Vs Sagan Tosu (away) 3/12/23 J League match 34

Sagan Tosu 0 - 1 Kawasaki Frontale

Another league campaign draws to a close and unlike last year, where we came miraculously close to kind of undeservedly getting something on the last day of the season, this year it was effectively all over months ago and all we could look forward to on the last day of the season was getting that most desired of all prizes, a top eight finish. This year’s league campaign has been an unmitigated disaster. I’ll write more about this in my end of year round up if I can be bothered to write anything at all. But it’s not all doom and gloom. We have the knockout stages of the ACL and the Emperor’s Cup final to look forward to. If we win the Emperor’s Cup and go a bit further in the ACL, perhaps this season will be looked back on as being a bit of a success. Of course objectively that will be correct, but an 8th place finish in the league isn’t something we’ve been used to recently. 

 

As I’ve said before, you can’t really make much sense of why we’ve done better in some competitions than others this year. It’s basically been the same players and the same approach all the way, but maybe we’ve just been luckier when we aren't playing league games. It doesn’t even make sense when you consider the quality of the opposition. For some bizarre reason, even in past seasons when we’ve been flying high, it’s always the ‘weaker’ teams that get us. And that’s been the case again this year in the league. Although the truth is that pretty much everyone has had a decent chance of getting us at some stage of the season. Well apart from Kashima, hehe. When it comes to playing some noticeably weaker teams in the ACL however, we seem to brush them aside without too much trouble. A very confusing year. The only thing we can predict with any kind of confidence is that we’ll play terribly in the first half of pretty much every game. 

 

Guess I’d better talk about this game a bit. In this match we didn’t play particularly well in the first half. But thankfully neither did Sagan Tosu. Both teams looked like they were already on the beach. Neither team had anything much to lose in this game when you consider league position so maybe that was why almost all the players on the pitch looked like they were thinking about plenty of other things than football. However, the thing is that we very much should not be on the beach yet. We have the cup final next weekend, and what better preparation for that game could there be than a game where we apparently managed four shots on target, none of which I can particualrly remember. As usual with Tosu away, part of this is probably to do with the shochu consumed whilst standing behind the goal. In a game of little quality it is kind of fitting that we won through an own goal. I think a fair result, particularly when you consider the level of both teams’ play, would have been a 0-0. Apparently Sagan Tosu didn’t manage a single shot on target, so perhaps if anyone ‘deserved’ to win it, it was probably us. But yeah, 0-0 would have made more sense. But still I had a lot of fun at this game. Think it was a kind of last day of term feeling, and will be the last time I get to watch Frontale from a reasonable distance in 2023 so I guess I just got a bit carried away and sang myself hoarse. Sorry if you were expecting more details from this post. 

 

Maybe I should briefly say that the ref again seemed a bit rubbish, but rubbish in general rather than for any particular clanger. (We should have had a free kick inside their box for a back pass though, when they took a free kick, passed it back to the keeper who handled its and decided to take the free kick again from completely the wrong position. This was at the other end of the pitch though and… you know, shochu…). It was just a general low standard J League officiating performance. Clearly I couldn’t do a better job myself, but I don’t think that exempts me from being able to moan a bit. Especially given that this moaning has been the most entertaining part of many of this year's games for me. I feel like I should also write more about Oniki signing a new contract at the end of the season, so I won’t talk about it too much here. I will say though that depending on the result of the cup final, the decision will seem either well made or perhaps a bit of a rash decision. Certainly, as soon as the ink was dry on the new contract we seem to have gone back to the terrible early and mid season toothless performances. Presumably there is no connection, unless Oniki is really getting an early start on trying to lower expectations before picking things up shortly before the next contact renewal time. 

 

It is quite funny, (well, maybe funny isn’t the right word…), quite how bad we became between the last couple of matches and this one. But we do always play pretty badly against Sagan Tosu, so maybe snatching a 1-0 win from a late own goal should actually be considered a bit of a coup. Plenty of fans seem to have greeted Oniki’s new contract with glee. I can’t say I feel the same way, but thought it was kind of inevitable after we cruised through the ACL group stages. The weird thing about the timing of that competition is that now it straddles two J League seasons there is the very real chance of a team who qualified from the group stage looking very different when it comes to the knockout stage. I wonder if players would be cup tied if they transfered from one ACL team to another. Anyway, 2024 will be another year for us with Oniki. If we finish the year playing how we have for the most part of the last couple of months, I think we can be a bit more optimistic. If we revert to the same old rubbish of the previous months in the final, I think it’s going to be another long year. 



