Vs Consadole Sapporo (away) 7/12/19 - J League match 34

Consadole Sapporo 1 - 2 Kawasaki Frontale

The season is over. Let’s be thankful for small mercies. It might sound like an arrogant thing to say in a season where we won a cup, but this year has been pretty much a big old disappointment. And this game was the perfect one to reflect the season to be honest. A brief flurry of hope followed by grinding tedium, a bit of good fortune followed by a big old let-down. The only thing that could have made this game totally emblematic would have been a late equaliser for Consadole and therefore another 2-2 draw, again throwing away points from a winning position with a late goal conceded. But why is this post so gloomy? We won, after all. True, but the performance was so predictably bad. And thanks to plenty of other previous predictably bad performances, this game was close to pointless. We’ve ended up fourth in the league but have also ended up as the team who lost the least games. The story of the year has been draws. Draw after draw after draw. Our summer was particularly disheartening, with us drawing against the teams who finished in 11th, 12th, 14th and 15h and losing heavily to the team who finished in 13th. Of course we don’t have any divine right to do well and beat these teams, but this year is one string of missed opportunities given the talent we have in our squad. It seems that barely a game goes past recently without me irritating someone on twitter so I’m not going to go into much detail about this game. I also can’t be bothered to. I want to forget about it. It seems bizarre that I’m writing about an away win like this, but this wasn’t much fun to watch. Thankfully Sapporo is a fun place to visit. If we’d finished the season like this and then had to come back from Kashima on the bus I’d be even closer to despair, I think. It probably would also have taken longer to get back from there than it did from Hokkaido. Anyway, let’s get this over with.

Same team = same old rubbish, unsurprisingly - 

Another game with plenty of rotten performances from players. Kobayashi’s useful input finished after he tapped home after 45 seconds. The rest of the game he did his normal thing of missing chance after chance and irritated me particularly by moaning at Chinen after he came on. Kobayashi is perhaps something of a problem for us going forward. He’s in awful form, but is undroppable. He doesn’t want to play on the right but is basically a waste of time up front as the person who is supposed to be putting chances away. He can be a great player, but seems to be shorn of all confidence and not up to much right now. The same could be said about Taniguchi at the back. It’s a miracle he was nominated in the short list for the J League team of the season. Whoever picked that list clearly hasn’t watched any of the games he’s played in for the last few months. To be fair to him, he always seems to make one amazing tackle or block per game, but always fills up the rest of the 90 minutes with errors, gaffes and bad passes. I think I’d settle for playing a defender who doesn’t make the great block but doesn’t make all the mistakes. He’s another player whose form and perhaps confidence are at rock bottom. I’d mention Morita at right back again, but am aware that he’s being played out of position whilst we have available right backs who are being overlooked. Which leads us to the main problem I guess, and it will come as no surprise for you to hear that I think it’s Oniki. We lost our last game to our big local rivals 4-1 at home basically handing them the title. No changes for the next match. I just don’t get it and am fed up with trying to understand it. Sure we won this game, but aside from the first 15 minutes where we were quite efficient with chances, we were totally rotten ,and it seemed only a matter of time till we’d concede, with our toothless attacking preventing us from having any chance of scoring any more goals. Astonishingly, we apparently had 18 shots in this match, eight of which were on target. I can’t really remember their keeper having to make any saves so they were probably the usual powder-puff back pass like shots that we favour recently. Wakizaka was again withdrawn around 55 minutes, as I predicted he would be on Twitter. But there’s no glory in getting this prediction right as it always happens. Not sure what Oniki’s doing in that regard either. We had 43% possession. Exhilarating stuff! You could say the season has petered out. but that would suggest we ever really got any kind of momentum going. I can’t believe we finished 4th to be honest.

Potential exodus - 

I don’t know if Oniki is staying next year. I’m pretty sure it’s obvious what I would like to happen. If he leaves, I fear he might leave quite some wreckage behind him. But if he stays he could cause even more damage. I think we are going to lose a lot of players in the off-season. I can’t imagine Leandro Damiao will stay. Why should he? He hasn’t been given a real chance. Maguinho likewise. Jesiel was being courted by some big names after the Chelsea game it seemed. Since he’s recover from injury he’s been on the bench or in the stand behind a defensive duo who were playing pretty badly. Gamba are once again trying to tempt Nara. I wouldn’t blame him for leaving for the same reason. (It seems today he’s confirmed he’s leaving...). Anyone who’s been watching us play recently would find it unbelievable that we had two good defenders like them who were unable to get on the pitch. At the end of the match Arai seemed very emotional, which suggests he’s leaving too. Which is weird as I thought Oniki preferred him and was going to get rid of Sung-Ryong, who I expect will also leave. So maybe we’ll lose both. It’s weird as Arai was clearly first choice for a while. I thought he must have been injured when he didn’t make the bench last game but I wonder now if it was some more great Oniki man management after Arai had perhaps suggested he might be looking elsewhere. Shimoda has been linked with a departure too. And Ao was also quite emotional. Whether that was because of Arai or because he too is going to leave I don’t know. It’s going to be a pretty different squad next year I think. I can’t blame anyone who leaves or is considering leaving. There seems little chance of Oniki improving anything as he seems out of ideas (if he ever had any). Perhaps the departure of Oniki might give some of these players thinking about going second thoughts. I keep hearing about how bright the future is for Frontale. And this could be true, as we saw another bright prospect get his first pitch time yesterday. Congratulations Hatate! But the truth is, if Oniki is the one in charge, these great young players might as well think of going elsewhere, unless they are looking to play football that is increasingly dull and less effective game by game.

Another hopeless ref - 

I’ll quickly mention the ref, who I thought made some major mistakes, having more than decent reason to send of Anderson Lopes twice in this match but only gave him one yellow card. And Suzuki made a horrible tackle too. But apparently the officials did rule out a legitimate Consadole goal for offside. And some Consadole fans thought he gave us everything. I think it’s funny that rival fans can have such differing views on the same match. Apparently Consadole fans don’t think that’s quite so interesting. But given that arguing on the internet as about as pointless as writing this blog is, I’d rather step away from at least one of those activities and as I seem to be stuck doing this blog I guess I’ll continue with it. I think one thing we can all agree on is the fact that this was another rubbish ref, even if we disagree on the details.

So, good riddance 2019 league campaign. And 2019 Emperor’s Cup campaign. And 2019 ACL campaign. Hooray for the Levain Cup! A competition in which we played only five games, and won only two of them. I’ll do my usual end of season survey and round ups soon and then I can vent a bit more on this year. Right now, I’m glad we don’t have any more games and that I don’t have to think about the J League for a while. The less we say about the league champions the better too. I remember when we used to play attacking football. Now, we just have possession and grind out 2-2 draws. Toru Oniki, sucking the fun out of football and being a Frontale fan! Thank you for your services, but let’s hope we either have a new manager or at least some new ideas for next year.

