Vs Mito Hollyhock (away) 24/5/26 J League East match 18

 

Mito Hollyhock 1 - 3 Kawasaki Frontale

 

So another season is finished. Some people might think that there are two games left but I personally have decided not to acknowledge them. I’ve long moaned about this dog’s breakfast of a season so I’m sure you wouldn’t expect me to suddenly become excited about it now we have an away trip to Hiroshima and an opportunity to once again finish 8th in the league. To be honest, I was quite looking forward to a decent away game but that was all squashed only a few hours after the game when we discovered that the away tickets had already sold out. It does feel a little bit like masochism that I attended all the shitty away games we’ve had in this half season and then denied myself the chance of having a good away trip. Apparently Sanfrecce have been selling the away tickets since the end of April, which probably tells you everything you need to know about this league. At the end of April it could have been any number of potential teams who’d be playing Hiroshima. I presume there is some kind of resale procedure, but presumably the most important thing for the home team is getting as much away fan cash as possible, so if a fan who’d bought a ticket for a game that their club ended up not playing in couldn’t resell it and didn’t attend, well, Sanfrecce still have already got their money, so they’re fine. I don’t know if this is how every team is approaching the sales for these matches, but it definitely does suck. Apparently there were some tickets available this morning (Monday), but by that stage the realisation had dawned that as we have a two legged play off, nothing would probably be decided in the first leg and that given that this ‘cup final’ is to decide who finishes seventh, it’s quite difficult to not feel like you’re being squeezed for as much cash as possible. So basically, fuck it, we’re not going. We’d started to plan but have canceled everything and will instead watch it on DAZN. That blog post is going to be shite.

It’s a bit of a shame as we finally have started playing some exciting football. Well in the second half at least. Mochiyama’s first pro goal, which was shortly followed by his second and then third provided some much needed and long overdue positivity. I’m not one to brag but check my conclusion to the FC Tokyo away post from the 2nd of May. I said I wanted to see Mochiyama play, he got a chance and he scored three times. I am a genius clearly. (Just ignore all the times I get predictions wrong). In Hasebe’s favour, there is no way that Oniki would be giving these youngsters any time on the pitch even in these pretty useless end of season games. And also, Hasebe is definitely going to at least equal the league finishing position that Oniki took us to in his last season with us. I really want things to work out for him, and I want him to have a bit more courage in his convictions. I can’t imagine he will be leaving us after the next two games, (there have been no rumours as far as I know, and our money obsessed chairman would most likely not want to have to pay off anyone’s contract), so I guess we just have to hope that Hasebe will have the chance to finish the season in good shape and with some morale that maybe we could carry over to next season. He’ll also have a decent break to work on some things if he chooses to do so. You’ve also got to say that he’s been absurdly unlucky with injuries this year. (Even more unlucky than most years when we’re merely ‘unlucky’ with injuries). I’m sure we would have done better this year if even a few of our injuries had been avoided. I don’t think Hasebe has had any moment of the season where he could select from a fully fit defence. This kind of talk is probably more appropriate for an end of season post though. Erison has been absent for a couple of games now. Not sure why that is. And Yamaguchi has been back in goal ahead of Brodersen. Not sure why that is either. Even in this match when we were 3-0 up with time running out it was inevitable that we’d concede at least one to ruin the hopes of us keeping a clean sheet for only the fourth time this season. And before then we’d already been saved by a, how should I put it, generous VAR decision after Wakizaka lost the ball just outside our box and was just about fouled enough to maybe stop him from perhaps winning it back. Have I couched that sentence in enough uncertainty? This was by no means a walk in the park. We weren’t very good in the first half, in the way that we’ve been not very good extremely often this year.  But it was nice to get the job done and very nice to do it by more than one goal.

A few words about the ref and opposition. I didn’t mention this yet, but the view from the grassy knoll, (I presume it’s ok to use that phrase, isn’t it?), behind the goal was not great. (I feel like it has to be a knoll as to use the word slope would greatly exaggerate the elevation). The bottom of the goal was obscured by the advertising hoarding so the only way of determining whether the ball had gone in was to watch the movement of the net carefully. This bad view led to me not making any notes, as basically I couldn’t see much. Thankfully our goals were at our end, but still there was a certain mystery to what happened until I watched the highlights. Anyway, bad view, but not particularly a bad impression of the ref Yamashita, who let’s be honest, has come in for a lot of criticism from plenty of people in recent years. No notes probably means either than I couldn’t be bothered, (pretty much true), or that there was nothing particularly contentious in the match, (also pretty much true… I think). As I said, I think we were lucky with their disallowed goal, but at the same time, I think you could make a case for it going either way. As for Mito, I don’t have any strong moans about them either. Well apart from their captain Watanabe who seemed to embody all the things that irritate me in an opposition player, fouling, diving and whinging. Makes it all the more satisfying that it was his goal that was disallowed. This was the third time we’ve been to Mito away and the first time where it wasn’t an evening game, so we got a chance to go to some places after the game and the locals seemed to be interested in football and very nice, even though we’d beaten them. Compared to some other places we’ve been where locals on seeing the kit asked what sport we’d been watching and then who was playing, apparently unaware their city even had a team, Mito definitely seems to be a football town. Of course I want to nice to Mito too, as I overheard some fans in one pub talking about how nice and passionate our fans were compared to XX and ZZ who turned up and acted like entitled arseholes. (See if you can guess who these teams were. Answers at the bottom of the post). So, Mito is nice! I would say it was the best away trip of the season, but there was hardly any competition. And it definitely helped that we won.

