Vs Cerezo Osaka (away) 3/10/20 - J League match 20

 Cerezo Osaka 1 - 3 Kawasaki Frontale

Lovely stuff! This was probably on paper our most difficult game of the season so far. Away to a recent bogey team who also happened to be directly behind us in second place in the league table and who are playing and doing a lot better this year than in previous years when they always seemed to frustrate us. But we passed another big test and now have a 14 point lead at the top of the table with 13 games left to play. It’s a bit early to be thinking like this, but if we win nine more games we will be certain of winning the league. Of course if other teams drop points it won’t be necessary to win nine more times. Also looking at the table and for the time being ignoring the fact that teams have played all sorts of different numbers of games, we have scored the most goals and conceded the least. It’s a great time to be a Frontale fan, isn’t it? Although nothing is in the bag yet though, so we shouldn’t get complacent. Cerezo were a tricky opponent for the majority of the game. I would have probably have been satisfied with a draw in this game, particularly considering our recent record in this fixture. But perhaps we’ve put that to bed now. We’ve played one of our bogey teams twice in the league this year and come away with an aggregate score of 8-2 which is delightful! Of course there’s still a possibility that we’ll play them in the Emperor’s Cup later in the season with them desperate for revenge and perhaps will lose another final to them. But as things stand at the moment, we’ve had a pretty good season against them. But let’s not think about potential future defeats and instead enjoy the buzz of satisfaction this game has given us. Lovely! Here are some bullet points on various things with hopefully not much moaning

A tough game! - 

As mentioned above, this was by means an easy game for us and the scoreline perhaps flatters us a little. It didn’t really feel like a 3-1 as for large parts of the game Cerezo were causing us some trouble. In fact long periods of the game consisted of one team or the other having some good possession but not quite being able to break through and turn the possession into meaningful chances. According to the stats I’ve seen, both teams had 13 chances in the game with us having six on target and them three. So this gives some idea of what kind of match it was. Defence was on top, (not surprising considering Cerezo spent most of the match with everyone behind the ball and usually eight players in their own penalty box. We had a lot more possession than them, but given that we love a sideways pass and they love a quick break counter attack there’s nothing out of the ordinary there. The big difference seems to be that we have an ability this year to score goals in clusters and it’s pretty tricky to come back when you concede a couple quickly. I don’t know why this is happening and whether it’s a tactic but it has happened quite a few times. Of course, we’ve also conceded shortly after scoring too, so perhaps it’s not quite as clear cut as I might think, but I guess this might suggest that we are pursuing a plan of not sitting back after scoring and trying to strike while the iron’s hot, sometimes ending up getting burnt, but thankfully not so often. Again it felt a little bit like our first half was more about probing and seeing what’s going on and then the second about keeping it steady aside from a brief explosion of goals. Again the starting striker toiled and huffed and puffed to not much success. Kobayashi had a few good chances but it seemed like nothing we tried was going to get past Kim in the Cerezo goal. It was fortunate then that Cerezo put one in for us and what a finish it was! To be fair to the defender, if he hadn’t done anything about it, Kobayashi was free and in plenty of space behind him. Lovely pass from Nobori to Wakizaka to set up Seko for the own goal though. Similarly, Cerezo’s goal was pretty unstoppable, a nice cross to a player who was right between our two central defenders and it was finished perfectly. Thankfully we could get a couple of quick fire close range bangers to claim the points. Lovely!

Our old friend Tojo - 

Once again, we were reunited with our old friend Tojo, who took charge of the game. Can’t say I’m particularly upset about anything he did but it seems some of the Cerezo fans feel differently. For the record, in my notes I wrote that I definitely didn’t think it was a penalty. Nobori took the ball cleanly I thought. The camera angle that the clip that’s going round was filmed from seems to suggest otherwise, but I wouldn’t really say it’s clear. It’s one of those ones that you watch over and over and the more you watch it the less you can see. Would like to see it from another angle again in order to reinforce the opinion that is already lodged in my head although I’m currently happy with the way I see it. Not sure why Tojo booked Oshima for fouling the Cerezo keeper. Or rather I guess I know why he did, but I’m not sure he should have. Anywhere else on the pitch and the challenge wouldn’t have been a yellow but because it’s the keeper Oshima was booked. I don’t think it’s particularly fair, as if teams are going to use their keeper as an extra defender I think they shouldn’t get special treatment when it comes to tackles. Just to clarify. I’m not disputing that it was a foul. Just don’t think it should have been a yellow. It was great to see Oshima back though. It’s probably no coincidence that our recent slightly dodgy performances have coincided with his absence.