Next up, this Saturday, the Emperor’s Cup final against Kashiwa Reysol. We were pretty ineffective when we played them at their place recently, (one of the bad games in what was a pretty good run). Our previous Emperor’s Cup final at the National Stadium was a pretty dull affair so I guess this one could be too. But fingers crossed anyway. After that, the following Tuesday we finish 2023 with an away trip to Ulsan. I will be on my way to the UK for my Christmas holiday on the day of that game, so don’t expect anything more than a couple of sentence for that blog post and because of pre-holiday lack of preparation coming home to roost, also expect the Emperor’s Cup one to come out around the same time.

Team

GK 1. JUNG Sung-Ryong

DF 13. YAMANE Miki

DF 4. JESIEL

DF 31. YAMAMURA Kazuya

DF 2. NOBORIZATO Kyohei

MF 8. TACHIBANADA Kento
MF 17. TONO Daiya

MF 14. WAKIZAKA Yasuto

FW 33. MIYASHIRO Taisei

FW 11. KOBAYASHI Yu

FW 30. SEGAWA Yusuke

 

Subs

GK 99. KAMIFUKUMOTO Naoto

DF 3. OMINAMI Takuma (on for JESIEL 81')

MF 16. SEKO Tatsuki (on for SEGAWA 59')

FW 18. Bafetimbi GOMIS (on for WAKIZAKA 81')

FW 20. YAMADA Shin (on for KOBAYASHI 59')

DF 29. TAKAI Kota

FW 41. IENAGA Akihiro (on for TONO 71')

 

Goals

 

HINO (Sagan Tosu) OWN GOAL 87' 0-1    

Highlights

Vs Kashima Antlers (home) 24/11/23 J League match 33

Kawasaki Frontale 3 - 0 Kashima Antlers 

What’s happened to us recently? After struggling to play attacking football for pretty much the whole year, now we’re on a massive goalscoring streak. Perhaps it’s because the pressure is off as we’ve been out of the title race for a while. Perhaps Oniki has tweaked the tactics (haven’t really noticed that happening particulary, but what do I know?). Actually the only team we’ve been unable to score multiple goals past in the last month and a half is one of the two teams still involved in the relegation battle going into the final week’s fixtures. Thankfully we got our awful performance against the other one out of the way earlier in the year. Bizarrely, but maybe not so unpredictable given recent years’ performances, the only other game in this run that we’ve failed to win was against Kyoto, a team who were until this round of fixtures, also involved in the relegation battle, albeit slightly tenuously. Whatever the reason for these goal heavy games, it was lovely to keep the high scoring going against Kashima, who at times for me get slightly forgotten as being a true hateable team. I guess they just haven’t been very successful recently 😉. That and the fact that they seem to be completely unable to beat a Oniki managed Frontale team which must be particularly annoying for them in 2023, when pretty much anyone can beat us pretty easily. We’ve got four more games left this year, Sagan Tosu away in the league, Johor at home and Ulsan away in the ACL, and the Emperor’s Cup final. If we don’t win the Emperor’s Cup this will have been a pretty poor season, I think. Even if we do, there is definitely a case to be made that it still has been pretty bad. This sounds like an entitled attitude, but the fact is that we were apparently fully focused on regaining the league title this season and that was probably the worst we did in any competition. Well, perhaps the Levain could also be taken into consideration for this title, but the fact that most teams play the reserves for games in that competition means that it’s always a bit random. So, I guess the key is to intentionally not focus on a competition and then you do well in it. This was one of the first years for a long time that the ACL wasn’t really mentioned as a season goal and somehow we seem to be managing to negotiate a difficult group without too much trouble so far.  2023 has been a weird season, but probably not weird enough to live long in the memory. Certainly I want to forget quite a few of the games we’ve had to watch this year. But anyway, this isn’t an end of season round up. That will, I guess, come in a few weeks. Not sure I can really be bothered to write it though as it’s never much fun when you have almost nothing positive to say.
 