Team

GK 1. Sung-Ryong JUNG

MF 6. MORITA Hidemasa 

DF 5. TANIGUCHI Shogo

DF 34. YAMAMURA Kazuya

DF 7. KURUMAYA Shintaro

MF 25. TANAKA Ao

MF 10. OSHIMA Ryota

MF 41. IENAGA Akihiro (Yellow card 90+3')

MF 28. WAKIZAKA Yasuto

MF 8. ABE Hiroyuki

FW 11. KOBAYASHI Yu

Subs

GK 21. ARAI Shota

DF 4. JESIEL 

FW 9. LEANDRO DAMIAO (on for KOBAYASHI 90+1')　

FW 20. CHINEN Kei (on for WAKIZAKA 59')　
MF 22. SHIMODA Hokuto
DF 26. MAGUINHO

MF 33. HATATE Reo (on for HATATE 85')　

My Frontale Man Of The Match

It was probably Ao again, but tell you what, just to be petty, let's give it to...

WAKIZAKA Yasuto - nice free kick goal. Naturally withdrawn by Oniki around 55 minutes as predicted. It's almost as if the decision had been made before the match. It probably had been.

Goals

KOBAYASHI (Frontale)1' 0-1

WAKIZAKA (Frontale) 13' 0-2 

FERNANDES (Consadole) 34' 1-2

Highlights
 

Vs Yokohama F Marinos (home) 30/11/19 - J League match 33

Kawasaki Frontale 1 - 4 Yokohama F Marinos

Football is crap, isn’t it? Or rather, we’re crap, aren’t we? How far we’ve fallen over the course of the last 12 months. For a while it looked like we might end up agonisingly short in the league thanks to a truly awful run in the summer but instead we’re going to be well short at the end of the season and deservedly so. The only saving grace from this game was the fact that Yokohama weren’t able to actually lift the trophy in our stadium. Let’s be thankful for small mercies. As it was, we did our best to make it near impossible that they won’t lift the title next week by significantly contributing to their goal difference. The Levain cup win is something we can take away from this season, but to be honest, that victory is only papering over the huge cracks. Of course, you know I’m going to blame Oniki for this. But we’ve had plenty of terrible performances from players this year as well as the terrible decisions from our manager. I don’t think he’s signed the contact we offered him for next season yet. I wonder if he will do the honorable thing and leave us at the end of the year. It’s pretty clear that he doesn’t know where to go from here. Our system has been found out and there’s no sign of any other ideas. Losing 4-1 to your local rivals in your own stadium to practically hand them the title hurts me, so hopefully he realises quite how bad it was too. We’ll see, I guess. This blog post is going to be full of bitterness, so I’ll try to keep it brief. If you don’t want to wallow in misery better stop reading now. If you are a Yokohama fan looking to enjoy our misery, you’re probably only going to get irritated by my opinions on your ‘brave heroes’ so I’d stop reading here too. A lot of it is sour grapes, but I think there’s an element of truth. I’ve deliberately delayed writing this a little to try and tone down the sourness, but watching the goals has upped the acid level again. Here are my points about this travesty, and beware, everybody’s in for a slagging here.

Oniki out -

Come on, do the right thing and go. This was awful again. The game plan didn’t work, and we had no response to going behind. The back four were useless. Please never play Morita at right back again. It has never worked and it never will. Play him right wing maybe as he was alright going forward, but not right back. Three of their four goals came from that side and he was clearly being targeted. PLAY A RIGHT BACK AT RIGHT BACK!!! Taniguchi and Yamamura were a total mess. Sure they may be the most handsome center back pairing in the league, but they both had nightmare games.  Taniguchi is clearly undroppable for Oniki but to be honest I think most of the people in the stadium could have done a better job in this game than he did. A while ago we were very short of centre backs but now we have Jesiel and Nara both sitting on the sidelines or in the stand and yet Taniguchi is able to continue blundering his way through game after game. Give him a rest. He’s not a bad player, but he’s playing incredibly badly right now. For two of our goals he was closer to taking out Sung-Ryong than getting anywhere near either the ball or a Yokohama player. Kobayashi had another game to forget. As soon as Leandro Damiao came on we looked a different team. I really can’t believe that Kobayashi is up there on the scoring charts. I don’t think he should play up front by himself but apparently he’s said he doesn’t want to play on the right. Fair enough, don’t play him there, but don’t play him up front alone either. Quite why Oniki always withdraws Wakizaka and ignores those players stinking it up even more around him I don’t know. But then I don’t really understand many things Oniki does. I don’t know who should replace him if he goes, but I know that whoever it is, it’s got to be a hell of a lot better than what we’re getting right now.

Terrible referees (the usual refrain) -

Nishimura - a referee announcement that always strikes fear into the hearts of everyone. Please retire! Thankfully he was changed at half time, apparently due to an injury, but I like to think of it as being the match commissioner hauling him off for the rotten display he was putting in. Seconds after kick off Oshima was fouled off the ball. No card. This pattern was repeated throughout the game. Yokohama hacked and dived and feigned injury all the way through the game. I can only guess that Nishimura was due to drive home in a lovely new luxury Nissan provided by Yokohama. I’ve never seen a more infuriatingly one sided refereeing display. Oh, actually, I probably have as the refs are always terrible but this one really stood out. His replacement in the second half was even worse, apparently unaware of what sport he was even officiating. Random decision after random decision. Stopping the play for an injury and then restarting with a goal kick instead of a drop ball. Sure he probably was only expecting to only be lifting up the substitute board and got thrown in at the deep end, but seriously, he was clueless. Quite why Nishimura and the 4th official got selected for a potentially title deciding game I don’t know. Surely it’s time that Nishimura got sent off to pasture. Leandro Damiao through on goal and hacked down by the last man on the edge of the box. Amazingly he got the award of a free kick rather than a penalty right, but no card? I think it could have been a red. Plenty of terrible fouls from Yokohama that weren’t even given as free kicks. Another clear penalty that wasn’t given when Daimao was shoved in the box. A handball in the box from a Yokohama defender that the ref also missed (well, I saw it!). Marinos players rolling around on the floor, kicking the ball away, anything to waste some time and getting away with it. I don’t even know why they were bothering as if they hadn’t they probably could have scored three or four more. Let’s not forget the fact that it wasn’t just the ref and we were rubbish too, but we definitely didn’t get the rub of the green in this game.

Dubious Yokahama -

I’ve been wavering on who I least disliked winning the league for the last month or so. First of all, I decided the least bad option was Kashima as at least it would be business as usual and would deny both of our neighbours. But Kashima were such a bunch of scumbags when we played them, (shout out to Bueno!), that I couldn’t possibly hope for that. So, down to Yokohama or FC Tokyo. I then moved on to Yokohama because at least they score a few goals and don’t just hoof the ball to the fast guy to dive and win a penalty so that the chubby guy can run up, stop jog on the spot, reverse, skip a bit and then finally kick it (all in one ‘seamless’ run up, right?) and then win 1-0. But after this game, they’re out too. I would have liked us to smack Yokohama by four or five goals and then would be happy for them to win the title. But that didn’t exactly happen, did it? So now I’m going for Tokyo, I guess. Yokohama apparently play beautiful attacking football, but all I saw yesterday was a bunch of cheating midgets diving, fouling, time wasting, feigning injury and most annoyingly of all, finishing off chances clinically. Nakagawa apparently said he wanted to thank Frontale for his time with us as a youth player by beating us. Interesting logic. Similarly interesting was his goal celebration, kneeling and praying with his hands aloft right in front of our main fan area. Presumably this was in thanks to us too. I don’t know if they’ve been doing this all season or they just save it for local derbies, but if they have, I think that any sense of them having the attacking football moral high-ground disintegrates on closer inspection. Perhaps we were aiming for the moral high-ground and were pursuing it at the expense of actually playing football. Funnily enough, we out possessed and out-passed them and were only one shot behind them too. And we if we avoid defeat next weekend we will end up as the team who lost the least games in the league this year. But these stats aren’t really much consolation as they beat us 4-1 at our place and will win the league comfortably ahead of us.