Next up, two glorified friendlies, away and home against Sanfrecce Hiroshima. With only five days between the end of this match and a match hundreds of miles away that required accommodation and booking transport, (and apparently the foresight to book away tickets for every potential away game we might have got and then be saddled with some of them), this was always going to be a big ask. So it’s good in a way to have a moral reason to ‘boycott’ it. I am a bit gutted though… Then we’re back at home the following weekend for the second leg. I know one swallow doesn’t make a summer, and any kind of positivity taken from this and the previous match could all come crashing down soon, but at least we’ve finished the regular part of this cursed mini tournament in at least a little bit of style, getting both the win and a glimpse of a player that some great geniuses have been calling for Hasebe to give a start to for at least three weeks. Watch this space for the next truth bomb.

Team 

GK 1. YAMAGUCHI Louis
DF 29. YAMAHARA Reon
DF 2. MATSUNAGANE Yuto
DF 28. MARUYAMA Yuichi
DF 13. MIURA Sota
MF 6. YAMAMOTO Yuki
MF 8. TACHIBANADA Kento
MF 17. ITO Tatsuya
MF 14. WAKIZAKA Yasuto 
FW 24. MIYAGI Ten
FW 91. Lazar ROMANIC

Subs

GK 49. Svend BRODERSEN
FW 15. MYOGAN Toya
MF 19. KAWAHARA So (on for YAMAMOTO 82')
FW 20. MOCHIYAMA Kyosuke (on for ROMANIC 46')
MF 23. MARCINHO (on for MIYAGI 46')
DF 30. NODA Hiroto
DF 32. HAYASHI Shunsuke
FW 34. OSA Ryuki (on for ITO 88')
FW 38. KANDA Soma (on for WAKZIAKA 89')

Man of the match

Think there’s no doubt that I had to do this for this match and there’s no doubt who should get it. Admittedly there was some fortune involved as two of his goals were deflected, but you’ve got to be in it to win it, so it goes to…

MOCHIYAMA Kyosuke - an absolute banger of a second goal, beautifully sandwiched between two slices of deflected-shot-goal bread. Delicious!

 

Goals

MOCHIYAMA (Frontale) 58' 0-1
MOCHIYAMA (Frontale) 78' 0-2
MOCHIYAMA (Frontale) 85' 0-3
PATRYCK (Mito) 90+1' 1-3

Highlights

 

Quiz answer: It was Urawa and Kashima. Obviously. Surprised that Machida weren’t on the list, but that was probably because the massive empty spaces in the away end helped dilute the toxicity of the areshole element of their fanbase that they seem to have.

Vs Mito Hollyhock (home) 1/3/26 J League East match 4

 

Kawasaki Frontale 2 - 2 Mito Hollyhock

(Frontale win 4 - 2 on penalties) 

I haven’t exactly been putting off writing this post, but there certainly was a feeling of not being bothered to write it. I feel pretty stupid after starting the year with some confidence. At the time it seemed like it made sense as we’d strengthened well in the exact areas that we needed to, so all seemed good. Little did I know that the kind of indifference I had towards this interim season system would also spread through the club so much. In the week there were people talking about Taniguchi commenting on how the club seemed a bit too laid back compared to his previous experiences and expectations. This definitely rings true when you consider that quite a few players have been playing as if they don’t give a shit. The past few games have been so bad that I am starting to feel that even if all of our players started making a proper effort we might still have problems due to the lack of ideas from the manager. It’s been very easy to point the finger at Miura, Wakizaka and Yamamoto for their pretty dodgy performances in previous games, but the fact is it seems that we don’t actually have any idea of how to play at the moment. Hasebe’s attempts to keep it tighter at the back have failed two-fold. Not only have we kept it tight for almost all, but crucially not all of the game, the few occasions when we haven’t kept it tight, we instead kept it incredibly… loose? But also the fact that there seems to be no plan other than to keep it tight and keep practicing keeping-it-tight defending means that every time we manage to stop an attack, we are so tight that we have almost no-one to have a go at attacking. Hence the ball keeps coming back, again and again, and sooner or later we concede an extremely soft goal. Or two as the case was in this game. The only time we actually got going in this game was when things were getting desperate towards the end when presumably the game plan had been abandoned. Maybe we should abandon the game plan at the start of the match instead and see how that works… Anyway, there will be more moans later, so let’s end this intro paragraph here and get on with the usual crap.