Unsurprisingly, Oniki kept pretty much the same line up for this game. I guess it was slightly interesting that Ominami was back and it was him who partnered Yamamura in defence. Jesiel had a shocker in his last game which led to me pondering on whether he wasn’t really fit. I don’t know if we’ll see him again this season. Yamamura and Ominami looked pretty well organised in this game, so I’d much rather it was them playing at the moment to be honest. Up front we had Oniki’s recently favoured Ienaga / Marcinho / Damiao trio. Probably the main talking point of this game was Damiao who turned back the clock somewhat and could have had a hat trick if Oniki hadn’t intervened and taken the ball off him and given it to Wakizaka for our very much not crucial in any way whatsoever penalty with us leading 2-0 with about 10 minutes to go. Sure Damiao’s recent penalties have left quite a lot to be desired, but at least give hm the chance of scoring a hat trick in what will probably be his last appearance at Todoroki. There has long been talk that he’ll be leaving us and his goal celebration with his kids who were sitting in the main stand and then him climbing in with the drummers for a post game Vai La De Frontale suggests that he was making the most of his last home appearance. It will be a shame if he goes, but probably the right decision. Strikers in Oniki teams seem to struggle recently, and I can’t imagine it’s much fun being a big money player who doesn’t play much and when they do play, struggles to get any chances. I think he’s greatly loved by our fans and seems like a really nice guy. I think we all hope he goes back to Brazil rather than join another J League team, particularly as I suspect he’d start scoring for fun in a different formation or under different tactics. But Oniki, why did you demand Wakizaka took that penalty?! As I always say, there seems to be nothing but nice comments about him and how much of a good guy he is, but there is definitely the cold veins of a psychopath in some of the decisions he makes. Let’s not get too carried away about us scoring three times in this game. The first goal was a nice move and a lovely finish from Damiao. But the second was an absolute gift from a Kashima defender and their keeper got in on the gifting by giving us a penalty for the third. However, we did look pretty solid at the other end so perhaps…. we deserved to win… Perhaps.

Not taking anything away from the joy of putting the despicable Kashima to the sword though. I’m sure there are some nice people involved with the club and I’m sure that not all of their fans are arseholes, but how nice to see Suzuki, Pituca and Iwamasa upset about how this game went. I have nothing new to say about the Spirit of Zico banner, It’s still bizarre. I don’t have anything original to say about Yuma Suzuki’s shorts, which at the start of the match seemed to be pretty normal but soon started to creep up his thighs as if they were trying to sneak their way into his arse without anyone noticing. There was one particular amusing point where his short wearing style seemed to bite him as he kind of swiveled mid air to try to volley the ball and seemed to give himself a wedgie. At the end of the game, Suzuki was furious and gutted by the result, taking his time to half-heartedly join the post game bow line. He may have been gutted but his shorts presumably were relieved as they were by that stage only millimeters away from being completely consumed, never to be seen again. Actually though, I don’t mind him that much. He’s a real Okubo type player, who you love if he’s on your team and hate if he’s on the opposition team. I think he’s probably not as nuts as he seems to be and instead is a bit of an expert in the dark arts. Pituca on the other hand is just an areshole it seems. Constantly complaining about everything, perhaps constantly only moments away from punching someone or kicking something into the crowd. How nice it is that he’ll be leaving Japan soon (apparently). It will mean the end of my jokes about him looking like CJ from Eggheads, but I think no-one ever understood what I was talking about when I made that reference, year after year, much to my own amusement. For the sake of tradition, let’s just one more time refer to his most famous news story by hoping that wherever Pituca moves next, there are no canals, as if there are the local population could be in danger. I feel like I should probably mention their goalkeeper too, who I think is young and looked quite dodgy at times. I could happily enjoy this dodginess though, as before he started being dodgy, he’d been flopping around feigning injury and moaning a lot. I have to say, I find it quite annoying when goalies come out of their box and then go down at the slightest contact. Surely they should be treated the same as outfield players if they want to start heading or passing the ball. But this is probably the ref’s fault and not his. In any case, the keeper somehow managed to combine the characteristics of both a sickly child and a frail OAP, bridging the generation gap. Truly inspirational stuff. A quick word on the Kashima gammon fans who were pretty annoyed at the end of this game. Who can blame them? As their players went to thank them, a shirtless gammon ran towards the extremely low wall separating them from the pitch area and was somehow stopped in his tracks. Another one did that classic Kashima move of simultaneously perfectly playing the roles of angry fan trying to storm the pitch and security guard holding him back, another brave protestor being thwarted by a wall that comes up to just past his knees and the restraining pull of himself on himself. I’d very much enjoyed us beating Kashima, but the reaction of their fans just added that extra bit of satisfaction to everything. Lovely!

A few words on the ref. It was Kasahara and we also had Nishimura on VAR which sounds like a nightmare combination. Although thank you to Nishimura who overruled Kasahara to give us what looking at replays was clearly a penalty. Kasahara managed to keep his red card in his pocket in this game, and was presumably distraught that he couldn’t give a DOGSO red card to us. He didn’t seem very keen to give yellows either. Although he made an exception for Kobayashi’s first tackle after coming on. To be fair I don’t think he made any clangers, but he did give some wired decisions at times and they did start to irritate me. But in 2023 a referee being irritating and making weird decisions but not making any major mistakes counts as a first class officiating performance, so best give credit where credit’s due. Especially as he told Ienaga to go off the pitch behind the goal in order not to waste time and then let himself be completely ignored, and even slightly humiliated. Actually, I should be giving Ienaga the credit here and not the ref, shouldn’t I? So, well done Ienaga.