Foreign players -

One big difference between Yokohama and us was in the use of foreign players. They had four Brazilians, one Thai and one Korean player in the starting line up. We played Sung-Ryong, probably only because Arai was injured (I’m guessing) and that was it. I’ve often moaned about Oniki having a problem with foreigners and it seems like he’ll do anything to avoid playing them. The thing is, the reason they have a limit on foreign players is presumably to stop big money clubs fielding a whole team of foreign ringers, the implication being that there’s a much bigger pool of good foreign players to choose from. Most teams understandably use their foreign spots to boost their starting eleven. For some reason, we use our foreign spots to warm the bench or maybe just to keep the translators occupied. Damiao has been used sparingly and seemingly reluctantly. Oniki has never attempted to mould the team around him (our big money star player) and has instead put him in up front by himself with no thoughts on how he could get the best out of him. If Oniki is with us next year, there’s really no point us having any foreigners.


Four goals, all coming from mistakes from us, all put away by a superior if quite cheaty Yokohama team. Have a close look at the replay of the game please Oniki. Thankfully this season will soon be over and we won’t have to deal with any more of this rubbish for a few months. Next up, our final game, away at Consadole Sapporo, a team who probably really want to beat us after the Levain Cup final. We need to win to have any chance of an ACL place next year. Not sure we particularly deserve one, and we’d probably only mess it up again, but it could be useful for player retention and attraction. Least it’s a nice trip. Hopefully we’ll see some kind of reaction to this disaster. Fingers crossed.

Team

GK 1. Sung-Ryong JUNG

MF 6. MORITA Hidemasa

DF 5. TANIGUCHI Shogo 

DF 34. YAMAMURA Kazuya

DF 7. KURUMAYA Shintaro

MF 25. TANAKA Ao

MF 10. OSHIMA Ryota

MF 41. IENAGA Akihiro (Yellow card 90+5')

MF 28. WAKIZAKA Yasuto

MF 8. ABE Hiroyuki

FW 11. KOBAYASHI Yu

Subs

GK 24. ANDO Shunsuke

DF 2. NOBORIZATO Kyoehi
DF 4. JESIEL

FW 9. LEANDRO DAMIAO (on for ABE 61')　

MF 16. HASEGAWA Tatsuya (on for WAKIZAKA 54')　

FW 20. CHINEN Kei (on for KOBAYASHI 79')　
MF 22. SHIMODA Hokuto

My Frontale Man Of The Match

A fair few terrible performances, a lot of average and ineffective ones. Normally in a game we lose heavily I sulk and don’t give anyone this, but one player at least tried to do something.

TANAKA Ao - wasn’t crap. But to be honest, wasn't as good as he normally is.

Goals

NAKAGAWA (Yokohama) 8' 0-1

ERIK (Yokohama) 49' 0-2 

ERIK (Yokohama) 69' 0-3 

LEANDRO DAMIAO (Frontale) 74' 1-3

ENDO (Yokohama) 89' 1-4

Highlights
 

Vs Kashima Antlers (away) 9/11/19 - J League match 31

Kashima Antlers 0 - 2 Kawasaki Frontale

Hehehe. Well, that was fun. I think I said in a previous post that all we have to look forward to for the rest of this season is ruining other teams’ title challenges. Today we’ve probably done that for Kashima, and let’s be honest, it couldn’t have happened to a nastier team. I’ll keep this all brief as it’s not long since I did a post moaning about Kashima and this time I’d probably only be saying the same things. If you’re not interested in me repeating myself feel free to stop reading after the next sentence which I feel will sum up the rest of what I’m going to say. It was a lot of fun to beat a horrible Kashima team at their own place, particularly when they desperately needed to win. Here are a few brief bullet points and then we can all have a drink or two to celebrate this probably inconsequential win. At least as far as we’re concerned anyway. There will probably be quite a few consequences for Kashima!

Dirty, dirty Kashima -

Have said it numerous times but I’ll say it again. Kashima are a horrible team full of hackers and divers and their fans aren’t much better. Their centre back pairing of Jung and Bueno must be the most irritating of all possible J League duos; two players who individually are pretty damn irritating, but together take it to another level. It’s a sign of how much of an arsehole that Bueno is that for most of this match Jung looked fairly respectable in comparison. Bueno is a total rotter but took it to new levels getting Ienaga booked by falling down clutching his face after no contact whatsoever. To be honest, not sure what the ref was doing with that decision. Serginho seems much less arseholeish, but at the same time seems to just be a massive elbow made into a football player. The amount of extremely dubious physical challenges he put in was unbelievable. No cards of course. Sometimes not even a free kick. Fair play to him though, he did apologise after each attempted shattering of bone. And those fans... ‘Amazing atmosphere...’ if you’re really into booing of any opposition possession. I don’t know why they and Urawa bother to be honest. Can’t imagine that an away team passing the ball around would be so affected by the boos that they’d have a crisis of confidence and give the ball away. Add to this some big booing for Kashima old boy Yamamura before the game and you have quite an unlikeable set of fans. It was lovely that Yamamura scored. It was pretty good of him to not celebrate the goal. Can’t imagine I would have been able to do the same after being booed before the game. Karma, eh?

High on excitement, low on quality, but I'll take that! -

In some ways this was a bit of a smash and grab from us. In the first half we had plenty of possession and pretty much no shots whilst Kashima had little possession and plenty of shots, and missed some pretty good chances. Though, to be honest, most of those chances were gifted to them by us. The second half was a bit more even but there was still not much high quality play going on in front of goal. Kashima fluffed some more, and the one time they didn’t fluff, Kurumaya was on hand to clear off the line. We didn’t look great up front but were getting a bit closer the more Kashima tried to score. It’s weird for us to score with a header from a set piece recently so that was nice. This really forced Kashima to commit men forward and consequently gave us lots of space. We probably should have scored more. Ienaga put a first time shot pretty much out of the stadium it was so high over the bar. Chinen had a chance to hoof the ball into an empty net from near the centre circle at the end of the game but almost put it out for a throw. The game is probably best summed up by our second goal; Kobayashi has a great chance, doesn’t take it (although this time he at least managed to shoot, even if it did hit the post and Hasegawa bundled the ball into the net at the second time of asking with some help from a defender. It definitely wasn’t beautiful, and it was definitely comical and sloppy. But they all count, and when it’s your team scoring these kind of goals, sometimes they are even more fun than fantastic pieces of skill. 

Title race trundles on -

Still got no idea what’s going to happen. Still mathematically have a chance ourselves, but you’ve got to think that chance will be extinguished when the other teams catch up the extra game we’ve played. But if they happen to lose all those games...


That’ll do, I won’t mention dodgy performances from some players, I won’t mention a ref with some interesting thoughts on both yellow card offences and playing the advantage. I will mention again that this was fun!! Next up Yokohama at home. Perhaps we’ll spoil their party too. We’ll see, I guess. It’s nice to be able to enjoy the end of what has been a bit of a frustrating season. Let’s keep it going for the last couple of games. Go Frontale!

