long balls we tried weren’t being collected by our front players, so why not try something different? It's the same old story of us failing to break down a team who come to the game with a plan to disrupt us and pack the defence. As we still struggle to play against these tactics, I can't believe anyone bothers trying anything else against us.

Well, there’s not much else I want to write about this game. I don't really want to think about it, as it went exactly as we might have feared it would. Let’s wrap this post up and move on to the next game, which is now a totally crucial away fixture against Nagasaki. Win that and if Gamba beat Hiroshima, we’ll go top. Given that I’m a pessimist, I think that Gamba will do their half of the deal and we might stumble again. But yeah. Let’s just put this behind us and move on. Seven games to go...

 

Team

GK 1. Sung-Ryong JUNG
DF 18. ELSINHO
DF 3. NARA Tatsuki
DF 5. TANIGUCHI Shogo
DF 7. KURUMAYA Shintaro
MF 10. OSHIMA Ryota
MF 22. SHIMODA Hokuto
MF 41. IENAGA Akihiro
MF 14. NAKAMURA Kengo (Yellow card 23')
MF 8. ABE Hiroyuki
FW 11. KOBAYASHI Yu

Subs
GK 24. ANDO Shunsuke
DF 2. NOBORIZATO Kyohei (on for ABE 61')
FW 20. CHINEN Kei (on for IENAGA 83')
MF 27. SUZUKI Yuto (on for SHIMODA 71')
DF 29. MICHAEL JAMES
MF 32. TANAKA Ao
MF 37. SAITO Manabu


Goals

None


My Frontale Man Of The Match

It clearly can’t go to any of the front players who all misfired to various degrees. Taniguchi was misplacing passes willy-nilly at the start of the game and both full backs were back to our recent lethargic worst. As Sung-Ryong hardly had anything to do, and I'm running out of options, I’m going to give it to...

NARA Tatsuki - because I like him, and he wasn’t rubbish. In fact, some of our better attacks came from his passes. Yeah, maybe ridiculous, but if it’s going to go to anyone, it might as well be him.


Highlights

The Frontale youtube channel usually has longer highlights provided by DAZN, but given that a previous year's highlights got wiped when the broadcaster got changed, I'm going to stick with the official J League ones. But you can watch the longer highlights here if you want.