Next up Johor at home in the ACL. A point will secure first place in the group but it would be nice to beat them, wouldn’t it? After that, our final league game of the season away at Sagan Tosu down in Kyushu. It’s always one of my favourite away trips and perhaps this year it will be even more fun as the game will be 100% meaningless, so when we perform badly as we tend to do, it won’t matter at all!

Team

GK 1. JUNG Sung-Ryong

DF 13. YAMANE Miki

DF 31. YAMAMURA Kazuya

DF 3. OMINAMI Takuma

DF 2. NOBORIZATO Kyohei

MF 8. TACHIBANADA Kento

MF 16. SEKO Tatsuki

MF 14. WAKIZAKA Yasuto

FW 41. IENAGA Akihiro 

FW 9. LEANDRO DAMIAO
FW 23. MARCINHO

 

Subs

GK 99. KAMIFUKUMOTO Naoto

MF 6. JOAO SCHMIDT (on for NOBORIZATO 87')

FW 11. KOBAYASHI Yu (Yellow card 90') (on for IENAGA 87')

FW 18. Bafetimbi GOMIS (on for LEANDRO DAMIAO 87')

FW 17. TONO Daiya (on for SEKO 87')

DF 29. TAKAI Kota

FW 33. MIYASHIRO Taisei (on for MARCINHO 71')

 

 

My Frontale Man Of The Match

 

As it might be one of the last times I can give this to him, and jointly for his first blasted finish and the good grace with which he allowed the penalty to be taken from him, it has to go to….

LEANDRO DAMIAO - lovely guy. It’s been a pleasure having you at our club and we hope you can score a few more before you depart.

 

Goals

 

LEANDRO DAMIAO (Frontale) 34' 1-1

LEANDRO DAMIAO (Frontale) 63' 2-3

WAKIZAKA (Frontale) PEN 84' 3-3

Highlights

Vs Kyoto Sanga (home) 12/11/23 J League match 32

Kawasaki Frontale 3 - 3 Kyoto Sanga

Sorry this is a bit late but I had an unpleasant start to the week as I think I caught the flu. Given that, I'm a bit worried that I was at the Frontale game on Sunday and then the Brave Thunders game too, (deal on tickets as it was a collaboration with Frontale. Have never been to a basketball game before and it was a lot of fun). This morning I’m feeling slightly human again so am sitting down and trying to get this post out of the way as quickly and painlessly as possible. Time always dulls the details and when you add three days of high fever to this, you can expect that there won’t be much that makes sense in this post but I’ll do my best from the notes I made. Here we go.

People excited by the starting line up and imagining we were changing formation and approach probably don’t know Oniki as well as they think they do. Naturally, no left back in the line up means we’ll probably be playing an attacker there. And so we did. You could say there was some rotation as Takai was in for Yamamura and the front three were changed. It’s basically the same 15 or 16 players still though. I think the last time Takai started at Todoroki he had a nightmare and was directly responsible for three opposition goals. On this occasion he was the solid link in the defensive chain and Jesiel instead was giving away goals for fun. Their second was particularly shocking, when it appeared that Jesiel was stuck in slow motion and could only look on as the Kyoto player easily beat him by… not really doing anything. I suspect that Jesiel has been rushed back from his injury and is feeling the pace. If only we had a manger who actually knew how to rotate, particularly in games that are absolutely meaningless for us! It was a shock when he was replaced at half time though, but definitely the right decision as he’d been really out of sorts. Not sure why Joao also got subbed, but that does seem to be Oniki’s reaction to a poor first half (remove the midfielder who isn’t Wakizaka or Tachibanada). If only we could get to a situation where we could actually choose the right players or approach right from the kick off if would be nice! So terrible have all of our first halves been recently, that if there was a bar in the stadium, it really wouldn’t be worth leaving it till half time. There’s one thing we can always guarantee recently and that’s that we’ll concede for fun in the first half. At least in this game we managed a couple of goals in the first 45 minutes and they were nice ones. Miyashiro was back starting again and scored a good goal and got an assist for Kobayashi's goal. I wonder what might have happened if Oniki hadn't dropped Miyashiro (our then top scorer) completely from our squads earlier in the year? Anyway, to sum us up in this game, we still look utterly surprised that teams will come and try to score goals against us, totally unprepared for what they might try to do, struggle to get decent shots in from our normal ponderous build up play, and will apparently persist in playing anyone at left back apart from an actual left back. I’m surprised he hasn’t given Kamifukumoto a go there yet. It’s weird that in a year when we are targeting reclaiming the league title we are woefully off the pace and when we haven’t mentioned the ACL and are in tough group we seem to be negotiating it pretty well. I think the only conclusion we can draw is that we’re not very good at doing what we want to do, or perhaps that our manager's plans to get what we want are so poor that they have no chance of succeeding. I guess the even more bizarre thing is that Oniki has never really been one for prioritising any one competition. In anything other than very early Emperor’s Cup rounds against amateur or university teams, Oniki’s gone with pretty much the same group of players and the same approach. Surely it can’t only be me who has noticed that they don’t work, can it?