Team

GK 21. ARAI Shota

MF 6. MORITA Hidemasa (Yellow card 42')

DF 5. TANIGUCHI Shogo (Yellow card 69')

DF 34. YAMAMURA Kazuya

DF 7. KURUMAYA Shintaro

MF 25. TANAKA Ao

MF 10. OSHIMA Ryota

MF 41. IENAGA Akihiro (Yellow card 77')

MF 28. WAKIZAKA Yasuto

MF 8. ABE Hiroyuki

FW 11. KOBAYASHI Yu

Subs

GK 1. Sung-Ryong JUNG

DF 2. NOBORIZATO Kyoehi (on for ABE 90+3')　
DF 3. NARA Tatsuki

FW 9. LEANDRO DAMIAO

MF 16. HASEGAWA Tatsuya (on for WAKIZAKA 56')　

FW 20. CHINEN Kei (on for KOBAYASHI 81')　
MF 22. SHIMODA Hokuto

My Frontale Man Of The Match

I dunno, wasn't exactly the greatest match, but a few players looked good. Tanaka was great again, Arai made some important saves, Hasegawa and Kurumaya made fools of plenty of Kashima players later on in the game. But given that he hasn't really had a chance to play where he probably wants to, I'll give it to….

YAMAMURA Kazuya - scored a goal, kept a clean sheet, got the best possible revenge for his prematch booing and then trumped it by not even celebrating. Classy!

Goals

YAMAMURA (Frontale) 62' 0-1

HASEGAWA (Frontale) 71' 0-2

 

Highlights

Vs Urawa Reds (away) 5/11/19 - J League match 32

Urawa Reds 0 - 2 Kawasaki Frontale

I couldn't go to this game due to work. It was moved to a Tuesday night with a 18:30 kick off to try to help Urawa win the ACL. We'll see how that works out. It's helped us pile the pressure on the top three. We're coming for you! Hmmmm... Yeah right. But it's always nice to beat Urawa and nice to get another win on the board. All I know about this game is what I have gleaned from looking at the match stats and the highlights videos, so I'm not going to bore on about it. But I wanted to get this post done as soon as possible as I won't really be gaining any more insight as the days pass. Next up, Kashima away on Saturday. The bus journey is almost certainly going to be a nightmare. This is the first opportunity that we have to ruin someone's title chase. I'm still torn as to who I would prefer to win the league. Actually, completely bewildered would be more accurate. We'll see, I guess. Let's hope we can keep the wins coming. Go Frontale!

Team

GK 21. ARAI Shota

DF 26. MAGUINHO

DF 5. TANIGUCHI Shogo

DF 34. YAMAMURA Kazuya

DF 7. KURUMAYA Shintaro

MF 25. TANAKA Ao

MF 6. MORITA Hidemasa

MF 41. IENAGA Akihiro

MF 28. WAKIZAKA Yasuto

MF 19. SAITO Manabu

FW 9. LEANDRO DAMIAO (Yellow card 67')

Subs

GK 1. Sung-Ryong JUNG

DF 3. NARA Tatsuki

MF 8. ABE Hiroyuki (on for WAKIZAKA 89')　　　

MF 10. OSHIMA Ryota (on for MAGUINHO 46')

FW 11. KOBAYASHI Yu (on for LEANDRO DAMIAO 67')

MF 16. HASEGAWA Tatsuya

MF 22. SHIMODA Hokuto

Goals

WAKIZAKA (Frontale) 35' 0-1

KOBAYASHI (Frontale) 78' 0-2

 

Highlights

Vs Sanfrecce Hiroshima (home) 2/11/19 - J League match 30

Kawasaki Frontale 2 - 1 Sanfrecce Hiroshima

As the season nears an end, and with our Levain Cup victory still fresh in our minds, we were back at home and playing again in the league. Mathematically, we still have a chance of taking a third league title, but giving that this was another match day where Kashima, FC Tokyo and Yokohama all won, it is only the maths that we have to hang on to. But we’ve still got to play out these last few games and perhaps mess up some teams’ title chances. It was nice to win a game in the league though as that is something of a rarity recently. I’ve said it before and I’m sure I’ll say it again, but it’s a bit of a miracle, given our recent form, that we’re anywhere close to the title race this year. This blog post is going to be more useless than these normally are, as I was lucky enough to get some VIP tickets to this game. Consequently, I very much enjoyed the free food and alcohol before the game and watched from the side of the pitch near the centre line in the main stand. Very nice seats, fantastic view, pretty lousy atmosphere as you’d probably expect. These things combined with the general pointlessness of the match meant that I didn’t put much effort into writing notes. So, I’ll do my best, but it’s going to be a bit shabby, I think.

Suspensions and now injuries -

This game saw us without Taniguchi (suspended for the red in the Levain final), Kurumaya and Ienaga (suspended for picking up five yellow cards). We narrowly averted a defensive disaster through Nara’s return and he looked well up for the game after missing a lot of games. Jesiel also made it back to the bench so we should be spoilt for choice in that department soon. Wonder who will get picked. The combination of Nara and Yamamura looked pretty solid I thought and the goal we conceded only came from a bit of an unfortunate blunder from Maguinho. Arai did have to make a few saves though and some of them were pretty good so I can’t see us seeing Sung-Ryong again this season if Arai continues like that. Up front we once again seem to be struck by the curse that if a player scores as a sub, they start the next game and then fail to do anything too exciting. Can we start our future games with no strikers and use Kobayashi, Leandro Damiao and Chinen all as super subs please? Although to be fair to Kobayashi, he did have a legitimate goal ruled out for offside in the first half. (Some abuse for the officials further down in this post). Thankfully we have midfielders who want to shoot and it was nice to see Ao get another goal. Whether he is allowed to claim it is another matter as it is clearly an own goal, the ball bouncing off the post onto the keeper and back into the net. I suspect that Ao would like it and the keeper doesn’t want it though, so we’ll see. This was not the only thing Ao contributed though. I think he was pretty good all over the pitch to be honest. Wakizaka also had another good game I thought. I was delighted for Maguinho to get a goal on the day his kids were at the game. He really hasn’t had a decent crack of the whip this year and looked delighted when he smashed the ball home confidently. The fact that it came shortly after his mistake gave Hiroshima their goal will hopefully go some way to canceling out the mistake. I wouldn’t be surprised if we see him make way in the next match though as we’ll have bigger names available. It’s a shame for him though. Just as we get some players back from injury we lose another couple though. It will come as no surprise to hear that Oshima is one of the injuries, although he walked off the pitch so it’s hopefully not too serious. It’s not really worth risking him though as the remaining games are pretty pointless. The worrying injury came to Kengo and it was immediately apparent that it was a serious injury from the way he reacted. Apparently it’s an ACL injury so that will see him definitely out till the start of next season at the earliest. We just have to hope it’s not too bad as these injuries can sometimes be pretty nasty. Fingers crossed he’s back next year. Very classy of the Hiroshima fans to boo him as he lie injured…

The race for fourth -

Realistically, this is the best we can hope for. Eight points off top and second and seven points off third with four games to go. Two of these games will be against two of the teams above us, but even if we win them both we’ll still need more slip ups from those teams. Fourth place could get us into the ACL if Kashima win the Emperor’s Cup, (I think, but this could well be just my imagination). This could be somewhat useful for us when it comes to attracting and retaining players. Possibly… I don’t really know how much of a big thing the ACL is for J League players to be honest. It’s a shame we stunk the place up so badly in the middle of the season. We now have three wins in our last eleven league games. You could spin that a little differently though and say three wins a draw and a loss in our last five. Either way you look at it, it hasn’t been good enough. We’ll be scrapping for fourth with Sanfrecce and Cerezo as there’s only one point between the three of us. So it looks like a final league position of anywhere from 4th to 6th. I don’t know how this will be perceived by the board and the fans. Apparently Oniki has been offered a new contract but I haven’t heard that he’s accepted it yet. Mysterious… The Levain Cup win has taken the edge a little of a disappointing league campaign I guess, but as I’ve said numerous times, us not winning the league this year has to go down as a huge missed opportunity as the other contenders have been pretty rotten at times.

