Vs Urawa Reds (away) 6/12/25 J League match 38

Urawa Reds 4 - 0 Kawasaki Frontale

What a horrible end to a mixed season. At least I think it was a mixed season. I can’t quite remember the good times right now. I suppose we scored some goals (five more than any other team), but jeez conceding so relentlessly to lose points takes the shine off it a bit. Whilst this was a horrible end to the season it was also an utterly appropriate one in the way that it came about. We’ve clearly gone well off the boil recently and I guess thats to be expected when you consider we had nothing to play for. I was still a bit shocked quite how lacklustre plenty of our players were. I wonder if we will have some people leaving being announced soon. Yamamoto looked like he was doing his best to keep out of the way of everything so maybe he has a transfer lined up. There have been rumours for other players too. I suspect next season will be one of rebuilding. Which you could say we should have been doing this year. Perhaps it will be more of a complete demolition and start again from new foundations kind of thing. Anyway, as I have no desire to prolong this year, let’s get this out of the way.

Us -

There were hardly any positives to be taken from this game. Perhaps we could say that Noda looked good when he came on. Also Myogan got his first J1 minutes and did alright. Elsewhere… hmmm. Wakizaka and Yamamoto were terrible, the former giving the ball away again and again and the latter seemingly to be actively getting out of the way of any action. And neither contributing to any kind of attacking threat. I wonder if Marcinho’s time with us is coming to an end. With our only usual attaching option Ito banned for the game a lot of responsibility fell to Marcinho. But he was pretty ineffective in the way that he can be sometimes. If the ball went to him during a rare attack you could guarantee that would be the end of the attack as he’d either dribble till he lost it or miscue his pass straight to the opposition. I don’t want to blame him too much though as given the anonymity of our midfield the only thing we did was endlessly hoof the ball forward so weren’t ever really that likely to score. There was absolutely no imagination, no inspiration and not a lot of motivation. To be honest though, the scoreline was ridiculously flattering to Urawa. Sure, there was no way we deserved to win and we never looked like scoring so the 0 on our side was absolutely correct. But fuck me, Yamaguchi was awful. It’s interesting but also unwelcome that he is coming up with new ways to concede soft goals. He repeated the tactic from the last game of just sitting down rather than attempting a save in this match. We didn’t get one of his usual flying dive to palm it perfectly to the unmarked striker at the back post performances which was something of a surprise. The second goal was horrific, when as Urawa crossed, Yamaguchi decided to throw himself across his goal parallel but crucially well behind the cross rendering him helpless to even think about making a save as they slotted the ball home. But still somehow people seem to think he’s a good keeper. Maybe it’s because he occasionally flings himself into the air to stop a regulation shot. It seems to me that the only on target shots he normally saves are ones that are hit straight at him. And at the same time, he quite often seems to be trying to get out of the way of the ball rather than in the way to save a shot. If he is our number one next year, we’re fucked. I’d say we’re fucked if he’s even making the bench next year. Of course it’s not all his fault, but you can guarantee that recently it’s usually mostly his fault. I don’t really understand expected goals, but I guess if a team concedes almost double the goals as the xg, the keeper has maybe had a mare? I have nothing against Yamaguchi personally, but the adoration he gets from a surprisingly large amount of people baffles me. And I also hate the way he blames anyone after a goal that is almost certainly his fault. You could probably point the finger a bit at Hasebe again in this match, as his triple change at half time seemed to have a thoroughly negative effect rather than the positive one he might have been hoping for. But the truth is that this game didn’t matter so he definitely could easily give some fringe players a chance. And even with fringe players involved you wouldn’t expect one of your starters to fuck up so massively, repeatedly. Guess we’ll really be able to judge our manager when we see what he does in the off-season. Hopefully we might try a change of system, formation or approach, or any combination of them. Please just try something…

Them (marginally, but actually mainly more moaning about us) -

It’s quite annoying that they beat us so easily as their fans were sulking and doing the whole ‘we won’t sing unless you give us something to sing about’ thing mentioned in their pre-game banner. To be honest, during the game it wasn’t so different from a normal Saitama Stadium experience as most of the time they just boo anyway and apparently they were still allowed to do this when we had the ball. It wast perhaps more baffling that we kept singing as the game continued as we were absolutely shit. I’d still probably rather have it that way though, rather than go down the bad boy supporters route. Their silent treatment really exposed the pointlessness of our ‘don’t sing when we don’t have the ball’ policy though. There were long periods of silence as they played the ball around at the back and we just twiddled our thumbs. After half time I was doing my best to keep supporting, even though the first half had been horrible. And then one shocking Wakizaka pass knocked the stuffing out of me and I was pretty much done for the day apart from singing some of the subs songs. I wanted to make a joke mentioning about how I’d finally worked out the real reason for them always playing East 17 before the game. As it turned out, I’ll have to reflect it back on us instead though, as although Urawa usually follow the Bryan Harvey approach of metaphorically blacking out after eating too many baked potatoes and running themself over in their own car, they’ve finished above us now and if anyone was in a massive stodge coma in this match it was clearly us. As I don’t really have anything else to have a go at them about I’ll leave it here. Well, with just the short postscript that on leaving the station I noticed a political party handing out leaflets. I didn’t recognise the name but a quick google search informed me that the party’s ideology is apparently Japanese ultranationalism, which was utterly predictable given the passing foot traffic and which I imagined was going to form a hilarious part of this blog post presumably provoking an angry response about how all the horrible elements of their fanbase are just a tiny proportion of Urawa fans etc. But as appropriate as the political party’s choice of venue to hand out leaflets may have been, I can’t even be bothered to make a joke about it. Hmmmmph.