On to the opposition and the officials. Let’s start with Kyoto as there’s not much to say about them really. They haven’t really looked like they were in relegation trouble for a while this season but as it comes to the crunch they find themselves hanging around in the wrong area again. So should be easy picking for a resolutely mid-table team like us, right? Well, of course not. Previous to this game they’d only scored 33 goals in their 31 games, but we let them score three against us. It seems to me that Kyoto have three main skills, time wasting, play acting and cutting through our defence with ease and scoring against us. Thankfully they devoted the second half to the first two having had their fill of the latter in the first half. I don't really have anything moany to say about them. We all know that with their manager they will be well organized and difficult to break down, We probably didn’t imagine that they’d cut us to pieces though. I normally get really angry about their captain but the only bitchy note I wrote about this game was that ‘their keeper is annoying’. I’m not sure the point has guaranteed their safety. Three would have done and looked likely for most of the match. They are definitely not the team I want to go down the most who are in the bottom five. Let’s move on to the officials or more accurately the ref. Takasaki was a new name for me and as I tweeted, this usually is a bad sign but I wasn’t going to pre-judge him. I should have trusted my gut though as he was by far the worst ref we’ve had for absolutely years! Apparently unaware of basic rules and almost always looking in the wrong direction at all times, I felt like he was a youngster who in their first proper game was determined to show that he wasn’t going to play favorites and give decisions to the home side and overcompensated the other way. He also seemed to be making every decision by using a complicated system of dice rolling like the dungeons and dragons nerd he probably is. (Sorry D&D fans, you probably weren’t expecting a dig at you here, but at the same time, I guess you’re kind of used to that kind of thing happening). The first dice roll was for whether to have his eyes open or not, then another roll for the direction in which to look, one for whether to blow his whistle or not, one for which team to give the decision to. There was probably another dice to roll later on when writing his report to decide how to justify his totally random decisions in the game. I can’t help but feel that if his first dice roll had come up with eyes closed and whilst his eyes were closed someone had nicked all of his dice and therefore he had to officiate the rest of the game by sound alone, we would have had a more consistent and accurate performance from him. 

 

Ironically, the most egregious error he made, which cost us a goal and was confirmed as a horrible mistake by J League Judge Replay, (presumably to absolutely no consequence to the referee), was one that I didn’t see at all. Probably because I already had my head in my hands as we were clearly about to gift the opposition a goal. Little did I know that it was the ref who’d passed the ball out wide for the Kyoto play to make the assist. Our players surrounded the ref afterwards which is never a good look, but is something we don’t normally do, so I guessed something shocking had happened. Perhaps he thought he’d play an advantage instead of giving the absolutely obviously correct drop ball decision, as maybe he wants to get a reputation as a ref who lets the game flow. I’d like to see his career flow straight down the plughole if I’m being honest right now. Apparently VAR can’t intervene in this situation as there wasn't a foul committed, so it’s good to see that VAR, with its strictly prescribed guidelines, is ruling out those errors that we all care the most about, namely whether a striker’s toenail is offside or not, but failing when it comes to the reason for its whole existence, ie. fixing clear and obvious errors. Not saying I think it should be used more. I personally think we should just dump it now and forget it ever existed. Surely no-one thinks the game is better with it? I don’t think VAR was used at all in this game, which suggest that for a ref with very little experience and apparently very little skill, Takasaki was quite confident in his own abilities. Oh well, at least it wasn’t a shocking refereeing error in a potentially title deciding game…. oh 😺. Not being a fan, (and that’s quite an understatement), of either Vissel Kobe or Yokohama F Marines, it has been a bit difficult for me to decide who I would prefer to see win the league this year, but perhaps Vissel Kobe winning it, in part thanks to a truly awful refereeing cock up and therefore really irritating YFM fans whilst at the same time undermining Vissel’s first league title, well, that would suit me just fine I think. But there are still two games left, so plenty of chance for some more clowning from the guys who apparently know the rules of the game but seem to forget them every time they step on the the pitch and get their hands on their whistle. Some people have welcomed the introduction of the J League Judge Replay program to draw attention to the mistakes that are made, but it doesn’t seem that them highlighting previous cock ups has made it is any less likely that future cock ups will happen. So perhaps in the end, the whole thing only has the purpose of undermining the refs further. I would imagine that they don’t watch it anyway. After all, they are the experts and have nothing to learn. I don’t know if there have been more mistakes this year, but it feels like it. I know it’s a hard job, but is it too much to ask that some of them aren’t absolutely terrible at doing it?