Damiao finally the hero, and the return of the Mitoma we love? - 

Finally, Damiao is the hero, scoring the decisive goal with his first touch. Again it was a real poacher’s goal, but the fact that he was aware enough to be in the right place to slot home a rebound from Hatate’s shot shows he’s doing the right thing. He seemed so happy during his post match interview and I enjoyed his ‘arigato gozaimasu’ a lot. The scorer of our third goal could also be said to be significant too. To the casual viewer it would come as no surprise to see Mitoma scoring, but if you’ve been watching closely he’s definitely been a bit off the pace recently. It feels that in the last month or so that he’d come on, dribble a bit, not get his cross or shot off properly and then fade out of the game. Thankfully that wasn’t the case in this match. This probably is a comment made with slightly rose-tinted glasses though as if he hadn’t scored maybe I’d be saying the same thing again. Hopefully the goal will restore some of his confidence as he’s been a crucial player for us so far this year and will be for the rest of the season too hopefully. Guess we have to congratulate Oniki on his subs, as they immediately changed the game. We were set to take the corner we scored from before the subs were made, but Oniki rushed them on and then Damiao was there to smack it home.

Nonsense - 

Yamane, what a mystery! I’d love to see his positional heat map as he doesn’t seem to spend much time in normal right back kind of positions. More power to him though! I don’t think I remember seeing a right back who makes so many runs into the box. Definitely deep down inside, he’s a frustrated forward or winger. As long as Morita or one of the midfielders is there to cover his adventures forward, all is good though! 

Oh, and as you know I like to put one stupid throwaway joke in every post, my groundbreaking observation on this game is that Desabato and Jonjic are the same pokemon, before and after evolving. I have to admit my knowledge of Pokemon is close to non existent, but I’m pretty sure that if you get two Desabato’s and merge them you get the taller and more fully bearded Jonjic. Is that how it works? I wonder if that’s what has happened to some of the players who are apparently in our squad that we never see anything of. Maybe Koki Harada has been used to power up Yamane’s attacking. Has Issaka Zain been grafted on to Sung-Ryong to improve his passing? Until I see any evidence suggesting otherwise, I’m going to keep an open mind.

Well, that was fun. Guess we’ll now throw in some stinkers in a couple of what might be considered our easier upcoming league games. Got my eye on the out of form Vegalta Sendai who we face next in the league next Saturday. Before then we face FC Tokyo at home on Wednesday in the Levain Cup semi final. The league is definitely more important to me, but of course I really want us to give FC Tokyo another pasting and get through to a final at the new national stadium. Would make a nice change from schlepping up to Urawa. Fingers crossed! Also it seems that we might be able to attend some away games soon which is very exciting for me. Will be a bit weird with no singing or shouting though, but it will still be good to watch some football somewhere away from Todoroki. Fingers crossed for that too. Keep it up lads, keep it up Oniki and GO FRONTALE!

Team 

GK 1. Sung-Ryong JUNG 

DF 13. YAMANE Miki 

DF 4. JESIEL (Yellow card 14')

DF 5. TANIGUCHI Shogo

DF 2. NOBORIZATO Kyohei 

MF 6. MORITA Hidemasa

MF 8. WAKIZAKA Yasuto

MF 25. TANAKA Ao

FW 41. IENAGA Akihiro

FW 11. KOBAYASHI Yu

FW 19. SAITO Manabu

Subs

GK 27. TANNO Kenta 

DF 7. KURUMAYA Shintaro (on for NOBORIZATO 73')

FW 9. LEANDRO DAMIAO (on for KOBAYASHI 82')

MF 10. OSHIMA Ryota (on for WAKIZAKA 63')  (Yellow card 71')

FW 18. MITOMA Kaoru (on for SAITO 63')

FW 20. MIYASHIRO Taisei 

FW 30. HATATE Reo  (on for TANAKA 73')

My Frontale Man Of The Match

Solid performances all over the pitch again, with of course the occasional blunder. But one player just seems to plough on being a different class in almost every game he plays. I’ll give it to….