Ref -

Koya, who was once known on Flashscore as K. Hut, a fact which I still enjoy, seemed pretty useless and utterly card shy. But even his shiteness was smothered beneath the disastrous performance from Yamaguchi, so I guess Mr. Hut should buy him a beer for taking the heat off of him. Delighted I won’t have to watch another atrocious J League ref for the next three months. 

Fuck all of this. I can’t believe I wrote this much. I guess my irritation about Yamaguchi has propelled me on. Plenty for us to do in the off-season and I think plenty of shocks coming about more departures. As I said, I reckon Yamamoto might be one. There is a small chance that I might do some end of season posts, but right now I feel like I don’t want to waste my time thinking about this season anymore. If there is any demand for it, I might do my survey, but honestly I don’t know if even I can be bothered to answer the questions, let alone compile and post the answers. We’ll see. Anyway, let’s put 2025 behind us and I hope you can enjoy some kind of end of year festive fun. The safest way is do that is probably to get smashed and then hopefully a flashback of a horrible Frontale 2025 moment won’t interrupt your good times. 

 

Team

GK 98. YAMAGUCHI Louis 
DF 31. VAN VERMESKERKEN Sai

DF 4. JESIEL

DF 22. Flip UREMOVIC  (Yellow card 72')
DF 5. SASAKI Asahi
MF 19. KAWAHARA So 
MF 6. YAMAMOTO Yuki
MF 14. WAKIZAKA Yasuto 
FW 41. IENAGA Akihiro
FW 9. ERISON

FW 23. MARCINHO

Subs

GK 21. ANDO Shunsuke

DF 13. MIURA Sota (on for VAN WERMESKERKEN 46')
MF 16. OZEKI Yuto (on for (IENAGA 46')
FW 29. MYOGAN Toya (on for KAWAHARA 76')
DF 30. NODA Hiroto (on for JESIEL 66')
MF 34. YAMAICHI Shuto

FW 38. KANDA Soma
DF 39. TSUCHIYA Kaito
FW 91. Lazar ROMANIC (on for ERISON 46')

Goals

GUSTAFSON (Urawa) 44' 1-0
THIAGO (Urawa) 54' 1-0
NEMOTO (Urawa) 58' 1-0
KIESE (Urawa) 77' 1-0

Highlights  

Vs Shonan Bellmare (away) 23/9/25 J League match 31

 

Shonan Bellmare 1 - 2 Kawasaki Frontale 

Yay! Back to winning ways after a terrible game against Tokyo. But this was another pretty dodgy performance. Perhaps the saving grace might be that the opposition weren’t as good. Although to be fair to Shonan, at the end of the game, we were the team who looked like the one that was in terrible relegation trouble rather than them. Obviously it’s nice to get a win, and while we played alright for some parts of the game, the shooting was once again quite bad. I know these kind of things go in streaks, but it’s really weird that we couldn’t stop scoring for a few games and now it looks like we need plenty of shots before getting the job done. Normally this is because we’re smashing it over the bar and out of the stadium. On this occasion it seemed more like we were just dollying the ball back to their keeper for most of our ‘shots’. It wasn’t terrible and we got the three points. But it definitely wasn’t good. Thankfully there was a beer festival outside the stadium to smooth things over a bit. Sadly you probably won’t have that luxury whilst reading this horrible blog post.

Us - 

I shouldn’t moan too much. We just about got the job done. Much like against FC Tokyo, the opposition didn’t exactly set the world on fire when it came to attacking. Unlike against FC Tokyo however, we weren’t worse in that respect. In these two games we’ve faced a total of five shots on target so it’s not great that we’ve conceded from two of them and have lost one of the games. Perhaps my whinging has gone up a level because for a while it looked like we might be getting somewhere in this season of transition. But in these two games we’re right back in the mediocre mud again when it comes to putting the ball in the net. We couldn’t even score from a penalty! (Bit unlucky though, hitting the post and then the keeper and still not going in. But it wasn’t as if we particularly deserved to breeze through this match). Being slightly chaotic at the back is kind of fun when we’re marauding forward and scoring with ease. It’s not so much fun when we’re toiling to even hit the target. And once again we conceded almost immediately after scoring which seems to be something of a tradition this year. I think there are some questions about Hasebe again after this match. I don’t want to get on his back, but in this and the Tokyo game there were some baffling choices that makes me worry a bit. I know we have to pretend that we are still in the title race until it’s mathematically gone, but keeping the ball near the corner flag from a corner kick with nine minutes to go has to go down as something that is pretty horrible to see. We definitely looked like we were the ones desperately clinging on to points for survival. I suppose it makes a financial difference to us if we manage to get into the continental competition places, but time wasting in this way against the team second bottom of the league is pretty despicable I think. Obviously this isn’t a decision from Hasebe that I can say is bad, as it helped preserve the points for us. Just felt very cheap. 