Next up Kashima at home in another one of those pointless league games. Then we have Johor at home in a very important ACL game only four days later. What’s the betting he’ll start pretty much the same team for both of those games? Quite high I’d say. Sorry this post is a mess. I've had to make a lot of corrections already in my post-fever state and have probably missed some more. But you don't come here for accuracy anyway, do you? You come here for the wonderful insight, right? Sorry that is once again absent too. And not even much trolling of the opposition. See! I clearly am still a bit ill.

Team

GK 1. JUNG Sung-Ryong

DF 13. YAMANE Miki

DF 4. JESIEL

DF 29. TAKAI Kota

DF 30. SEGAWA Yusuke

MF 6. JOAO SCHMIDT
MF 8. TACHIBANADA Kento

MF 14. WAKIZAKA Yasuto

FW 11. KOBAYASHI Yu

FW 18. Bafetimbi GOMIS

FW 33. MIYASHIRO Taisei

 

Subs

GK 99. KAMIFUKUMOTO Naoto

DF 2. NOBORIZATO Kyohei

MF 16. SEKO Tatsuki (on for JOAO SCHMIDT 46')

FW 20. YAMADA Shin (on for MIYASHIRO 71')
FW 23. MARCINHO (on for GOMIS 61')

DF 31. YAMAMURA Kazuya (on for JESIEL 46')

FW 41. IENAGA Akihiro (on for SEGAWA 79')

 

Goals

 

FUKUDA (Kyoto) 7' 0-1    

MIYASHIRO (Frontale) 19' 1-1

TOYOKAWA (Kyoto) 42' 1-2

TOYOKAWA (Kyoto) 45+1' 1-3

KOBAYASHI (Frontale) 45+5' 2-3

WAKIZAKA (Frontale) PEN 90+1' 3-3

Highlights

Vs Kashiwa Reysol (away) 29/10/23 J League match 31

Kashiwa Reysol 1 - 1 Kawasaki Frontale

Our run of three 4-2 wins in a row is over. But don’t worry pattern fans, we now have three consecutive draws away at Kashiwa! Hmm, not quite so thrilling, is it? At least on this occasion we got a goal, unlike two years ago. Kashiwa’s ground seems to be a popular one amongst J League fans. I always say that I suspect this is for people who go there and sit in the home end as they tend to treat the away fans like shit. This year there was a slight improvement as instead of cramming the food and drink into the small area in front of the toilets, they instead put it outside the gates on the bit of grass where you used to have to queue before the days of reserved seating/standing. I guess it might get a bit messy if it rained though. And it normally does rain when we go to Kashiwa. I’m sure no one can forget the year where the rain was so heavy that the match should have been postponed but they instead went ahead and attempted to play a game of football on a heavily waterlogged farmer's field. I presume this was the same year where there were hundreds of people sheltering in the toilets from the typhoon as that was the only place with any kind of cover. But such are our games there that it could easily have been another year. This year, the game was a lot more significant for Kashiwa than it was for us. They really need some points to avoid getting dragged back into the relegation battle. Well, to be honest, they are still in it, I guess, but with games running out and them currently ahead of two teams with only one going down, it probably means that they’re in a decent position. For us, perhaps we were looking at it as a possible dress rehearsal for the Emperor’s Cup final. Jeez… from the first half, I hope not. We have nothing left to play for in the league, but in spite of the hopes of many fans, that doesn’t mean Oniki is going to try any of the younger players. So we went with the usual players, with the one exception being that Ominami was unavailable due to his injury in the last game. (Apparently, it might not be as bad as feared. But at the same time, we are kind running out of games so maybe it won’t have much difference with regard to this season). So, pretty much the same starting players, same formation, same tactics, I wonder what happened in the first half?