1st half -

Complete control with absolutely no threat and then complete self destruction. Seemed like we were showing a bit more guts and effort, but of course it didn’t translate into anything meaningful. Or actually anything at all. Fucking terrible stuff. Four shots in the whole first half, none of which were on target and then dropped a couple of clangers to intensify the frustration. I don’t think anyone covered themselves in glory and in fact a few people covered themselves in something considerably less desirable and a lot more stinky.


2nd half -

Of course the only way was up. And in the end we absolutely cheated Mito out of a win. It felt like a bit of an injustice for us to get an equaliser. I think this is partly my pessimism speaking though, as in reality it had been a dull game and probably a draw was a fair score. A 0-0 probably would have been fairer. Of course that would have also resulted in penalties, so perhaps justice was done after all. It didn’t feel like it to me though. Not saying I didn’t enjoy the ‘win’, but it was a feeling more of relief than anything triumphant.


Penalties -

Felt like Brodersen was a lot closer on a lot more occasions in this shoot out than in the previous one. And his save was a nice one. Well done to him! Pleased again that we seemed to be able to put our penalties away pretty nicely. Probably should bear in mind that the two shoot outs we’ve had have both been against promoted teams so maybe we shouldn’t get too excited about any kind of penalty prowess at this stage.

Good day -

As strange as it is to say this, I thought the ref did a reasonable job. The last time we had him I noted that even though he’s a youngster he had already attained the necessary level of total shitness to make it as an established J League ref. In this match I thought we got away with a few fouls that could have been yellows, which was kind of the reverse of the last game we had with him, (away at Nagoya), so maybe he goes a bit easier on the home team. Perhaps me saying that he had a good game is as a result of him maybe giving us a bit of a break. Also somewhat bizarrely, I’m going to say that our main supporter group had a good day too. We were utterly shit in the first half and as our fans sang the team off at half time I commented that anyone singing must have been a complete idiot after what the team had served up. As the players came out for the second half they started up a different song than the usual post half time one and then… proceeded to sing the same song for the whole of the second half without stopping. They clearly are better people than I am. I was kind of sulking and moaning whilst trying to detach myself from the experience slightly. I feel like that is the healthy thing to do. But clearly we are in a mess at the moment and sometimes it’s not particularly helpful for arseholes like me to just whinge. But in my defence, I do usually try to support the team as much as I can. I’m not sure if singing the same song for fifty minutes managed to inspire the team to get the result, but it definitely did send a signal I think. We’re in a bit of a mess which is an amazing thing to say so early in the season and with the points on the board that we have. I think a comeback like this might be what we need to have a bit of a shake up and use the next two weeks between games to sort ourselves out a bit. Finally, although he didn’t have a great day on the pitch, well done to Wakizaka for saying that we shouldn’t be doing the usual end of game sing and jump thing that we do when we win if we’ve only managed to scrape through a penalty shoot out. I was certainly hoping that they didn’t do it. So good on him for having a bit of humility in the situation.


Bad day -

Maybe I should have done the bad day part first as now it looks like I’m a build ‘em up and knock ‘em down kind of guy. The toils of our midfielders continued in this match. Hasebe had changed things up… a bit. But it seems like 2026 is going to be the year that our midfield, which is usually the strongest part of our team, turns to shit. I think the only two players who’ve played in there this year who come out with any credit are Kawahara and Tachibanada. Wakizaka has started every match and hasn’t been very good. Yamamoto has been in and out of the team but has shown consistency in not being very good, and even Ozeki who we’ve all been clamouring to see play more, was in this game… not very good. Wakizaka and Yamamoto in particular seem to be way too casual this year, getting caught in possession on numerous occasions and giving the ball away cheaply on an equally numerous amount of occasions. I think this is partly why we we’ve been conceding so many opportunities recently. It probably should be noted that we only gave away ten chances in this game which is less than half of our previous best this season. Although saying that, we did still concede twice. Miura was also pretty dodgy again. If Taniguchi was trying to single anyone out subtly with his comments it could well be the guy who is to his left in defence. Much like in the last game, he started reasonably, but seemed to give up pretty quickly. I really don’t know what’s happened to him. He hasn’t been the same since his last injury, but his level has dropped off so dramatically that it’s pretty weird. Obviously given that I was moaning that Wakizaka and Miura are undroppable for Hasebe even though they’ve both been way off the pace, it was inevitable that they should combine for the late equaliser. I like that fact that my hot takes are more often than not extinguished by fact. It keeps me from getting cocky I guess.