 

The starting line-up Hasebe picked for this game, (three days after the last game and four days before the next game), was almost identical to the Tokyo one. Thankfully he didn’t again attempt the experiment with Romanic in the Wakizaka role which it felt like he might have come up with as he got off the team bus, such was the apparent unpreparedness we showed when using it. I think the sensible choice would have been to give Erison a rest and Romanic a start. But he didn’t do that. Instead we went with the usual line up, Erison got a yellow and now will miss the next game which looks like being a much tougher challenge against Kashiwa. I know we are short of numbers in important areas, but it does feel like we’re running the same players into the ground a bit at the moment. Probably Hasebe still has the memory of when he rotated significantly against Kyoto at home, (back when Kyoto were expected to have their usual kind of relegation troubling season), and we played awfully and lost. This seems to have traumatised him and spelled the end of any kind of rotation that isn’t just changing Kawahara for Tachibanada. Surely there must be some kind of middle ground between changing almost the whole team and changing almost no-one? And surely this game would have been the time to do that? But no, on we trot with the same guys. And maybe we can get a hint as to why he didn’t change much. In this match, which as I’ve said numerous times was far from being a confortable masterclass win, we got to the 91st minute of the match having only made two subs. I guess we can only conclude that Hasebe has no confidence in the back-up players. These late changes were made to switch us to playing five at the back to hold on to those… precious(?)… points. Once again, if we were the relegation threatened team maybe that would have made sense, but shutting up shop against one of the teams who are adrift at the bottom of the table and running out of time… hmmmm. All of this is to say that the win, whilst welcome, was by no means comfortable and left a bit of a maybe not bad but certainly weird taste in the mouth. If we play like this against Kashiwa, a team who want to attack, we might get smashed. 

Them - 

Not much to say about Shonan really. At times it looked like they were Barcelona and we were a team made up of elderly tourists assembled outside the Sagrada Familia. But they couldn’t shoot, thankfully. It looks like their fate might have been sealed to be honest. It’s a shame as it’s a decent away trip. The view from behind the goal is awful though. I can blame that for the poor quality of this blog post. Everthing up the other end of the pitch was an absolute mystery to me. I quite like the orange splash across the belly of their kits which under the floodlights made it look a bit like all of their players had done a Yuma Suzuki with their shirts rather than their shorts and rolled them up and under for no apparent reason other than to show off their midriffs. It will be shame if they go down, but they have flirted with relegation and got away with it for quite a few years now so I guess they suspected that sooner or later it might come back to get them. They’ve got a few games left against teams low down in the table though, so I don’t think all is lost, but it will be tough for them. Fingers crossed either them or YFC can get above YFM and stay there till the end of the season.

Ref and VAR - 

Koya was back. We last encountered him away at Tokyo Verdy and I thought he did ok on that occasion.  I mentioned that he was giving no cards until he broke the seal and then suddenly started flinging them everywhere and it was the same in this match. I think the yellow for Ersion which will ban him for the next match was pretty awful. I don’t know where he is supposed to go to get out of the way of the keeper, who is absolutely miles out of his box. The VAR delay for our penalty was ridiculously long. Presumably they checked the hand ball. Then they checked the offside. Then they checked their lottery ticket. Then they checked on the pizza they had cooking in the oven. Then they checked the weather for the weekend. Then they checked how to spell Czech as they weren’t sure if the European born player on the pitch came from a country near Czechia. It all took ages and gave us another reminder of how fucking annoying VAR is. And then of course we missed the flipping penalty. 

Next up, as I said before, Kashiwa at home. This is another weird game. Against Shonan I wouldn’t have been distraught if we’d lost, as our league campaign is over and a win for them would have given YFM something to worry about. Now we have Kashiwa and if we beat them, we’re basically doing a favour to Kashima and Kobe. It’s horrible, isn’t it? Such a shame that with some truly terrible games played we’ve ruled ourselves out of contention and only have the ability to mess up other teams rather than further our own cause. After title chasing Kashiwa at home we have (maybe) title chasing Kyoto away. So we’re definitely going to have some kind of say in where the title is going. Sadly though, it definitely will be going somewhere, rather than coming back to Todoroki. 

 

Team

GK 98. YAMAGUCHI Louis
DF 31. VAN VERMESKERKEN Sai (Yellow card 71') 

DF 22. Filip UREMOVIC

DF 5. SASAKI Asahi
DF 13. MIURA Sota
MF 19. KAWAHARA So
MF 6. YAMAMOTO Yuki
MF 17. ITO Tatsuya
MF 14. WAKIZAKA Yasuto
MF 23. MARCINHO
FW 9. ERISON (Yellow card 70') 


Subs

GK 1. JUNG Sung-Ryong

MF 8. TACHIBANADA Kento (on for YAMAMOTO 90+1')

FW 11. KOBAYASHI Yu (on for ERISON 78')

DF 15. TANABE Shuto (on for ITO 90+1')
FW 24. MIYAGI Ten (on for MARCINHO 62')
DF 27. KAMIHASHI Ryota (on for VAN WERMESKERKEN 90+1')
DF 39. TSUCHIYA Kaito
FW 41. IENAGA Akihiro
FW 91. Lazar ROMANIC

 

My Frontale Man Of The Match 

Not going to bother with this again.