IENAGA Akihiro - seems to be able to shrug off three opposition players at the same time, passing classily, all while chewing gum and keeping his hair style intact. What’s not to love?

Goals

OWN GOAL (Frontale) 37' 0-1

OKUNO (Cerezo) 62' 1-1

LEANDRO DAMIAO (Frontale) 83' 1-2

MITOMA (Frontale) 84' 1-3

Highlights

Vs Sanfrecce Hiroshima (home) 13/9/20 - J League match 16

Kawasaki Frontale 5 - 1 Sanfrecce Hiroshima

Another big win! And now we even have the luxury of no game for a whole week. Lovely! Unbelievable this was the seventh time we’ve scored five or more goals this season. Admittedly, we’re half way through the season now, but 44 points out of a possible 51, and 52 goals scored in 17 league games is a pretty amazing first half to any campaign. But still we have that troublesome pink mist hanging around, not right behind us, but certainly close enough to cause a few worries, especially given that they have a game in hand. Sadly our neighbours weren’t able to stop them winning at the weekend, but I guess we can take some consolation from the fact that our tricolor chums have lost another game. Obviously a draw would have been much better for us though. A mini midweek round of games will give some teams the opportunity to catch up on some fixtures. Cerezo will play Kobe, so hopefully local pride will boost a Kobe team who can’t even lay the claim to being best team in Kansai right now, let alone Asia. So, on Wednesday night the league table will look a bit clearer. FC Tokyo who are currently in third will also be playing, but that game will put them one game ahead of us. For this game Oniki did exactly what I hoped he would and shuffled the pack a bit with Taniguchi completely left out of the squad and rested and Yamamura taking his place in defence. Kurumaya came in for Nobori. Ienaga and Oshima were on the bench and another new midfield three was tried out. I was a bit suprised to not see Diogo come in for Yamane, but Yamane did more than enough to justify his inclusion and didn’t look anywhere near as knackered and out of form as he has recently. The rest of the pitch is as always a bit of a mystery. I don’t think any of us really know who are the first choices in the front three and as long as we keep smacking in the goals that’s fine by me. In any case, it was nice to see Manabu get another start. As usual, here are a few bullet points about this match.

Goals! Goals! Goals! - 

As I mentioned above, it was lovely to score a load of goals again and particularly lovely to score them against Sanfrecce, who I don’t find particularly likeable. As has happened on so many occasions, we didn’t go nuts until the second half and at times in the first it looked like Hiroshima would give us a game. They broke through the middle on a few occasions, perhaps capitalising on some confusion as I can’t say for sure whether it was Ao or Morita playing in the anchor role. I’d guess it was Morita though, given that Ao scored two lovely goals from lovely passing moves. There’s certainly more to his game than we might have been led to believe by his performances in front of the defence. Aside from these two, Mitoma dribbled as is his wont and set up Leandro Damiao for a relatively easy tap in (easy if you’re in the right place at the right time). Damiao looked chuffed as usual. Mitoma didn’t do a great deal else in this game and he seems to have lost a bit of momentum recently. This is hugely unfair though as I’m sure I wouldn’t be feeling that way if he hadn’t started the season in such crazily good form. Kobayashi put away a penalty (always a nice thing to see) and although the Hiroshima players and fans had a few complaints about it, (on the pitch and on twitter), I think it’s pretty clear from some of the replays I’ve seen and in any case, the game was pretty much done at that stage anyway. Reading the recent updates to the laws it seems that even with them attempting to clarify the handball rule, there are numerous interpretations of the language, however cut and dry they may have tried to make it. My favourite of the goals was Yamamura’s. He absolutely smacked the ball in from just outside the box after a succession of our shots and chances had been successively cleared by the Hiroshima 10 man defence. Glorious! And even more so when certain details emerged after the game. It’s clear that this game was won in the 10 minutes after half time when we just couldn’t stop scoring. It’s been a common factor that we come out blazing in the second half but I don’t think we’ve blazed so brightly yet this year. Yamamura is the 15th player to score for us this year which is a hell of a stat in half a season. We really seem like a team though rather than a collection of independent individuals, with everyone playing for one another and happy to see each other score. Sure, we are shooting a lot more than last year, but at the same time it seems that we’re encouraging everyone to shoot and score and join in the fun. Lovely! Shame we conceded a goal though, but you can’t really complain when we scored five. Sung-Ryong complained quite a bit though, but it did look like a good finish, and at that stage of the game perhaps people weren’t quite concentrating 100%. Would have loved a clean sheet, but I appreciate this comment will make opposition fans dislike me even more so I probably shouldn’t have said it. 