Oniki reconsidered -

On last week’s J Talk podcast I said that I have once again called a truce with Oniki, mainly as I’m tired of moaning about him, but also I have to give him some credit for getting us another trophy. I still have my doubts about a lot of his team selections and his tactics leave me cold at times. However, sitting just behind him in the fancy seats gave me a whole new impression of him. He was constantly giving the fourth official and the ref grief about some dodgy decisions, so I have a newfound respect for him. If there’s one thing we can all agree on, it’s the fact that the officials are often pretty useless. People bore on about Rugby and the respect that the players show the ref, but seriously, the way some of the J League officials officiate, I think it would be ridiculous to afford them any kind of respect. Yeah, it’s a tough job etc. but in the way that most people who want to be politicians are exactly the kind of people who shouldn’t be politicians, you could probably say the same about refs. If you are in any way religious, why not have a little pray for some new refs and linesmen who aren’t insane and can actually do the job for next season.

So, yeah, nice to beat Hiroshima. These little victories are probably all we have to take from this season now, so I suppose we should try to make the most of them. Next up, Urawa away on Tuesday with a ridiculous 18:30 kick off, perhaps arranged to ensure the smallest possible crowd. I won’t be able to go to this game and the crazy early kick off means that the game will be all but over by the time I finish work. Would be quite fun to add to their league worries, wouldn’t it? Guess the line up will be of some interest and to be honest, it’s a game we really should win. Therefore, we’ll probably lose. After that, it’s another hellish trip to Kashima next weekend. Or more accurately, a hellish bus trip back from Kashima. Pressure’s off so let’s just have some fun for the last few games. Go Frontale!

Team

GK 21. ARAI Shota

DF 26. MAGUINHO

DF 3. NARA Tatsuki

DF 34. YAMAMURA Kazuya

DF 2. NOBORIZATO Kyohei (Yellow card 90')

MF 25. TANAKA Ao

MF 10. OSHIMA Ryota

MF 28. WAKIZAKA Yasuto

MF 14. NAKAMURA Kengo

MF 8. ABE Hiroyuki

FW 11. KOBAYASHI Yu

Subs

GK 1. Sung-Ryong JUNG

DF 4. JESIEL
FW 9. LEANDRO DAMIAO

MF 19. SAITO Manabu (on for NAKAMURA 66')

FW 20. CHINEN Kei (on for KOBAYASHI 90+3')

MF 22. SHIMODA Hokuto (on for OSHIMA 60')

MF 35. ISSAKA Zain

My Frontale Man Of The Match

This was a reasonable performance, with not a great deal of possession and significantly fewer goal attempts than the opposition but it didn’t feel like a smash and grab. Perhaps it was a strangely efficient performance. All in all, quite average, but one player stood out and that was….

TANAKA Ao - all over the pitch, wearing a phantom of the opera mask, getting involved with a broken nose and even trolling their keeper by forcing him to score an own goal with his back. His star continues to rise, and deservedly so.

Goals

OWN GOAL (Sanfrecce) 21' 1-0

LEANDRO DAMIAO (Sanfrecce) 82' 1-1

MAGUINHO (Frontale) 84' 2-1

Highlights

Vs Gamba Osaka (away) 19/10/19 - J League match 29

Gamba Osaka 2 - 2 Kawasaki Frontale

Well, the league title chase was over before this week, but as tends to be the case this season, we got another glimpse of a potential opportunity to get back into it, and then we snuffed out our own chances again, without even having to worry about our opponents’ games. Kashima drew, and once again, so did we, and we did it by our favourite score this season, 2-2 (think this was our fifth 2-2 in the league this year). This time we threw away a lead, but did so after coming back from an early calamitous goal. It really seems that we like to make it difficult for ourselves. I’m not going to dwell too much on this game as we were pretty much out of the title chase before it, and are even more out of it now, but still aggravatingly there is a mathematical chance. Mathematical, but supremely unlikely. And the sooner we all admit this the better. Of course we should be trying to win our remaining games, but please put a stop to things like Oniki saying that the players are not thinking about the Levain cup and are focused on getting our third league title. Let’s quit doing that as it’s a bit embarrassing now, but let’s do our best to disrupt anyone who’s challenging for the title. That’s all we have left in the league now, a desire and ability to spoil someone else’s fun. Anything else is pure fantasy now I think. Perhaps even the ACL spots could be out of reach. Here are a few things we might have learned that are different from the usual things we fail to learn from in our numerous defeats and draws this year.

Return of a ref with a reputation to refute -

It’s been a while since I had a ref rant, and as these rants are horribly repetitive and predictable, I’ll leave it at just saying Ikeuchi was absolutely crap in this game. Much like our recent Iemoto experience where he was made aware of the fact that we do well in games he refs and then he evens things up by giving absolutely everything against us, Ikeuchi, a ref who has a reputation for favouring the away team, did his best to dispel these rumours by giving Gamba pretty much everything. Of course, I’m biased, but I think he got plenty of decisions wrong in this match. Hope we don’t have to encounter him again soon (unless it's in a home game, of course).

A bit of excitement... -

In spite of all of this, it was a fairly enjoyable game. Perhaps, because I've already written off our chances in the league so am less bothered by the result, and partly because there was plenty to get irritated, excited and generally worked up about in this match. We had an insane referee! We had no running track between us and the pitch! We had possession! We had shots! We didn’t really have shots on target though, .... that same old problem is back again. If we could shoot better we’d be running away with the league. But equally, if we had the choice of all the players and managers in the world we probably also would be doing well, so it seems a bit stupid to deal with ifs. Football is a game of small margins and we came off on the wrong side of most of these in this game. Our former Gamba players Noborizato and Ienaga had pretty forgettable games, the former pretty much giving away the first goal, and the latter failing to score our winning goal from a couple of very nice chances. I’m not sure if they were overawed by returning to their former stomping ground or whether that’s just the way things seem to go in our games against Gamba. [This point is fantastically undermined by me discovering that Nobori never played for Gamba. Thanks to Gamba Osaka English Blog for questioning this. You should follow him here. Dunno where I got that idea from and have thought so for years. Leaving it in here to make myself look deservedly stupid]. Damiao finished his goal nicely and contributed plenty to the team. 100% not starting next week, eh? I agreed for once with Oniki’s starting line up. In spite of Ao’s recent national team triumphs, Morita didn’t deserve to get dropped. You could probably say the same about Arai. He’s been solid recently, and whilst I think Sung Ryong is the better keeper, Arai deserves to keep his spot, I guess. The fact that we had no right back on the bench meant that apparently Oniki thought Morita could switch there if required. But he maybe forgot this when he subbed Morita at half time for Ao. This decision could have cost us the match, and I can’t really understand why he did it. Morita had a decent first half. There were definitely worse players on the field. But still, it was Morita who was hooked. I realise this goes against what I normally say about Oniki being a terrible man manager oblivious to people’s feeling, but it did feel like he thought Morita deserved to keep his spot, but Ao deserved to play too, after scoring twice against Brazil this week. Whichever way you look at it, it was a pretty pointless sub, and one that came back to haunt us as we lost numerous players to injury. It might seem harsh to blame one substitution for us not winning the game, but it severely limited our options later in the game and felt pretty pointless at the time. The loss of Nobori to injury, (BOOOOOOOOOOO, BOOOOOOOOOO, said the idiots in the Gamba end as he was treated for a head injury...), meant that we had to switch Ao to right back. Chasing the win Oniki brought on a defensive midfielder, Shimoda for Kengo. Yamamura getting a bit crocked meant that he had to be deployed up front as a big lump as he was lacking the necessary mobility to keep things safe at the back. So, Kurumaya to centre back and Shimoda to left back. Another unique Oniki line up, and not the most effective of teams, but one that was necessary after an apparently unnecessary half time change and a complete lack of confidence in the right backs we have at the club. So, yeah, even when we agree on a starting line up and we don’t lose, I can still find a way to pin it all on Oniki. Although I reckon the ref probably contributed to our demise the most. Him, and the awful defending for the goals. Guess, at least we didn’t lose. But our exertions in this game might cost us dearly in the cup due to some potential injuries.