 

Goals

WAKIZAKA (Frontale) 28' 0-1
ITO (Frontale) 80' 0-2
TACHI (Shonan) 82' 1-2

Highlights

Vs Tokyo Verdy (away) 29/6/25 J League match 22

Tokyo Verdy 1 - 0 Kawasaki Frontale 

It’s been said a few times, but I think most people would agree that this was the worst Hasebe Frontale performance there has ever been. It was so bad, I don’t even know where to start moaning. It was an immensely frustrating game. Of course, anyone thinking we were the greatest team in the league after putting three past Albirex was definitely not right. But it was a shame to go from scoring three and attacking a bit to this match where we did absolutely nothing. Given how bad we were it feels like I should say the better team won the game. I can’t really say that though as Verdy were as crap as we were. There were some similarities between the two sides and one massive difference. Both teams looked like they’d struggle to score even if their first eleven were playing the oppositions under 7s five a side team. Both teams made error after error and couldn’t do any of the basic skills usually required for football. And most of all, apparently shared the same desire to repeatedly do the same thing, over and over, much to the frustration of their fans and to very little effect. We went with the ‘fantastic, silky’ pointless passing. They went with the hoof it forward as soon as possible. That was the one difference. Well, apart from the fact that they managed to score. It would have been a miracle if we had done so. It was an utterly pointless 90 minutes with the same problems rearing their heads again. This game has left me quite irritated.

Us - 

Utter shit. Maybe those two words might be all that is necessary. Our game was perfectly encapsulated in a period of about 90 seconds in the second half when we passed the ball around in our own half without ever leaving it, EVEN THOUGH WE WERE LOSING AND RUNNING OUT OF TIME. Fantastically beautiful possession football with absolutely no end product. We had five shots in a terrible first half, none of which were on target. Surely the only way was up, right? Not really. Apparently we had six shots, five of which were on target in the second but I don’t think we can honestly say that we ever troubled their keeper and instead just passed the ball directly to him instead of trying to shoot. 70% possession in that second half and fuck me it was dull. After I said in the last post that maybe our injury situation is getting better we lost Sung-Ryong in the warm up and Marcinho after 12 minutes. I know I’ve previously said that Marcinho should get a rest as he’s been playing a lot, but blimey after he went off, it was clear why Hasebe hasn’t dared rest him yet. If he’s seriously injured we are utterly fucked. A quick run through some of the performances. Wakizaka had a bad game. Oshima was anonymous. Soma had a couple of decent chances but headed both over. At least he tried to score. The other people who shot seemed not to want to score. Miyagi got a good chance to show what he can do in this match. If he did show what he can do, that’s a bit worrying because it was almost nothing. Even the usually reliable Sasaki and Miura had bad games. The Verdy goal came from a weird pass from Sasaki that Miura and Yamaguchi both seemed to not bother with that lead to the first of a series of corners which we inevitably conceded from. Yamaguchi made one save when the ball was kicked pretty much straight at him. I don’t know what he was doing for the goal. I do know that him diving after the ball had already passed him irritated me again. Tachibanada wasn’t very good. Yamada when he came on did exactly what you’d expect him to do right now, never ever fucking pass. There was one chance that particularly annoyed me when he tried to score through a couple of defenders from an impossible angle instead of fucking passing the ball. It’s really annoying that outside of the final third all we do is fucking pass and pass and then when passing might actually get us a goal, he tries to score from a ridiculous position. He shouldn’t be playing if he’s going to do this kind of thing. I think Hasebe knows it, but in this match it’s not like we really had any other option. After a dogshit first half I pondered what we might be able to do and didn’t really see anything on the bench that might help us. Never mind eh, Kashima lost so at least they didn’t extend their lead over is. It seems that when Kashima lose, we always also do. The thought that we are even in competition with them is ridiculous. And we’re playing them next. Confident? I’m not. We need a major rethink and even if that happens I’m not sure we have the players to pull off a win. Well, we have the players, but sadly most of them have forgotten how to play football. Hopefully we’ll be able to keep Kashima in single digits for goals scored. If we keep up that passing and possession we could hopefully grind out a 3-0 defeat. 

Them - 

Nothing much to say. Their football was as annoying as ours but in a different way. Matheus seems like a right moody git. I reckon a ref who was more keen to make a name for himself could well have sent him off for a second yellow for dissent, after he got his first yellow for… dissent. He was constantly moaning the whole game. Quite an unlikeable fellow. Nice of us to try to cheer him up by giving him a quiet 90 minutes and three gift-wrapped points. Verdy fans before the game were lamenting how terrible they had been recently, all of which in my mind meant that they had a nailed on win coming. And so it proved. The only possible bit of amusement I have is the weird use of quotation marks for the 

‘drinks’ break

Felt a bit like they were casting doubt on whether the players were actually drinking or doing something else. Maybe they were having soup. Even though you eat it, you are kind of drinking it, aren’t you? That must be it!



Ref and VAR -

I won’t go as far to say that this is the post where we lose and I say the ref had a good game as I was giving him some real stick during the match. But on checking the contentious decisions I noted down, I found he didn’t seem to have cocked up. He was a crackpot with the cards though. Nothing for ages and then once the seal was broken he was throwing them around like they were going out of fashion. I really don’t understand how their defender didn’t get one from knocking over Ito as he broke through. But perhaps if he had started giving them so early in the game we would have ended up with multiple sending offs. Maybe he was also worried about breaking the seal in a more conventional way, as I think he forgot the 

‘drinks’ break 

in the first half. I was a bit baffled to see a Verdy fan saying that he’d given us everything as I was very much of the opposite opinion. The truth probably is that with both teams playing so badly, both sets of fans probably wanted someone to vent their anger at. So, it’s not a ‘well done ref’ on this occasion, but he wasn’t a disaster. 