Emotions - 

This turned out to be a bit of an emotional game. Yamamura revealed after the match that he and his wife had lost their third child at the age of two months earlier this year. I imagine this explains his muted but somehow still slightly joyful celebration for his goal. When he scored my first thought was that it’s pretty good when you’re playing a midfielder/striker at the back and they have that kind of finish in their locker for this kind of occasion. Credit to him, he had another good game at centre back. I’d love to see him have a chance to play further forward again some time, but the fact that we have no defenders and absolutely loads of forwards suggests that most of his match time this year will be at the back. Kurumaya had a good game too, which I guess means that he might play at left back more and suggests that Yamamura at centre back will be even more important.

Also somewhat emotional was Ao. Apparently he was looking at this game as his ‘last chance’ which is pretty crazy, as I’m sure most of us would consider him a crucial player for us. He has had a few slightly dodgy games recently, but no-one is able to perform at 100% all the time so I wish he wouldn’t worry about it like he has apparently been. To score twice in a game that you consider your last chance is a pretty good way to give your confidence a boost. We really are spoilt for choice in the midfield right now. Whether the fact that he scored twice playing a little further forward will mean that he will continue in that position is another thing. But as he’s done pretty well for the most part further back, I don’t think we really have to worry where he’s playing. Keep up the good work!

New kind of fun - 

Of course it goes without saying that the Corona football experience is a pretty different beast to a usual Frontale match day. Not saying I haven’t been enjoying the games though. I thought at the start of the year that the experience would be so sterile that I wouldn’t really want to go back till I could shout and sing a bit. Perhaps the performances on the pitch have helped gloss over the quietness in the stands. You can’t help feel that we would have had some amazing atmospheres this year with the way we’re playing though. It’s a shame, but of course there are more important things going on than singing at a football match. The club are trying to do their bit to get some socially distanced fun going though with the usual guests and on this occasion a ball kicked into the stadium from a Frontale fan working at the South Pole. Some might say that there was some kind of camera trickery involved but all I’m saying is I saw him kick the ball at the South Pole and I saw it enter the stadium from the corner, (perhaps conveniently a corner that probably no-one was really looking at). It was an orange ball too, so that pretty much proves it had come from a snowy place, right? Not sure how Fronta managed to make it from the South Pole to Todoroki so quickly though. Magic, I guess. It was weird to see him take the penalty as usually he’s in goal trying to stop it. In spite of it being Fronta taking it Cabrera looked gutted to concede, probably as it was a nutmeg. Thankfully Komuzo was on hand to console.

I guess I’d better wrap this up now as I seem to be writing more about the pre-game mascot penalty kick than any of the actual goals. Perhaps I could do with a break too. And a break is exactly what we have! Until next Sunday when we face Urawa in Saitama. Not particularly a trip I’m going to get too upset about missing. Sure, it’s not far, (at least on the train. The walk from the station is another matter), but it always seems a bit lacking in excitement. Although right now I think we’d all be very happy to be able to go to any away game. But an away game with no singing might be even weirder than a home game with no singing and would probably come down to a red-raw hands volume-related clap-off between the opposing fans. I wonder if Urawa’s ‘great’ fans will give us the welcome that we’ve been affording to the opposition at our home games. Guess we’ll never know and I guess I should shut up before I irritate any more teams’ followers in this one post. Fingers crossed we can get a good result in this game and keep our good season going! After that, it’s Yokohama FC at home the following Wednesday. Go Frontale!

Team 

GK 1. Sung-Ryong JUNG 

DF 13. YAMANE Miki 

DF 4. JESIEL 

DF 34. YAMAMURA Kazuya

DF 7. KURUMAYA Shintaro

MF 6. MORITA Hidemasa

MF 8. WAKIZAKA Yasuto

MF 25. TANAKA Ao 

FW 30. HATATE Reo

FW 9. LEANDRO DAMIAO

FW 19. SAITO Manabu

Subs

GK 27. TANNO Kenta 

DF 2. NOBORIZATO Kyohei 

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

FW 11. KOBAYASHI Yu  (on for LEANDRO DAMIAO 71') 

FW 18. MITOMA Kaoru (on for HATATE 46') 

FW 20. MIYASHIRO Taisei (on for SAITO 71') 

MF 41. IENAGA Akihiro (on for TANAKA 89') 

My Frontale Man Of The Match

Good performances all round and some really good ones too. With that in mind but also considering I’m a sucker for emotional stuff I’ll give it jointly to…

YAMAMURA Kazuya & TANAKA Ao - well done to both of them for the goals, the overall play given the circumstances.