It’s very easy to slag off players, and believe it or not, I don’t actually enjoy doing it. So far I haven’t really slagged off the manager much. Every game comes round with me thinking that surely he has to try something a little different. In this game, he kind of did. He made a few changes to the starting line up in the midfield and swapped the front three around a bit. It didn’t really alter the outcome much though. I think the thing that is starting to irritate me is that he’s used the same maybe 20 players in the same positions with the same tactics, over and over and over again. It’s like he has a massive lego box full of exciting pieces and can build anything he wants. But instead he insists on making a little wall out of his favourite twenty bricks and occasionally changes it from being a blue and black wall into a black and blue wall. He could build so many more exciting things, but I don’t think he wants to if he doesn’t have the instruction booklet. I really hope he tries something different soon. Surely he realises that we’re absolutely shite at the moment and are just about scraping by. 

Any other business -

- Mito’s away shirt reminded me of a red bull can. I have nothing amusing to say about this really. It’s just a dull observation.

- Our crossing in this game was truly terrible. It didn’t matter who was doing it, they were all poor. I think we’re starting to get some kind of fore-goal dysfunction because it wasn’t really only the crossing that was poor, but just pretty much everything that took place within shooting distance. On the contrary, Miura’s corners seemed a bit better than Wakizaka’s efforts but maybe only because they were going all the way over everyone rather than always hitting the first defender. If only we could anticipate these apparent mishits and have someone stand by the touch line on the opposite side of the pitch we might be able to retain possession. It would probably be a unique corner routine too. We tried a few short ones but they more often than not were just a handy way of us being able to get the ball back into our own half quicker, which in recent weeks seems to be what we’ve been trying to do as a matter of extreme importance.

- I’m not going to moan too much about this as we were pretty shit, but their second goal getting called offside and then the offside decision being overruled by VAR after a massive delay seemed pretty dodgy to me. It really doesn’t seem like J League stadiums have sufficient cameras to judge these kind of tight offsides. I didn’t moan about it at the time, but the lengthy digging to find a reason to allow it was quite annoying. I don’t know how many times I’ll say the same two things on this blog, but here we go. Firstly, if it’s a clear and obvious error it shouldn’t take so long to determine, should it? Are they more just trying to find a reason to justify their own existence as VAR officials? And secondly VAR is so detrimental to the stadium experience that I would still like to see it booted into the ocean. But it does seem like the league thinks it’s a good thing. Shame they didn’t decide to prioritise training their refs. After listening to the J Talk Podcast I discovered that they too thought this decision was a bit dubious which made me think that perhaps I was being a bit harsh on the team when I said how bad we were. But at the same time, without those two Mito goals it would have been 0-0 at half time with us having just four off-target shots in 45 minutes so maybe I’m not so crazy after all.

- I feel sorry for Romanic. I don’t know if he accidentally farted in the changing room or something, but it seems like he always passes to someone in a better position, but never gets the ball passed to him when he’s in a better position. I guess when so many players aren’t playing well, lots of them want to do something dramatic and impressive to get their confidence back and their form going. But they could do that by getting an assist for a goal rather than trying to score by themself. One opportunity sticks in the memory where Konno shot from a difficult angle and obviously missed, (as did everyone in the first half), while Romanic was waiting for the ball, unmarked, directly in front of the goal with a potentially easy finish. It’s weird as when were in the middle third of the pitch we seem extremely happy to pass the ball rather than attack, but as soon as we get near the goal we seem like we feel like we’re on a shot clock and need to finish the attack as soon as possible. Maybe another thing for Hasebe to sort out. 


WOW! -

Bit disappointed to not have anyone to put in here again. I could extend it to figures outside of football but I don’t think anybody needs to read that, do they? Given the next opposition, there is certain to be someone who qualifies next time!


All of this has left me a bit confused. Are we absolutely awful? Or are we terribly unlucky? Are we a clear the air talk and a little break away from taking the handbrake off and going absolute gangbusters in the league? Or are we just repeating the same insane inconsistency that plagued us last year? To me it seems like our midfield is the problem. But the sheer amount of goals conceded might suggest it’s the defence. And don’t forget the forwards who struggle to muster more than one shot every fifteen minutes , let alone one on target. So basically, I guess we’re still in exactly the same position as after the Tokyo game, but somehow with two extra points. I think it’s too early to start calling for Hasebe to go, but at the same time I am still not sure he has the guts or the inclination to shake up our current stodgy football. I reckon a nice easy game next should help us get back on track. Maybe a game against a newly promoted team… oh we played both of them already and drew…. who is it then? Oh, just the defending champions away from home who seem to be absurdly lucky when it comes to things going their way. At least a significant portion of the next blog post will be dedicated to moaning about the bus journey. It’s one of our furthest away trips in this shittier than shit half season. A distant away trip usually means some excitement and fun, but this is Kashima, so it will be nothing more than the game and the bus ride there and back. No fun allowed. If it’s another stinker I might find the usual one hour getting out of the car park and to Kashima Station (one mile away) significantly more enjoyable than the 90 minutes. Yikes…

 