Next up Kashima at home on Saturday, And then the fan event on Sunday. The atmosphere is going to be a bit weird if we get hammered on Saturday. Takai won’t be at the latter as he’ll be traveling to Europe for a medical so presumably Saturday will be the last time we see him. Bit worrying that, isn’t it? Soon we might have an attack that can’t score and a defence that can’t keep goals out. And if the midfield is anything like it was on Sunday, well, you can probably rule them out too. Hopefully a midweek with no game might help us be a bit fresher, but seriously… looks like it’s not going to be much fun. By the way, if you’re wondering where the man of the match section has gone, I’ve run out of ways of saying everyone was shit so I’ve ditched it for now. What a weird season this has been. I can’t remember that many games where I’ve thought we’ve been good, but we’ve got the second best attack in the league according to the table. Absolutely insane. I was trying to think of the best league game this season, and even after looking at the results I can’t think of one where we’ve been anything approaching great. By contrast, there are no shortage of candidates for worst match of the season already. Maybe this season feels weird because we thought it would be a transition season and surprisingly we’ve done a bit better than expected. Bit of a miracle really. I think it’s time for Hasebe to start putting his mark on the team a bit more. Hopefully he can do that to good effect starting from Saturday. 

Team

GK 98. YAMAGUCHI Louis
DF 5. SASAKI Asahi
DF 2. TAKAI Kota
DF 35. MARUYAMA Yuichi 
DF 13. MIURA Sota
MF 8. TACHIBANADA Kento
MF 10. OSHIMA Ryota
MF 14. WAKIZAKA Yasuto
FW 17. ITO Tatsuya (Yellow card 69')
FW 38. KANDA Soma
FW 23. MARCINHO

Subs

GK 21. ANDO Shunsuke
DF 4. JESIEL
MF 6. YAMAMOTO Yuki (on for OSHIMA 46')

FW 10. YAMADA Shin (on for KANDA 46')
MF 16. OZEKI Yuto (on for TACHIBANADA 65') 
MF 19. KAWAHARA So
FW 24. MIYAGI Ten (on for MARCINHO 13') 
DF 31. VAN WERMESKERKEN Sai
FW 41. IENAGA Akihiro (on for ITO 74')

Goals

FUKAZAWA (Verdy) 32' 1-0

Highlights  

Vs Hokkaido Consadole Sapporo (away) 1/9/24 J League match 29

Hokkaido Consadole Sapporo 2 - 0 Kawasaki Frontale 

Ah, another amazing game! I’ve said so many times this year that we’ve reached a new low that perhaps the phrase has lost its meaning. I can confirm though that this most definitely was a new low. Perhaps worried that we were in mid-table mediocrity and had nothing to play for after our three win run, Oniki has plunged us back into the excitement of a relegation battle. But don’t worry guys, he’s got it all under control! Actually, if he did say those words it would be enough to send me into a massive downward spiral of worrying. We’re six points off the drop zone with quite a few teams between us and the relegation places. This probably means that we’re not in too much trouble. However, we’re absolutely the worst kind of shite at the moment and have a manager who has long since lost any credibility as a capable leader. I was sitting around all morning doing nothing because I knew I had to write this blog post and totally couldn’t be bothered to do it. But I must do it in order to free me up to do other more exciting things like deep clean the bathroom. Here we go...

- Absolute shit from both teams in the first half. Terrible skills, terrible tactics, terrible vibes. Everything felt like it was a game between two teams who’d not only already been relegated but also who’d been told they were about to be liquidated and the players had been told someone was about to set fire to their homes. Utterly shit. Utterly useless. And whilst this kind of uselessness can sometimes be entertaining this was utterly dull too. Basically two teams doing a couple of sideways passes and then gifting possession to the opposition. So bad was the first half that the only part of it that is shown on the highlights is our kick off, which in a very prescient way shows us pass the ball backwards and then aimlessly hoof it long, immediately losing possession. But surely the managers saw how bad it was and would do something at half time, right?
 

- Half right. As in one of them did. And no surprises, it was the Consadole manager. Oniki apparently looked at that first half and thought, ‘Hmmmm, pretty good, we’re not losing and they’re as bad as us so we should be able to get a thrilling 0-0 draw against the team who are sitting bottom of the league’. We weren’t. Consadole came out firing. We came out snoozing. They were well on top and then also made some changes. Which presumably caused Oniki to get the magnets out and have a think. And in his usual lightning fast way he produced the game changing substitution of Tono on for Marcinho. Because yeah, that was the big problem area, wasn’t it? Five minutes later they scored. Oniki was at this stage presumably thinking, ‘If we keep things tight we can come away with a great 1-0 defeat against the team bottom of the league’. Out came the magnets again and when he realised we don’t get any points for losing 1-0 he made two more subs, taking off the right back and the player who’d come closest to scoring and giving two strikers who are desperate to play and score a whopping 11 minutes to completely turn around the game. Of course Kobayashi would have to do that from right wing instead of up front as Yamada was on the pitch and he scored some goals a while ago so is now undroppable. We briefly flirted with two up front, (Yamada and Erison), before Oniki saw Oniki sense, and moved Erison out to play on the left. It’s impossible to understand what he is trying to do or what he even thinks. Unbelievably his post match comments included him saying that we should have played more like we did in the first half but we maybe couldn’t keep it up because we'd overdone it trying too hard in that half . This is now gaslighting of the highest degree. Surely most people at the club now realise he’s talking bollocks. Can’t someone call the authorities and get him taken out of harms way for both his and our sake.
 