Unsurprisingly, pretty much the same as in the last few games. We weren’t very good. As usual, lots of lovely possession. Lots of apparently pointless passing. A lack of shots, particularly ones that are on target. The stats say we had one on target in the first half, but once again I don’t remember their keeper having to make any saves. We rode our luck with them having a goal ruled out for offside and hitting the post. Rode it right up until we conceded. It was quite an open game where everything was shared fairly. They had the shots and we had the pointless possession. Gomis had a goal ruled out, (well, actually, not given and then the decision upheld by VAR I think, if that distinction is important), down the other end of the pitch and even I with my bias and my astonishingly bad view from the other end of the stadium felt that it probably was the right decision. Probably also a good thing as it would have been a shame for Gomis’s goal celebration to come down the other end of the pitch and as the result of a VAR overrule. Hope he scores soon though as I think he needs a goal. He had by far his best game for us so far in this match though, and was given not much protection by the ref. More on him later. Gomis hit an absolute belter of a shot in the second half, directly in front of us which hit the join of the post and the bar at a right pelt. It was such an exhilarating moment that it was celebrated almost as much as a goal in our end. If he can start doing that on a regular occasion we have some real fun in store. Well when I say doing that, I mean shooting and the ball going in rather than hitting the post. So, it was a good game for Gomis, I thought. In his first few games the ball seemed to bounce off him a bit, but in his match it was really sticking. Very nice! Not having such a good game, Yamane, who looked more knackered than ever before. Perhaps he doesn’t deal well with flying or something, but every time he got the ball, he seemed like he wanted to get rid of it as quickly as possible by hitting it first time. Perhaps this was another Oniki tactic, (if it was, it didn’t work, as more often than not we lost possession), but yeah, he just looked tired. Jesiel was back (probably should have mentioned that earlier!) and whist it was great to see him back, I suspect that he wouldn’t have been thrown in to the team so quickly had it not been for our continuing defensive injury crisis. You could see that he hadn't played for a long time. Often when he kicked or headed the ball it shot off at a weird angle, as if both his head and boots were pentagon-shaped. But I’m not criticising him or Yamane. One has played way too many games, and one has hardly played in a few years. If I have to moan about something, (aside from the ref naturally), I’d probably say that we were back to the same old plodding tactics again. On the rare occasions that we tried to move the ball forward a bit quicker, pretty much every midfielder misplaced almost every pass. Maybe I should give Kashiwa some credit for cutting out our passes or something, but it was weird that it happened to Seko a lot in the first half, and then to Tachibanada and Joao Schmidt in the second. Don’t remember it happening to Tono, but then again there’s a reason for that…

As he had done on a few occasions recently, Oniki changed one of his central midfielders at half time. On this occasion it was Seko who got the hook, being replaced by Tono, who’d got the hook to be replaced by Seko in the previous game. I don’t know if Oniki is just trying to share the starts between them or he really doesn’t know who he wants to play. In any case, it doesn’t really matter that much as in most games recently, we’re not very good in the first half. Tono lasted eight minutes before he got a straight red after a VAR intervention. Before this has happened he’d been totally clattered by a Kashiwa player after he’d passed the ball and the ref gave nothing, so perhaps he had a sense of injustice in mind. It didn't look like a great tackle at the time, and the VAR replay didn’t make it look much better. I don’t think he really touched their player, who seemed to jump out of the way, but apparently, (and I say apparently because I think I heard a ref talking about this somewhere but can’t fully remember), you don’t actually need to make contact to get a red for dangerous play. If this is true, well, we probably can’t argue about it. However, bizarrely it seemed like the ref hadn’t even considered a card till he was told to check the monitor. Tono must be living in fear now, as the last player who got a straight red shortly after coming on was Kozuka and he was soon sent to join a K League relegation battle. Hopefully that doesn’t happen again. I have said it before, but I don’t want Tono playing in midfield. He’s a striker, which might explain the slightly dubious tackle. But Oniki is determined to make him a midfielder it seems. So down to ten men again. I suspect we won’t be winning the fair play award this year. In fact, I think if there is an opposite award to that, we’ll probably get it. (Have just checked red cards and we’re right up there at the top with Kashima Antlers, and when you consider most of theirs are probably for abusing officials and booting things into the stands, we can stand proud in the knowledge that we are the team who have done the most dangerous tackles and denied the most goal scoring opportunities this year. Don’t you dare say we’re not the best at something!) Again, as has happened on numerous occasions this year, we played better with ten men than eleven. I have no idea why this is the case. It did take Oniki several changes to try out a few variations of ten men formations before we finally started going for it, but this is always the case with him. The subs are merely steps to reaching his formation goal. Don’t know why he doesn’t skip these steps and just go to the effective formation in just the one change rather than moving players all over the pitch in the interim, but you know, don’t question the genius, I guess. Some fans definitely thought there was some managerial masterclass display going on apparently, as they sang his name at the end of the game. I think it probably had more to do with the players getting a bit pissed off by the ref and Kashiwa though. Whatever caused it, I don’t care. It was a genuinely fun second half and coming back to draw after getting the red whilst already losing meant like it felt almost like a win. I guess it helps that the number of points we got in the game didn’t really matter. If we’d been in a title race, I wouldn’t have been quite so pleased with a draw. Once again Tachibanada was the goal hero. It’s weird as it seemed like he really couldn’t shoot for a long time, but recently he’s banging them in for fun. Long may that continue! I reckon that in the end we could have easily won the game, as we were threatening a lot more at the end. But at the same time, Kashiwa had missed some good chances, and we probably could have just as easily lost from one of their many counter attacks. So yeah, a draw will do! Particularly when you check the stats and see that we only had nine shots in the whole game and only three on target. Lots of lovely possession though, eh?