Team 

GK 49. Svend BRODERSEN
DF 29. YAMAHARA Reon
DF 3. TANIGUCHI Hiroto
DF 5. SASAKI Asahi
DF 13. MIURA Sota
MF 6. YAMAMOTO Yuki
MF 16. OZEKI Yuto
MF 18. KONNO Kazuya
MF 14. WAKIZAKA Yasuto 
MF 23. MARCINHO
FW 91. Lazar ROMANIC

Subs

GK 1. YAMAGUCHI Louis
DF 2. MATSUNAGANE Yuto
MF 8. TACHIBANADA Kento (on for YAMAMOTO 76')
FW 9. ERISON (on for ROMANIC 62')
MF 17. ITO Tatsuya (on for KONNO 62')
MF 19. KAWAHARA So (on for OZEKI 90')
DF 22. Filip UREMOVIC
FW 24. MIYAGI Ten (on for MARCINHO 62')
MF 41. IENAGA Akihiro


Man of the match

 

Still absolutely no need for this section to exist. 

 

Goals

KATO (Mito) 45' 0-1
KATO (Mito) 45'+4 0-2
ERISON (Frontale) 84' PEN 1-2
WAKIZAKA (Frontale) 90+3' 2-2

 

Highlights

Vs Mito Hollyhock (away) 12/7/23 Emperor's Cup 3rd round

Mito Hollyhock 1 - 2 Kawasaki Frontale

Another trip to Mito in the Emperor’s Cup, almost 5 years to the day and once again we’re through safely. Last time they took it to penalties but we managed to get the job done in normal time this year. It wasn’t particularly smooth sailing though, and it wasn’t a vintage performance either. But in 2023, every win takes us a step closer to being not quite so bad, so it’s very welcome. Oniki went with a bit of a reserves side which was a surprise considering it’s the only competition, aside from the ACL, that we still have any hope in. Some might say we needn’t bother adding the ACL to that list and they’d probably be right. In goal we had Kamifukumoto and Ando was on the bench, which I think signifies that Sung-Ryong is definitely back in possession of the first choice keeper spot. The defence was far from our usual back four, with welcome returns for Matsunagane, this time on the right, and Sasaki on the left. Ominami and Yamamura were the middle two. Tachibanada got a start again in the anchor role and had Seko and Tono ahead of him. Never particularly sure about Tono in midfield, but Oniki seems to like playing him there. I think he’s better further forward. And then the front three were Myogan on the left, Segawa in the middle and Miyashiro on the right. By the end of the game Segawa had played in every position across the front three as Oniki swapped him and Miyashiro’s positions at half time. Probably the thing most deserving of comment is that Myogan had a much better game than he did against Shimizu, when he was subbed at half time, and on this occasion got subbed on 62 minutes. I’m not really sure why he was changed, but to be honest, I’d say all of the subs in this match were a bit of a mystery to me. Oniki still seems keen to rekindle the prospect of playing Joao and Tachibanada together. On this occasion it wasn’t as dull as it usually is, but to be honest, we were playing lower league opposition, and it still didn’t look that likely that we’d score with them both on the pitch together. The next couple of changes saw Oniki make what he presumably considered a massively important tinkering of the defence in a game we were winning and didn’t look in too much danger in. Well, at least until he’d shuffled the defence. And then Oniki used his last sub in the 73rd minute, which was another big surprise, him doing all of them with 20 minutes remaining with the very real possibility of an equaliser and consequently extra time. I dunno if he just wants to show everyone that he’s doing something, but I wouldn’t particularly say that his interventions helped us much. Lots of shuffling of players and no really change of approach. But I don’t want to be too cynical in this post as we did the job.

Seko’s goal was a lovely finish. I know this from watching the highlights. At the game behind the goal on a very slightly sloping grass bank, all I could tell you was that it had gone in. The views weren’t the best, but to be honest, in this match, that might have been a good thing. Aside from that goal, the first half was pretty uneventful. The words I wrote in my notes were that we were ‘dull but competent’. Nowhere near as bad as in some other matches this year, but once again, we’ve got to remember we were playing a team from a lower league. The second half continued in a similar way but my notes reference an addition of ‘in’ to the phrase, resulting in us being ‘dull and incompetent’. We didn’t look like we were in much trouble but the few dangerous chances we created in the first half were very absent from our game for at least the first 20 minutes of the second half. Then things livened up a bit and we had a decent Joao chance saved before we extended our lead through a massively deflected Miyashiro shot. I felt a bit bad for their keeper as he’d made some important saves in the first half. Never ones to rest on our laurels, after scoring we immediately decided to give ourselves some more peril as almost from the restart we let them run straight through the middle and score. At the time it looked like Takai had made a real blunder but the replay shows that pretty much everyone was asleep. I’d like to say it spurred us into action, but the truth is more that it spurred us into trying to hang on to our lead with around the last five minutes of the game being spent trying to keep the ball by the corner flag, (never the most encouraging thing to see, but I guess I can kind of understand it, given how things are going this year). In the late stages of the game Mito had a penalty appeal, (down the other end of the pitch, therefore, no idea), and Takai had to clear another chance off the line, but we did manage to hang on, meaning no extra time, and meaning that we might possibly have been able to get home the same night. But we had been worried about extra time and had booked a hotel. So instead of a hurried charge to Akatsuka station we had the bus ride back to Mito, which was a little weird as it seemed to be just an extension of a regular bus service, with people getting on and off along the route back into town. Thankfully we had a seat as it was quite a long journey, but one which we could enjoy through checking the chaos that was going on in the other games.