Goals

TANAKA (Frontale) 14' 1-0

LEANDRO DAMIAO (Frontale) 47' 2-0

YAMAMURA (Frontale) 50' 3-0

TANAKA (Frontale) 51'  4-0

KOBAYASHI (Frontale) 88' PEN 5-0

ASANO (Hiroshima) 90' 5-1

Highlights

Vs Yokohama FC (away) 18/7/20 - J League match 5

Yokohama FC 1 - 5 Kawasaki Frontale

Hmmm, where to start with this one? This was another match I watched on DAZN so I’m not going to go into too much detail about it. 5-1 though! But it was never really a 5-1 and Yokohama can feel a bit aggrieved to have lost by that scoreline I think. They were by no means the worst team we’ve played so far this year. For large parts of the game they totally bossed us. Their young striker Saito made our defense look pretty bad, but somehow we ended up winning by four clear goals. Football is weird! They had more possession than us. We looked like we couldn’t pass, especially in the midfield. (Normally we complain about the length of the grass when this happens, but I didn’t hear anything like that mentioned this time). Particularly at the start of the second half, they were swarming all over us. But the shot count probably tells a different story. Apparently, we had 24 shots to their 10. But yeah, they were still really unlucky I thought. Our second goal to retake the lead was a penalty that looked a bit soft to say the least. Our third was another penalty which I think was undeniable. And then after that they seemed to go to pieces at the back, the rapid collapse of the strength of their position in the match perhaps has a serious effect on the confidence of such a young team. But, you know, in the four games since the league restarted we have scored 2, 3, 4 and now 5 goals in a game, so clearly something is going right for us on the pitch. Normally this kind of game would be a banana skin for us, and it so nearly could have been. But the two penalties and our first two substitutions really changed the momentum of the game. The subsequent substitutions probably changed things too. They certainly changed our understanding of where people were playing but we got away with them. Alternatively, maybe Yokohama’s hard pressing for the first two thirds of the game caused them to eventually run out of steam. Whichever way you look at it, this result would have been unbelievable after they equalised and we really dodged a bullet and by doing so fell into a pot of gold, to totally fabricate a new proverb.

Everything was so confusing about this game that I’m just going to briefly mention a few players and then that will do with this post. Kobayashi made his comeback and I almost predicted perfectly on twitter beforehand the timing of him replacing Damiao as our first sub. Damiao did alright I thought, and I wasn’t really sure he should have been the first change, but Oniki clearly loves Kobayashi and doesn’t want to play him on the right so it wasn’t so much of a surprise. And Kobayashi did pretty well considering he hasn’t played recently. Thankfully he put away the penalty as that is not always a given and a miss could have really changed the way his game went. His second goal hit the defender twice, one on the hand, on its way in, but I reckon it was on target anyway. It really seems that he gives the team a mental lift when he comes on and although I wish Oniki would play him on the right, I can’t deny that when he comes on for Damiao in the middle he does quite often really do the business in a way that our number 9 still isn’t quite able to. Hasegawa perhaps ran out of puff a little in this game and the difference when Mitoma came on was pretty noticeable. Mitoma immediately grabbed the ball and drove right at the Yokohama goal. And then proceeded to continue doing so. There seemed to be some real power and goal focus in his play and whilst it might not be the way we normally play,  it did stir up some excitement. The midfield three seemed once again to not be doing that great and Yamane again didn’t seem to be at his best showing flashes of good play but flashes with plenty of average or worse play around them. We are still clearly short of numbers at the back, but it doesn’t seem to be a worry for Oniki. I think perhaps that his solution to the problem of us having way too many midfielders in our squad is to just play some of them in defence. The goal we conceded once again seemed to be because our defence was in a bit of a mess, but the fact that our goal difference after five games is +11 means that it’s a bit churlish of me to complain about defending. In spite of the score though, this surprisingly wasn’t that much fun to watch for long periods. We were lucky to get this result, and it took a lot of sloppiness before we managed to click. But click we did and on we go. Next up, Sendai away on Wednesday. I always like that fixture but it will probably not be the same sitting at home on my sofa watching it.  Hopefully we can continue this nice run of results though. Go Frontale!