It would be remiss of me not to write a little bit about the ref. Previously my comments on Fukushima are that he is a ref that doesn’t like to give out cards and doesn’t even like to give free kicks that often. Since I’ve started keeping track of refs this is the first time he’s given us a card in a long time (the only other occasion was the Super Cup game against Cerezo in 2018!), and in this game too it seemed like he didn’t really want to do that. Previously I’ve faintly praised him for not getting in the way and kind of letting the players get on with the game. I think on this occasion though, he was absolutely useless. Perhaps the reason he doesn’t get in the way is because he doesn’t have a clue what he’s doing. In this match he looked like he'd mistakenly wandered on to the pitch on the way to the supermarket, even then not realising he was in the middle of a football game, froze to the spot, trying to remember the final item on the shopping list that he thought of at the last minute but hadn’t written down. 'Olive oil…? No…. cabbage…? No… But I think it was something green… Cress…? No, I don’t even like cress… oh maybe it was cress after all. So perhaps I don’t need it. Yes! It was cress! Cross it off the list. Hang on, I think I dropped the list… Where's it gone? Somewhere over towards the yellow area? Hang on, why's there a big yellow area here in the park?' Probably the reason his decision making was so random was perhaps due to him only blowing the whistle to try to imitate the song of a passing bird or sing along to the music running round his head, and then when the players asked him why he blew, he had to quickly make a random decision. 'CRESS!!! Sorry, I mean free kick. Who to? Errrmmm, the team with the taller goalkeeper'. Actually, all this moaning is just because he missed what was one of the foulest of foul throws I have ever seen and failed to punish Kashiwa’s winger for a blatant dive. So to be honest, I should probably not moan so much, as most refs probably don’t know what constitutes a foul throw and hell will freeze over before a J League ref gives a yellow card for a dive. So he probably isn’t that bad. But on this occasion he seemed particularly bewildered by where he was and what was going on around him.

So a 1-1 draw against the odds in a generally pointless game. It was fun to get frustrated about the ref, but ultimately the result was probably right as we weren’t very good for most of the game and they were as bad at taking chances as we were. It’s a point that is ultimately pointless (Yes, I enjoyed that unintentional play on words!) for us, and perhaps ok but not that good for them. Personally, I want YFC to go down after getting irritated by some of their fans being arseholes on Twitter. It seems that your enemy’s enemy is not necessarily your friend. Particularly as they have now got rid of all of our old players. It’s pretty tight down there though, and it looks like their game against Shonan will be crucial. Good luck to Abe, Nakano and Mawatari in that game! Kashiwa look like they have the toughest run in though… Anyway, this is all veering dangerously close to being an informative and balanced look at the current J League situation. Screw all of them! Next up, Pathum in the ACL at Todoroki after we’ve had a bit over a week off. Hopefully we can win that game, which on paper is probably the easiest of all our ACL group games. Definitely a defeat coming then! Then after that we have Kyoto and Kashima at home before finishing off the league campaign by getting absolutely smashed on shochu in the stands away at Sagan Tosu. Me that is, not the team, although the game is meaningless, so if the players want to, why not, eh?

 

Team

GK 1. JUNG Sung-Ryong

DF 13. YAMANE Miki

DF 31. YAMAMURA Kazuya

DF 4. JESIEL

DF 2. NOBORIZATO Kyohei

MF 8. TACHIBANADA Kento

MF 16. SEKO Tatsuki

MF 14. WAKIZAKA Yasuto

FW 41. IENAGA Akihiro

FW 18. Bafetimbi GOMIS

FW 23. MARCINHO

 

Subs

GK 99. KAMIFUKUMOTO Naoto

MF 6. JOAO SCHMIDT (on for MARCINHO 59')

FW 11. KOBAYASHI Yu (on for GOMIS 82')
FW 17. TONO Daiya (Red card 54') (on for SEKO 46')

DF 29. TAKAI Kota

FW 30. SEGAWA Yusuke (on for NOBORIZATO 68')

FW 33. MIYASHIRO Taisei (on for IENAGA 68')

 

 

My Frontale Man Of The Match

 

The second half was pretty gutsy and showed that a lot of our players really care about winning even when the game is kind of pointless. But we did only score once and only shoot nine times, so with that in mind, I'll give it somewhat randomly to...

 

Bafetimbi GOMIS - Purely for the improvement since his last game and the shot that was almost an amazing goal.

 

Goals

 

YAMADA (Kashiwa) 40' 1-0

TACHIBANADA (Frontale) 70' 1-1

Highlights