- I don’t like to single players out and I guess I’m about to single out so many that it probably doesn’t count as singling them out. Those who were crap from back to front. Takai, again after a confidence boost played awfully and was partly at fault for both goals. Miura, did nothing apart from attack their number 33,  and well done to him for doing that, but other than that he was awful. And I think his corners might be even worse than Wakizaka’s, which is really saying something. Tachibanada, seems to completely disappear when playing alongside Oshima. Only appeared when he was moved to right back and did nothing for their second goal. Wakizaka, strolls about the pitch looking to make a killer showbiz pass and in pursuit of that one good pass per game, spends the rest of the time giving the ball away. Marcinho, feel a bit guilty as he clearly tries hard but about a month ago he was our only attacking outlet and wasted way more chances than he made, never passing until it was absolutely too late. Presumably has been ‘coached’ by Oniki and now seems to have lost the attacking part of his game, leaving him basically just with the missing chances part of his game. Yamada, you can never fault his effort but why he gets almost 90 minutes of every game and is automatically ahead of every other striker we have, I don’t know. He had a great run of games but since then has done close to nothing. And quite how anyone not in the starting line up is supposed to do enough to get in the team from just playing in practice or for ten minutes at the most in games we’ve already totally fucked up, I don’t know. But this is all unfair. We know they’re not bad players. It’s Oniki's fault. But still we’ll go with 4-3-fucking-3 and perhaps his new tweak as a reaction to us losing again will be to tell them to attack less. His one tactical masterstroke in this game was to pump it forward as often as possible. Lots of long balls to our front three who aren’t very big and two of whom probably won’t even be up front. But even these long balls were awful. The only person who didn’t immediately hoof the ball off the pitch or give it to Consadole was Oshima, and his passes to Marcinho were ultimately pointless as it seemed that Oniki had spent the week telling Marcinho that he is shit, had kidnapped his pet and said that the pet would face the consequences if Marcinho attempted to attack.

 
- Consadole had kept three clean sheets all season until this match. Two of them were against Jubilo and the other one was in the first game of the season. They are notoriously not bothered about defending and on the rare occasions they win, it’s usually 5-3 or something similar. We failed to score against them. And worse than that, I can only remember one decent chance. We could still be playing now and probably would only have been able to score if their goalie had to pop off to go to the toilet. I’m not even convinced we could put the ball into an empty net at the moment. I think that right now, we’d be defeated by one of those free kick dummy walls that people use to practice. Somehow our tactic of trying to pass the ball directly through that wall rather than go around it wouldn't pay off. And then after a light gust of wind blows the wall over and it would clip the ball which would trundle slowly down the pitch, with one of our defenders who’d been distracted by Oniki shouting micro management instructions from the side of the pitch turning round quickly, taking out our goalie, and the ball would trickle slowly over the line. Oniki’s assessment would be something along the lines of ‘We wanted to win for the supporters who’d come to the stadium and should have tried to focus more on passing the ball though the solid object. I take full responsibility for the result, (By which I mean, I take no responsibility, it’s nothing to do with me), and I’ll do the same thing next week when we come up against another tough opponent, those little cones they use for dribbling practice.’

It's difficult to see but there's some double
magnet board action going on here

- It’s not all Oniki’s fault though. Well, 95% his fault, but not all his fault. I said it last week but our summer transfer business was ridiculous. Along with the disappointed Brazilian quota we have to fulfill (which now seems to be have been widened to being a disappointed South American quote), it seems like we also have to make up a supremely talented central midfielder quota too. I’m sure on his magnet boards Oniki has on numerous occasions tried to work out how to play a 0-10-0 formation. I guess that way we could get the pass count up which seems to be our only aim recently. Yamamoto has been treated appallingly and I’m kind of surprised he didn’t demand to leave in the summer. I hope Ze Ricardo is enjoying his time in Japan in the way that Gomis is. I saw one of Gomis’s Instagram posts and I’m not sure if he was being ironic when he said he’s ’Enjoying [his] journey through Japan’s culture’. I’m pleased he is because I can’t imagine he’s enjoying his time at Frontale. And poor Hayasaka. Out of the squad again. Wonder what the excuse if this time… None of these people have been given a fair chance. And there are numerous others who you could add to the list. And at the same time there are people in the team and in charge of the team who consistently perform badly but aren’t held to the same standards. The supporters aren’t immune from criticism either though in my opinion. I like the fact that we’re nice and generally positive supporters. I don’t like us being encouraged to sing a congratulatory sing after an awful performance when we’ve lost against the team who were bottom of the league. Some elements of our support would probably roll out a 'let’s go to the next level' song as our relegation is confirmed after our last home game of the season against Avispa. 'Let’s pull together and have a great season in J2 next year!' I’m not going to boo them, although I might reconsider my no booing policy if that sneak Oniki ever came to the supporters after the game instead of slinking away. But at the same time, I’m not going to sing to them if they’ve stunk the place up. I don’t think it’s their fault, I think it’s Oniki’s fault. Likewise if one of my students completely fails their Eiken test because I was instructed to only teach them words you can use to insult a referee in English instead of using the proper materials, I wouldn’t expect their parents to come into the school and give me a round of applause for my efforts. If they do a decent job I’ll clap them and sing. If they’re shite I’m just going to stand with my arms crossed and stay quiet. I wish more people would do the same.