Not much to be optimistic about -

The idea that we might be able to challenge for the title is absolute fantasy, demonstrated mainly by our recent league form. Ten points from a possible thirty, all of which have been gained in games against teams who currently sit in the bottom eight, (apart from today’s opponents, who were probably there before the game, but not after). Moreover, the only two wins came against the teams in last and third last places. It’s clearly not good enough, and the general poor quality of the league is the only thing that is keeping us anything like in touch this year. We’ve thrown way too many games away through poor performances, insane player selections and generally clueless tactics. Not much to give us confidence going into the season's most important game next weekend, the Levain Cup Final. And we’ll be going into that with probably a load of injuries. This game didn’t seem particularly dirty, but we ended up with a lot of crocked players. By the final whistle we’d lost Nobori to injury, after he clashed heads with Kurata whilst he scored their equaliser. Yamamura, Hasegawa and Arai looked a bit dodgy at the end of the game and I wouldn’t bet on them starting next week now. Thanks a lot Patric for leaving a leg in with a challenge on Arai and then having the cheek to consider appealing for a penalty. I know he’s an ex Frontale player and generally seems to be quite a nice guy, but he came out of that pretty badly and I think has probably lost a bit of sympathy from any Frontale fans who do the generous thing of applauding past players. Even though the pitch was awful and Gamba had 11 men behind the ball for most of the game, we still managed to make chances, but again we failed to put them away. We got what we deserved, but in the whole scheme of things, this game was pretty pointless. We’re down to 6th now. Our priorities must be pretty clear now! Oh, and Kurumaya and Ienaga picking up yellow cards apparently means that they'll both be banned for the next league game...

Next up the Levain Cup final, and in a way, I’d say it’s perhaps make or break for Oniki. (Sure it won't be though...). Lose it, and this season is a big steaming turd and he should probably go. Win it, and I’ll have to hope someone comes in and poaches him (Kashima, come on, you know you want to, eh?). Another title, albeit the 100% least desirable of all the titles according to most people, means that we have a layer of Levain crackers covering the pile of poo that this year’s efforts have been. Of course I want to win the Levain, but we stared the season with four options, really messed up the ACL and the Emperors Cup and hung around for a bit in the league before totally imploding over the summer. Let’s also not forget that we came into the Levain Cup at the quarter final stage, have only played two teams over two legs and have only won half of the games we’ve played. It’s not exactly a story that will inspire generations to come. Anyway, after that, some league game that’s pretty pointless now. Actually totally pointless. Would still be nice to give some of the title contenders a right pasting though, wouldn’t it?

Team

GK 21. ARAI Shota

DF 2. NOBORIZATO Kyohei

DF 5. TANIGUCHI Shogo

DF 34. YAMAMURA Kazuya

DF 7. KURUMAYA Shintaro (Yellow card 21')

MF 6. MORITA Hidemasa

MF 10. OSHIMA Ryota

MF 41. IENAGA Akihiro (Yellow card 21')

MF 14. NAKAMURA Kengo

MF 16. HASEGAWA Tatsuya

FW 9. LEANDRO DAMIAO

Subs

GK 1. Sung-Ryong JUNG

FW 11. KOBAYASHI Yu

MF 19. SAITO Manabu

FW 20. CHINEN Kei

MF 22. SHIMODA Hokuto (on for NAKAMURA 78')

MF 25. TANAKA Ao (on for MORITA 46')

MF 28. WAKIZAKA Yasuto (on for NOBORIZATO 69')

My Frontale Man Of The Match

Not many stood out in this game and by the end, everything was so confused that who knows what was going on. As I don’t think he’s had a fair crack of the whip this year but has done well when called on, I’ll give it to....

LEANDRO DAMIAO - scored a goal, hit the post (I think... it was at the other end of the pitch), did lots of important work up front that always seems to go unnoticed, played with passion and tried one overhead kick shot and one overhead kick pass. This guy really loves an overhead! Bravo! Just a shame that whenever he scores we don’t seem to win so he never gets a chance to be the match winning hero.

Goals

WATANABE (Gamba) 5' 1-0

OSHIMA (Frontale) 51' 1-1

LEANDRO DAMIAO (Frontale) 63' 1-2

KURATA (Gamba) 65' 2-2 

Highlights

Vs Shonan Bellmare (away) 6/10/19 - J League match 28

Shonan Bellmare 0 - 5 Kawasaki Frontale

I give up! Where did that come from? After an absolutely rotten performance against Vissel Kobe, Oniki picked the same team (for only the 4th time this season) and we hammered Shonan. I think there’s nothing I can really say now, so muddled is everything that I thought I knew. This was a much needed tonic for Frontale fans and I’m not going to write loads picking holes and finding things to moan about. I might write a little about it, but not loads. For now I’m just going to enjoy the result and enjoy the fact that we won away at Shonan, a game which we always seem to contrive to turn into a frustrating draw. Miracles do happen it seems! Here’s what we might have learned from this match.

Turn back the clock and party like it’s 2018 -

At least with the front four anyway. Kengo and Ienaga looked rejuvenated, Kobayashi put away his first chance confidently, we looked exciting going forward. At least in the first half anyway, which admittedly was at the other end of the pitch so perhaps my view wasn’t the best. But yeah! Goals!!! And a clean sheet!!! One slight downside was that Ienaga looked pretty pissed off when he was changed, and to be honest, who can blame him? He was playing much better than he had previously this year. He was involved! Perhaps though he should take being subbed as a compliment, as it normally seems to be the players who are playing well that Oniki changes (see, I knew I could get a moan in). After he potentially expressed some criticism, or at least commented on Oniki last week in his post match thoughts, I was surprised to see him start. I will also be surprised if he is still with us next year. Along with a few other players. This will be a shame as judging on this performance he seems to have worked his way through his dodgy spell now. I wonder if something has been said behind the scenes and some air has been cleared as there seemed to be an all round better mood in the team. Clearly this was a performance with a very different feel to recent games and given that it was the same eleven as against Kobe, you’ve got to wonder where such a change came from.