So on to the next round, which we had probably thought would have been another game against YFC, but they ‘got pumped’ 1-0 by Kochi United, who we’ll now face in the next round. I’ve heard it’s going to be at their place and I really want to go. At the same time,  it sounds like it takes the nightmare-to-get-to stadium thing to unimaginable heights. There is no shuttle bus and the nearest station is 10km away. For some reason this makes it even more tempting. We’ll see… A quick mention, before I finish up in the normal way with our next game, that the Chanathip video that came out this week made for pretty grim viewing. He seemed quite upset about the outcome of his time with us and it really hammered home some points that I have suspected recently. He said he didn’t hold anything against Oniki but at the same time was confused by how when the team were losing, and he was playing well in practice games, even when it came to a Levain Cup game, he didn’t make the squad. Oniki apparently told him things would be better next year. I’ve no idea what that is supposed to mean and why it would be any different. And the new chairman was surprised he wanted to leave and thought he should just wait for his turn instead. There’s definitely a big feeling that the new chairman doesn’t quite get football, which is quite concerning really. It just seems that Chana has been treated pretty badly by the club and was very unlucky to arrive at a time when we had a manager who was clinging on to any slight positivity he could find from the same old players and the same old tactics. I’m sure it would have been easier to take for both him and us if we were doing well, but we’ve been stinking the place up for almost two years now and if you can’t get a look in when things are going terribly, you might as well look somewhere else I think. Good luck Chana! You can watch the whole video here. Oh, next up YFM away in the league. Hmmmmm. Fingers crossed.

 

Team 

  

GK 99. KAMIFUKUMOTO Naoto

DF 27. MATSUNAGANE Yuto

DF 3. OMINAMI Takuma
DF 31. YAMAMURA Kazuya

DF 5. SASAKI Asahi

DF 8. TACHIBANADA Kento

MF 16. SEKO Tatsuki

MF 17. TONO Daiya

FW 33. MIYASHIRO Taisei

FW 30. SEGAWA Yusuke

FW 24. MYOGAN Toya

Subs

GK 21. ANDO Shunsuke

MF 6. JOAO SCHMIDT (on for MYOGAN 62')

DF 7. KURUMAYA Shintaro (on for SASAKI 69')

MF 14. WAKIZAKA Yasuto (on for SEKO 73')

FW 20. YAMADA Shin (on for TONO 62')
MF 28. OZEKI Yuto

DF 29. TAKAI Kota (on for MATSUNAGANE 69')

My Frontale Man Of The Match

 

Way too much shuffling of positions throughout the game and too bad a view to draw any strong conclusions, so let’s cop out and give it to…

SEKO Tatsuki - has really started showing his worth recently and his goal was an absolute blaster. As far as I’m concerned right now our best midfield three has to be Joao, Seko and one other. If you leave either of them out, we’re nowhere near as good.

 

Goals

 

SEKO (Frontale) 25' 1-0

MIYASHIRO (Frontale) 80' 2-0

TERANUMA (Mito) 81' 2-1

 

Highlights 

 

Vs Mito Hollyhock (away) 11/7/18 - Emperor's Cup 3rd round

Mito Hollyhock 1 - 1 Kawasaki Frontale (AET) (2-4 on penalties)

We’re back to playing football again. This is a bit of a blessing as I was getting fed up with writing posts about players leaving and I think people were probably getting fed up with me expressing my opinions (mainly negative, naturally!), on the bizarre goings-on at the club. On the other hand it seems that it’s a bit of a shame that the season is lurching back into action as judging on this performance we’re very rusty and only just managed to progress in the Emperor’s Cup against lower league opposition for the second game in a row. It’s certain that this game and the 3-2 against Sony Sendai which bookended the World Cup break were far from our best performances of the season. In fact they probably are vying with the majority of the ACL games and a few clangers in the league for the worst performances of 2018. At least we managed to get the win in these games though, even if it did take a very unwelcome extra time and then penalties in this match. Sorry for taking so long to get this post done. I’m sure plenty of people are having their schedules messed with by the World Cup at the moment and that’s partly my excuse here. The journey back from Mito followed by the World Cup semi final on TV looked a bit challenging even before we went to extra time and penalties. After that, plenty of us were left waiting on Akatsuka station platform for 50 minutes as a huge storm prowled around us, waiting for the optimum time to strike and cause the maximum disruption. It hit as we reached Sanuki station, where we were told that we were not going to be going any further with the station lights going off and on as lightning seemed to be striking very close by and some higher force seemed to be using a giant jet washer to try to dismantle the platform. We made it home just before 2am, my plan of having a nice nap before the England game in tatters, and my Thursday at work looking a bit tricky. Sadly for me, England couldn’t get the extra time and penalties result that Frontale had grasped. I can now say that a second helping of extra time in one 24 hour period is a bit of an ordeal for the spectator, particularly if they are sleep deprived and have a banging headache. This banging headache kept me subdued for the majority of the game. In spite of going through what I think was around eight PET bottles of water and Pocari Sweat, it seems that I still managed to get dehydrated. Because I’m a pasty Brit I guess. Anyway, this is all just an excuse to explain why this post is a little lacking on detail. The terrible performance also contributed to this, but I’m prepared to shoulder some of the blame. I also apologise in advance for the moaning that’s coming up quite soon.