Not a word about the ref or the opposition because there’s nothing to say. Everything in this game was down to us. We are playing awfully with awful tactics and awful team selections. Confidence is justifiably non-existent and the guy who is supposed to turn this around thought the first half of this game was a success! We’re fucked! Next up a home and way double header against Kofu in the Levain Cup, which we’ve been parachuted into at a late stage, helping us to not go out in the first round. In the Emperor's Cup we triumphantly beat a non league team and then lost to a J2 team. I fear that this time we’ll go one step worse and go out at the first time of asking. Expect the same line up and some amazing tactical tweak, perhaps something like attempting to keep the ball by the corner flag for the entirety of the home leg. If we crash out of the Levain we can really focus on the league... ermmm, on avoiding relegation to J2. Oniki will know what to do. He has a tactical approach for every occasion. by which I mean he has one tactical approach that he uses for every single fucking game. Success this year will be staying in J1. On our showing in this game, even though it seems like it should be achievable, I really am starting to have my doubts.

Team

GK 1. JUNG Sung-Ryong

DF 31. VAN WERMESKERKEN Sai

DF 5. SASAKI Asahi
DF 2. TAKAI Kota
DF 13. MIURA Sota
MF 8. TACHIBANADA Kento

MF 10. OSHIMA Ryota

MF 14. WAKIZAKA Yasuto
FW 41. IENAGA Akihiro
FW 20. YAMADA Shin
FW 23. MARCINHO

Subs

GK 98. YAMAGUCHI Louis
DF 7. KURUMAYA Shintaro
FW 9. ERISON (on for VAN WERMESKERKEN 79')

FW 11. KOBAYASHI Yu (on for IENAGA 79')

MF 17. TONO Daiya (on for MARCINHO 64')
MF 19. KAWAHARA So (on for WAKIZAKA 85')

FW 26. YAMAUCHI Hinata (on for YAMADA 85')

Goals

AOKI (Consadole) 71' 1-0
SUZUKI (Consadole) 80' 2-0

Highlights

 

Vs Shonan Bellmare (away) 24/2/24 J League match 1

Shonan Bellmare 1 - 2 Kawasaki Frontale

Now the season has kicked off properly we can just pretend that what happened in the ACL was just all a bad dream and concentrate on the league. It’s fair to say that we’re not really fancied to do anything at all in the league this year and I think I’d go along with that. In spite of our squad looking pretty good, I don’t get the feeling yet that we’re particularly organised and have a plan that can get the job done. Hopefully we can do a bit better than last year, but let’s be honest, that’s not a very high bar to clear, is it? In a way, having a very early season meltdown after a truly terrible, (yet wholly predictable), performance in the ACL has allowed me to gain a bit of perspective on where we are this year. In the same way that it’s ultimately pointless and probably not great for anyone’s health to get too angry about a bad defeat, we probably shouldn’t get too excited about a win. Perhaps this is all just a roundabout way of saying I’m really trying to scale back these blog posts a bit as I really don’t have much time to write them at the moment. It seems like a better idea to cut back rather than stop altogether. Anyway, this is probably of not much interest to you, so let’s get on with it.

Us -

When we conceded after seven minutes in this game to a team that we have struggled a lot against in recent years, it’s fair to say that I was a bit irritated. Particularly as it was a goal that came from a horrible error we made again. Wakizaka, after booting the ball straight off the pitch with his first touch of the game gave the ball away cheaply for a second game in a row and this time it ended up with a free kick for them which they put away after the ball broke free. It looked like a bit of a soft goal to concede and suggests that we’re still in a bit of a mess at the back. This was our fourth game of 2024 and featured our fourth centre back pairing. Somewhat bizarrely I’d say that the one clean sheet we have got in this time came when we played the strongest team out of all those we have faced so far. I guess Shandong might disagree with that though. Also somewhat surprisingly, the only clean sheet came when we had Kamifukumoto in goal. I don’t know what to think about this really. In contrast to the fact that the centre back positions are still very much in flux, it seems that Oniki has decided that his best left and right backs are Miura and Sasaki. It’s quite a turnaround for Sasaki who last year couldn’t get a look in at left back, which is presumably his strongest position and is now first choice on the right. Aside from the defence, it was business as usual with the same midfield and same forward line named again. Any thoughts that Ienaga might be played a bit less this year seem to have been disproved already.

After I got quite irritated about Wakizaka’s poor start to the game/season, which had been slightly inflamed by him saying in a recent interview that he wanted to take the lead in getting Frontale back to where they should be not long after a horrendous cock up by him had helped us get limply knocked out of the ACL, I was delighted to see myself proved wrong and look like an idiot (again) when he blasted in a goal from a long way out at the other end of the pitch. There was an element of justice for me too as in the celebrations I got elbowed in the face. The celebrations weren’t that wild either, so I can only presume it was karma that did it. Our other goal, which came quite a bit later was an extremely amusing goal, with the Shonan keeper doing his absolute best to haul Erison to the ground, but being unable to do so. He can be thankful that Erison was trying to score a goal, rather than running for a train, as so strong was his grip and so unaffected was Erison, that if it were the latter, he would have been dragged up the escalator and onto the train and now be clinging to Erison’s shirt on the next Tokkaido line train out of Hiratsuka. Probably the only other thing of note in this game was the fact that, perhaps with Wakizaka’s ACL opposition assist in mind, it seems that Miura is now taking our set pieces. Perhaps that will not be the case when it comes to us having a free kick in a shooting position, but in this match it was Miura who was taking the ones where we put the ball into the box. I can’t speak for the corners as we only had one in the whole game and I can’t remember it. It would be a very welcome thing though if we had some variation from our corners. Positive variation that is. I guess you can say giving the ball away directly is a kind of variation. Perhaps the fact that we only had one corner, coupled with the fact that Ienaga was encouraging his teammates to take the ball to the corner flag to waste time with five minutes to go suggests that this wasn’t a vibrant performance from us. It’s definitely preferable to conceding in the last minute but I think it does hold quite a bit of danger and sooner or later if we try to do it for the last 5% of every game it’s going to come back and bite us. But on this occasion it didn’t. As I said above, we weren’t great and as I’ll say in the next couple of sections we got a bit lucky at times, but not losing is a good step forward from our ACL trauma.