The cloud of the silver lining -

This is another victory which is very welcome, but has to be taken with a pinch of salt given the opposition. Shonan looked awful in the first half, focusing so hard on kicking lumps out of us that they forgot to try to play football. Akimoto had a bit of a nightmare fumbling most things he had to deal with. We have to remember that they lost 6-0 to Shimizu last week. They are very much not a good team right now. So are they awful and Shimizu and us are average? Or are Kobe and Urawa (who beat Shimizu this weekend), totally amazing, Shimizu and us good and Shonan merely not very good? It is the J League just being the J League? There have been some really weird results this season and maybe they are continuing. We still need to remember that our only two league wins in our last nine games have been against Jubilo who are rock bottom and Shonan who must be rock bottom of the form table and are flirting very forcefully with the drop zone.

Any other grumble business -

I’m going to round up my other grumbles into a quick little paragraph to get them out of the way. I realise it’s churlish to complain after winning 5-0. In spite of the result, I’m still not sure this was the correct team to pick. I really don’t know why Arai is getting picked over Sung-Ryong as until this game they’d both been conceding at least two a match. Although to give Arai some credit he did pull off a great save in this game. Morita at right back and Kurumaya at centre back still doesn’t work, with both of them naturally seeming to drift towards where they are comfortable and used to playing. We didn’t concede, but I think this again is more to do with the opposition. And again, the subs seemed nuts. The Ienaga change was mentioned above. Kengo off for Hasegawa means again moving Abe to the left (after which, he unsurprisingly lost his spark). And Mawatari on for Nobori means that we have a right back playing at left back and a midfielder playing at right back. I don’t think we’ll get away with that against Kashima. Oh and, I don’t know why they’ve put those seats in behind the goal, but it seems that it has severely reduced the capacity. As usual, there seemed to be a lot of people with a less than ideal view. If I hadn’t got to the stadium six hours before kick off I’m not sure we would have been able to find a space, and there were only two of us. And apparently our end hadn’t even sold out!

But yeah, forget my moaning. It seems I know nothing and I’m quite happy to look stupid if it means we win every week. I imagine with this result Oniki would have been flicking me a middle finger if he was aware of my constant criticism. But yeah, I’ll take the abuse. If only we could have started being not poor a bit earlier we might still be in with a shout as FC Tokyo seem to be stinking things up as some predicted. We now look like we could have a shot at an ACL place but one swallow doesn’t make a summer, and we have a tricky run in, so let’s not get too confident yet. Also, I was kind of looking forward to those Levain group stage games. But yeah, forget all this, and watch those highlights a few times. We scored some nice goals, so let’s enjoy them and make the most of some positivity while we can. Next up Kashima at home on Wednesday in the Levain cup...

Team

GK 21. ARAI Shota

MF 6. MORITA Hidemasa

DF 7. KURUMAYA Shintaro

DF 5. TANIGUCHI Shogo

DF 2. NOBORIZATO Kyohei

MF 25. TANAKA Ao

MF 22. SHIMODA Hokuto

MF 41. IENAGA Akihiro 

MF 14 NAKAMURA Kengo

MF 8. ABE Hiroyuki

FW 11. KOBAYASHI Yu

Subs

GK 1. Sung-Ryong JUNG

FW 9. LEANDRO DAMIAO

MF 16. HASEGAWA Tatsuya (on for NAKAMURA 70')

DF 17. MAWATARI Kazuaki (on for NOBORIZATO 81')

FW 20. CHINEN Kei

MF 28. WAKIZAKA Yasuto (on for IENAGA 64')

MF 34. YAMAMURA Kazuya 

My Frontale Man Of The Match

Oniki has left me with a tricky decision in this game as he removed both of the players who I thought were in for a shout for the man of the match. In spite of the scoreline, this didn’t seem like a game in which we played magnificently, so I’ll go on what happened before the subs started and give it to...

IENAGA Akihiro and NAKAMURA Kengo - dunno what they’ve been eating or drinking or thinking, but they both seemed really up for this game and we’re both a real menace going forward. I don’t know if they were being rested with Wednesday in mind, but it was a shame they couldn’t have continued as I think we would have scored some more goals and recovered some more confidence.

Goals

 

OWN GOAL (Frontale) 15' 0-1
NAKAMURA (Frontale) 21' 0-2
ABE (Frontale) 26' 0-3
KOBAYASHI (Frontale) 35' 0-4
HASEGAWA (Frontale) 81' 0-5


Highlights
 

Vs Vissel Kobe (home) 28/9/19 - J League match 27

Kawasaki Frontale 1 - 2 Vissel Kobe

Still we continue to plough this furrow of utter shitness, playing terribly and getting terrible results. Still Oniki is making absolutely senseless decisions. Still he doesn’t do the honorable thing and quit. But let’s look on the bright side. We now really don’t have to worry about the league title, although the teams above us continue to slip up giving us yet more reminders of what could have been if we had a proper manager in charge of our talented squad. And the kick offs are getting earlier, so now we have plenty of time to get smashed in the pub after the game in order to forget the horrors we’ve just watched. My enthusiasm about writing this blog post is low and to be honest most of the points I should make have been made in countless previous posts as the same rotten things are happening every week. I’ll be even lighter on detail than usual in relation to these aspects as I’m sure you’re fed up of hearing me moan about them. As usual, there is plenty that could be learned from this game, but as has happened in the past, it seems unlikely we will actually learn anything. In any case, here are the usual bullet points, but perhaps slightly truncated.

Team selection randomness and substitution nonsense -

See the previous ten or so blog posts for more details. Another all Japanese team, with two players playing out of position and plenty of players who’ve done next to nothing starting, and plenty of players who’ve played well being frozen out. Kurumaya has really been looking better in recent weeks playing at left back where he belongs. So cunningly Oniki decided to switch him to centre back. We have two adequate right backs in the squad, therefore Oniki decided to play Morita who has been struggling a little this season in his preferred position at right back where he has pretty much always had a dodgy game. As usual the subs were absolutely nonsensical. Oniki removed Ao, who was one of our only players who was playing well. Before this he took out Shimoda and replaced him in the defensive midfield spot with Wakizaka, one of the few players who ever shows a real attacking intent. The removal of Ao meant that we were playing Kengo and Wakizaka in those defensive midfield spots, so a further two players playing out of position. I really don’t know what Oniki’s problem is. This was his 24th different starting line up in 27 league games. He must really be going for a world record. Or perhaps his little magnetic line-up board feel on the floor, scrambling all the magnets and he thought it was a sign from above. That's about the only way I can explain the mess of decisions he's made recently.