The team for this game was a surprisingly strong one. Particularly given that Mito, who were playing a league game a few days later, put out the reserves. Even though Oshima didn’t get on the pitch during the World Cup, it was no surprise to see him absent. Of course Neto (and Okubo) were also absent, having departed the club in the break. So we started with Morita and Moriya in the defensive midfield positions. Most of the rest of the team was our preferred starting eleven. However, Saito made another start in place of Abe, after disappearing from the matchday squad for a while. And Michael James started alongside Taniguchi which was a bit of a surprise. I’m not aware of any injuries to Nara or Edu, but they weren’t even on the bench. Perhaps they’ve got themselves into Oniki’s bad books again. The sole defender on the bench was Noborizato, if you consider him a defender. Shimoda also appeared on the bench again alongside some more familiar names. It seemed a bit of a weird bench and I think demonstrates how stretched we are in the middle at the back at the moment. A couple of injuries to a centre back and a defensive midfielder would put us in a very difficult situation with regards to cover. No sign of any new players coming though, and presumably they'd be short attacking midfielders if they do appear. We did start the game fairly well though, scoring an early goal through Taniguchi, which seemed to suggest that maybe we’d overdone it a bit with the first teamers. No worries though about us going on to comfortably sew the game up with a Mito morale sapping high goalscoring first half. We were mediocre at best, making more chances than them, but not really threatening to actually put them away, aside from Ienaga hitting the bar. It was quite comfortable though. Mito weren’t causing us many problems and apart from a bit of sloppiness in possession at times, things looked fairly safe. Elsinho was having a good game in defence and attack, but no-one else was really standing out. Well, actually Taniguchi was, as he was a lot less composed than usual and was having a bit of a mare, but somehow getting away with it. Saito didn’t seem to be getting much of the ball and still seems to be struggling to find his way into the Frontale system at the moment. Guess the limited pitch time isn’t helping, but you’d have to say that his first brief substitute appearance against Yokohama is still the best he’s played for us so far. Michael James was doing alright, but still looks a bit like he has an error in him waiting to happen at any time. His limited pitch time presumably also contributes to this. You probably wouldn’t have picked it as being J1 versus J2 though as it looked more like two similarly sloppy teams playing out a meaningless end of season game with nothing at stake. So far, so mediocre.

I’m not going to write much about the second half as it was abysmal. We didn’t appear to have much desire to try to score again, which inevitably would come back to haunt us in the 93rd minute when we conceded and plenty of people’s journey home was thrown into turmoil. The main thing that was clear from the second half and extra time was the mess that the bench was. Hasegawa replaced Saito. Fair enough, Hasegawa deserves a chance, but Saito was getting no service and is unlikely to be able to find some form if he is constantly being hauled off or not even put on the bench. He is after all our big signing this year, but is another one who is suffering from 90% of our squad wanting to play in the same few positions on the pitch. Chinen on for Kobayashi was fair enough too, but once again Chinen is getting the ‘he loves me, he loves me not’ thing from Oniki, who apparently thinks he will solve all of our problems from the bench, but doesn’t give him a chance to do so for more than 45 minutes as a starter. The next sub was Shimoda on for Moriya. All of the changes in this game were like for likes, which makes a change from the usual way Oniki does subs. And I suppose it’s better than the somewhat random changes he makes sometimes, but you couldn’t really say any of them had much effect on the game. And I wonder if once again we could do with a plan B which consists of more than just making subs apparently decided on before the match. We were a lot less effective going forward in the second half with Mito having three times as many chances as us and Sung-Ryong had to make quite a few saves from decent Mito chances. Maybe the writing was on the wall, but it was a bit harsh on them leaving it until the 93rd minute to get their equaliser. It was nothing less than we deserved though. We looked a bit shaky at the back and kind of clueless going forward. I don’t want to suggest there is a morale problem in the squad, but they didn’t really seem up for it. The recent departures can’t have failed to cause some kind of upheaval though.