Them -

Shonan always cause us trouble and this game was no exception. However they are doing in any particular season, one thing you can guarantee is that form goes out of the window and they give us a real challenge. As this was their first game, we can’t really talk about form on this occasion I guess. But we can remark that they had one shot on target and scored with it. They also hit the bar and had a goal ruled out for offside, which I somehow ‘spotted’ from the other end of the pitch but didn’t realise how close it was until I saw the replay. I guess I spotted the deflection more than anything, but looking back it was a lucky, but just about justified escape. Praise the lord for VAR! Or maybe not, as I’ll come on to shortly. In spite of the stats being slightly one sided in our favour when it came to possession and shots on target, you can’t say that they didn’t cause us quite a few scares. I don’t have much else to say in this section apart from a plea to them to turn down the PA system a bit that was directly behind our area. Pre-game they played a whistle sound effect for some reason which caused a significant amount of people to jump and hold their ears. Similarly, the sound they play for every sub was blasted at such a level that the correct preparation when you saw a sub about to be made was to cover your ears before the attack. There was probably a clue for them in the fact that even normal speech sounded like it was being played through a Big Muff (or other similar distortion pedal). I suppose that part of the point is to cover up the opposition’s singing. I know a few clubs who definitely do this. But they should probably be careful with that whistle sound as they could have a lawsuit in their hands and someone’s audiologist bills to pay.

Ref -

The ref on this occasion was Koya, or as he used to be known on Flashscore, 'K. Hut', the app deciding for some reason to translate his surname. I don’t expect much from J League refs anymore and it’s pretty rare to think a ref has had a decent game. It’s also quite rare to think that a ref hasn’t had an awful game. On this occasion I think he was alright. I didn’t write down anything about being extremely angry about anything he did, so that must be a positive. He did give the two big decisions in the game different ways, which I’m not sure about really as I thought we should have had a penalty but I suppose he was trying to even things up as the previous marginal decision to disallow their goal went our way. I don’t think refs should do this kind of thing, but I understand that they are human beings and this probably seems like the right thing to do if your whole job is showing impartiality. He probably shouldn’t, after his lengthy look at the VAR screen, have whistled loudly and pointed in the direction of the penalty spot though, even if the incident had happened in a similar area, as I think everyone in the stadium thought he’d given it. But let’s be honest, if the biggest complaints we have about a ref are that his hand signals were ambiguous and that he gave each team one of the two big and kind of marginal decisions, he’s probably done ok. Blimey….

So a thoroughly meltdown free blog post for our first league game. Let’s see how long that lasts. I guess it helped that we won. There were some very enjoyable results over the weekend and our 2-1 win sees us sitting in sixth. Hopefully this won’t be the highest we get this year. It’s nice to get one of our biggest banana skins out of the way early on in the season, and even nicer to come away with a win. Next up we have Jubilo at home on Friday. At least this game won’t be kicking off at 5pm. If we can get another win it would be very nice. I suspect we’ll be going with exactly the same players again. And I haven’t seen any evidence of this new approach that I heard we’d be adopting. But I’m not particularly surprised about that either. However, as long as we keep winning, I guess I should refrain from whinging.

Team
GK 1. JUNG Sung-Ryong
DF 5. SASAKI Asahi
DF 3. OMINAMI Takuma
DF 2. TAKAI Kota
DF 71. MIURA Sota
MF 8. TACHIBANADA Kento
MF 14. WAKIZAKA Yasuto
MF 77. YAMAMOTO Yuki (Yellow card 51')
FW 41. IENAGA Akihiro
FW 9. ERISON
FW 23. MARCINHO

Subs
GK 99. KAMIFUKUMOTO Naoto
MF 16. SEKO Tatsuki (on for YAMAMOTO 72')
FW 18. Bafetimbi GOMIS
FW 20. YAMADA Shin (on for ERISON 84')
FW 30. SEGAWA Yusuke (on for MARCINHO 84')
DF 35. MARUYAMA Yuichi (on for WAKIZAKA 90+6')
MF 6. ZE RICARDO

Goals

IKEDA (Shonan) 7' 1-0
WAKIZAKA (Frontale) 24' 1-1
ERISON (Frontale) 56' 1-2 

My Frontale Man Of The Match

It wasn’t the most polished performance but we got the job done. With no one really standing out I’m giving this a bit randomly but with some slight justification and it’s going to…

ERISON - looks like a brute up front and is doing the business nicely at the moment. Gets this mainly for the pure entertainment of him dragging the Shonan keeper along behind him whilst he slotted the ball home. Oh, and the goal celebration too, of course! Three games, three goals so far!

Highlights