Tactical incompetence, no, hang on, complete lack of tactics -

This could have been a welcome return of Iikura to Todoroki. He is a total liability in goal for any team who decides to use him as a sweeper keeper. It’s perhaps unfortunate that in spite of his limitations in this area, he now seems to be expected to do this. I think anyone who has paid any attention to the J League recently knows that when you have Iikura in goal for the opposition, you are always going to get some chances if you pressure him into errors. And we did… once in the entire game. The obvious selection would have been Leandro Damiao as he always does a good job of hassling the opposition keeper. However, Oniki’s aversion to playing him overrides any common sense and instead for the majority of the game, Kobayashi let Iikura do what he wanted, effectively giving Kobe an extra player. There was no support for Kobayashi in chasing Iikura down so perhaps this is why he was reluctant to commit too much to doing it, but this has all got to go down as being another Oniki blunder. Playing Morita at right back also really messed with any attempt of ours to play any kind of offside trap. As Taniguchi pushed the defensive line forwards, Morita was always a few steps behind. It’s a miracle we weren’t made to pay for this, as Kobe clearly seemed to be focussing their attacks down that side where we were clearly weakest. I am by no means a football tactics expert, but these things were leaping out at me time and time again as we huffed and puffed our way towards another defeat. If Kobe weren’t so awful we could have been absolutely battered. If both teams had been playing well and sitting great the top of the table you could probably say that this game was for the most part a great tactical battle between two teams at the top of their games. As it was, it was a slog between two awful sides, neither of whom for the most part could manage to string a whole attack together. Kobe had two shots on target and scored twice. We had plenty of shots, if you can call them that, but rarely troubled their keeper.

Here you go, a couple of goals, you're welcome -

I mean what happened for that first goal? We lost possession and the entire defence went missing. It was just a travesty. Neither Kurumaya nor Taniguchi got anywhere near making a challenge and the two full backs were nowhere to be seen. A total gift for Kobe. The second was equally generous from us. Plenty of our players complained about the goal, but I’m not sure what they were complaining about as it clearly wasn’t offside. Once again it was just a total absence of defending that did it, with loads of our players in the box but no-one actually getting anywhere near the ball. It hurts even more that one of Kobe’s biggest donkeys managed to score. But to be honest, it probably hurts more that were weren’t hardly able to get past said donkey at the other end of the pitch. The goal we did score was utterly meaningless, and I know it’s wrong, but I was delighted we didn’t manage to get an equaliser, as we really needed to lose this match. We were totally crap and a draw would once again have papered over the cracks. We are losing a lot of games and Oniki has to take responsibility for both these losses and the awful draws we are also sometimes luckily getting.

Dirty Furuhashi, useless referee -

I used to like Furuhashi but recently there’s been plenty that has put me off him. Sure he’s a good player, but he’s also a terrible diver and in this game put in an absolutely horrible tackle on Taniguchi totally unnecessarily. If the same tackle had been put in by us on one of Kobe’s ‘Barcelonitos’ (or whatever people call them, which definitely not what I just wrote...), it almost certainly would have resulted in a red. I don’t know if it is because of the constant high profile whinging that Mikitani has been doing for the past few years and particularly this season, but it seemed that any tackle on a Spaniard resulted in a free kick for Kobe. On the contrary, Kobe shoved Frontale player after Frontale player to the ground from behind and I don’t think we even got a free kick. But let’s not go overboard on the ref as the real problem about this performance was us. To lose once to Kobe is pretty bad, but to lose to them two games in a row takes quite some incompetence.

Booooooooo -

This game finished with a significant section of the main supporter section booing the team as they came to us after the match. I totally understand this, but I didn’t do it myself. I will however try to boo every mention of Oniki going forward as in my opinion, and I’m sure this come as no surprise to you, I hold him fully responsible for how bad we are this year. He is out of his depth, has no ideas tactically or in terms of selection, despite having his little board with those magnets, and is in danger of doing irreparable damage to us. We have to get rid of him as soon as possible. A better man would probably have offered his resignation before now, but it seems like he’s not going to do so. He must be aware that he has no idea what he’s doing and has no chance of getting us out of this mess. If he doesn’t go soon I think we are going to lose a lot of players at the end of the season. I’m only going on my gut feeling, but I reckon Sung-Ryong, Taniguchi, Kurumaya, Jesiel, Maguinho, Ienaga and Damiao will go. There are plenty more who could also be justified in wanting to leave. We’ll be left with a lot of gaps in our squad and we all know how bad Oniki’s recruitment has been so far. If he’s still in charge next year, I really feel we could be involved in a relegation battle. Ienaga’s post match comments said something along the lines of how the manager has lots of decisions to make but the players have to do their best. Which sounds to me like he’s not particularly happy with some of Oniki's decisions and who can blame him. Ienaga, Kobayashi, Kengo, Taniguchi, Morita, Sung-Ryong and many more have been pretty average this season. When one or two players are under-performing we can point the finger at them, but when it’s so many of the squad who are below par, you’ve got to think something’s not right with the management. The team selections are mostly random it seems which can’t exactly help the players get into any form or build up any confidence. Seriously, get rid of him now. Don’t wait till we inevitably crash out of the Levain cup (can you really see us beating Kashima, the state that we’re in at the moment?). A lot of people question who we would get in to replace him, thinking that if we don’t have a replacement we can’t get rid of him. I’d say that there’s a lot more danger involved in keeping Oniki in charge than having the assistant manager take charge for a few games whilst we look for someone else. Oniki is the bright spark who let one of our few central defenders leave the club when we had two of the remaining three injured. He’s the guy who delights in trying to force square pegs into round holes playing multiple players out of position. He’s the guy who has no plan A, let alone a plan B. He’s the guy whose substitutions seem to have been planned before the match and are made with no consideration of what’s going on in front of him. He’s the guy who seems to be unable to deal with any foreign players we have or had. He’s the guy who has knocked the confidence out of some talented players to the extent that they now appear completely clueless. He’s the guy who supposedly had tightened up our defence, which has now conceded 14 goals in the last eight league games, the majority of which were against teams in the bottom half of the table. He’s the guy who has contrived to get us knocked out of the ACL in the group stages for the last two years against some very average teams and has almost certainly guaranteed that we won’t be taking part in that competition next year. He’s the guy who has to go as soon as possible, preferably right now. We don’t need to boo the players. We 100% need to boo the manager.

Next up, Shonan away, a game that we always disappoint in. After that, two games against Kashima in the Levain cup. Let’s see if we can get knocked out of another competition at the first stage of asking. I normally would try to finish with an optimistic ‘go Frontale’, but I can’t. The longer we keep getting average to shit results, the longer Oniki will remain in charge. Instead this post finishes unsurprisingly with ONIKI OUT!

Team

GK 21. ARAI Shota

DF 6. MORITA Hidemasa

DF 7. KURUMAYA Shintaro

DF 5. TANIGUCHI Shogo

DF 2. NOBORIZATO Kyohei

MF 25. TANAKA Ao

MF 22. SHIMODA Hokuto

MF 41. IENAGA Akihiro 

MF 14 NAKAMURA Kengo

MF 8. ABE Hiroyuki

FW 11. KOBAYASHI Yu

Subs

GK 1. Sung-Ryong JUNG

FW 9. LEANDRO DAMIAO (on for TANAKA 75')

MF 16. HASEGAWA Tatsuya (on for ABE 68')

DF 17. MAWATARI Kazuaki

FW 20. CHINEN Kei

MF 28. WAKIZAKA Yasuto (on for SHIMODA 54')

MF 34. YAMAMURA Kazuya

My Frontale Man Of The Match

Normally I would sulk and not do one of these after a game like this, but on this occasion, without a doubt it has to go to...

TANAKA Ao  - head and shoulders above everyone else on the pitch on either team, defensively and going forward.

Goals

 

VILLA (Kobe) 44' 0-1
OSAKI (Kobe) 70' 0-2
HASEGAWA (Frontale) 90+1' 1-2

Highlights