So, on to extra time, which turned out to be even worse than the second half. It was also a little weird as the drums and megaphones were put away by both teams’ fans. I guess this was perhaps something to do with the circling thunderstorms, but it certainly made for a disjointed lot of singing with the spread of fans meaning that songs quickly degenerating into chaos, out of time and sounding like they were being run through a big reverb unit. We had a few chances, one very nice one which Elsinho unfortunately put just wide. But they did too. Mito were being a bit more physical and we couldn’t cope with it. Our extra time extra sub showed up the crazy bench selection with Nobori coming on for Morita who seemed to have taken a knock. Our centre back pairing became Kurumaya and Michael James and Taniguchi pushed up alongside Shimoda. How we had gone from almost the regular starting eleven to this line up, with a couple of totally unfamiliar pairings at the back seemed almost impossible using only four subs. So it’s no surprise that we looked hopeless to be honest and at stages looked like we wanted to hang on and take it to penalties. Maybe we did, as we proved pretty good at them, scoring four out of four. Penalties are taken in the ABBA format in this competition, which makes it slightly confusing to work out what’s going on, but fortunately they sent one over the bar and hit the bar with another whilst we put ours away fairly comfortably, so it was pretty clear we’d won. But we’d been taken to penalties by a J2 team’s reserves. Yeah, maybe we’re rusty, but it’d be a shame if we have used the World Cup break to reset to our usual crappy start of the season form. Remember, it was supposed to be FC Tokyo and Sanfrecce who were disrupted out of their good form by this break and ACL teams were supposed to get back into the groove of things. Let’s hope this was a blip, but 120 minutes in pretty sticky conditions isn’t exactly what you’d want to kick off the second half of the season.

I’m not going to talk about positives and negatives in this game as it’s hard to find anything particularly positive. Sure, we’re though to the next round, but we look a mess and this was for the most part the regular starting eleven playing. I’ve been losing my mind a bit recently criticising Oniki and I don’t think it’s doing anyone any good, least of all me. I am deeply worried about him as our manager, particularly from a team morale point of view. I don’t think he’s a nasty person, but he doesn’t seem to have any awareness of the consequences of his actions on the players’ morale. I have no idea why we didn’t have Nara or Edu on the bench. We’re leaving ourselves very short in important areas and it’s almost impossible to understand the thinking behind it. We were lucky in a way that we had this game, as if our first game back was the away game against Consadole, I think we might have got smashed. I’m not sure we won’t do when we go there next Wednesday. Maybe it’s just me, but I have a real sense of impending doom at the moment. I couldn’t bring myself to go to the fan event and thought that going to games again would pull me out of my malaise, but this isn’t exactly what I was hoping for. I get the sense that people are getting fed up with me moaning about Oniki so I’m going to try to stop doing that so much, but I’m really worried. I feel like we’re in a lifeboat in the middle of the ocean and our leader has just decided to start a fire with the oars in the bottom of the boat. This is stressing me out!

Next up we return to league action away against Consadole Sapporo on Wednesday. Miyoshi won’t be playing as he’s not allowed to, but maybe he’ll come out and give us a little bow like Itakura did. Let’s hope we can be a bit more convincing than we were in this game. After that we’re back at Todoroki the following Sunday against V-Varen Nagasaki. Six points please from those two games and then you can all call me a complete idiot.

Team

GK 1. Sung-Ryong JUNG

DF 18. ELSINHO

DF 29. MICHAEL JAMES

DF 5. TANIGUCHI Shogo

DF 7. KURUMAYA Shintaro

MF 19. MORIYA Kentaro

MF 25. MORITA Hidemasa

MF 41. IENAGA Akihiro

MF 14. NAKAMURA Kengo

MF 37. SAITO Manabu
FW 11. KOBAYASHI Yu

Subs 

GK 30. ARAI Shota

MF 2. NOBORIZATO Kyohei (on for MORITA 98')

FW 8. ABE Hiroyuki
MF 16. HASEGAWA Tatsuya (on for SAITO 58')

FW 20. CHINEN Kei (on for KOBAYASHI 70')

MF 22. SHIMODA Hokuto (on for MORIYA 83')

MF 27. SUZUKI Yuto

My Frontale Man Of The Match

Let's not beat about the bush on this, plenty of players were pretty ordinary and anonymous at best. In spite of him missing a good chance for us to avoid penalties and maybe get home at a more reasonable time it has to probably go to...

ELSINHO - wasn't rubbish

Goals 

 

TANIGUCHI (Frontale) 4' 0-1

TOMITA (Mito) 90+3' 1-1

Penalties
TOMITA (Mito) 1-0
CHINEN (Frontale) 1-1
SHIMODA(Frontale) 1-2
KISHIMOTO (Mito) 2-2
FUNATANI (Mito) 2-2 (over bar)
NAKAMURA (Frontale) 2-3
HASEGAWA (Frontale) 2-4

SAITO (Mito) 2-4 (hit bar)

Highlights