Team 

GK 1. Sung-Ryong JUNG
DF 13. YAMANE Miki
DF 5. TANIGUCHI Shogo

DF 7. KURUMAYA Shintaro

DF 2. NOBORIZATO Kyohei

MF 25. TANAKA Ao

MF 10. OSHIMA Ryota

MF 8. WAKIZAKA Yasuto

FW 41. IENAGA Akihiro
FW 9. LEANDRO DAMIAO

FW 16. HASEGAWA Tatsuya

Subs
GK 27. TANNO Kenta

MF 6. MORITA Hidemasa (on for YAMANE 84')
FW 11. KOBAYASHI Yu (on for LEANDRO DAMIAO 60')

MF 18. MITOMA Kaoru (on for HASEGAWA 60')

MF 22. SHIMODA Hokuto (on for OSHIMA 84')
FW 30. HATATE Reo

MF 34. YAMAMURA Kazuya (on for NOBORIZATO 90+6')

My Frontale Man Of The Match

Was a bit confused over who to give this too, but then the clouds cleared and it became obvious it should be…

IENAGA Akihiro - looked full of energy for the whole ninety minutes in spite of his advancing years and was one player who seemed to not be messing things up when we were having our dodgy spell not making the basic errors  that others were. And this maybe also makes up for me not giving it to him when he scored twice against Kashima.

Goals

WAKIZAKA (Frontale) 28' 0-1

TASHIRO (Yokohama) 59' 1-1

KOBAYASHI (Frontale) 75' PEN 1-2

IENAGA (Frontale) 78' PEN 1-3

KOBAYASHI (Frontale) 83' 1-4

TANIGUCHI (Frontale) 90+6' 1-5

Highlights 

Vs Kashima Antlers (away) 13/10/19 - Levain Cup, semi final 2nd leg

Kashima Antlers 0 - 0 Kawasaki Frontale (1-3 on aggregate)

So this year hasn’t been a complete write off. We’ve made it to a final and there’s some chance of redemption for our many Levain final failures. As I keep saying, any kind of success does paper over the big old cracks in our season, but at this stage, I’m quite happy it hasn’t all been a disaster. Although we can still lose in the final and everything I said above is off. This group of players does deserve something though. My opinion, and it seems I never tire of restating it, is that we have got talent in abundance but we’re not doing a very good job of getting the most out of it. This game gave us another glimpse of quite how close we could have been to getting our third consecutive league title. Kashima, who are now leading in the league, were pretty useless again, and I know they’ll bring up the fact that they have a lot of injuries, but even with their injuries they’ve been ploughing on and picking up points in the league. We too have had injuries (and still do have), but we’ve failed this year due to having our usual slow start and then compounding things with a rotten run in August and September. I have a horrible feeling that we are going to end up agonizingly close to the top spot. We’ve got games against some of the top teams, so our run in isn’t easy, but at the same time it does allow us to have a big influence on the title race and take points off contenders. Whether we do this or not remains to be seen, but even in this dullest of dull games, we seem to finally be playing with a bit of attacking intent again, and have regained some solidity at the back. Problem is, it’s all a little too late for the league probably. Anyway, the games are coming thick and fast so I’ll stop blathering and try to get on with this post. Here’s what we might have learned from this game.

We were poor, they were poorer -

I think I went over this a fair bit in the last post, but this was another game that could be mistaken for a relegation battle rather than a cup semi-final in terms of the quality that was on display. We totally dominated but at the same time never really looked like we were going to score. An amazing amount of our shots went straight at the keeper, who rarely had to move to stop anything we threw at him. Kashima had one shot on target in the whole game. Considering that they needed to score at least twice to progress, this was pretty woeful. There was an amazing amount of possession conceded from both teams. We were excellent at winning the ball from them in midfield, but almost always gave it back to them with the next pass. It happened over and over again. We did a great job of pressing and stifling them, but when we had the ball, could do nothing with it. The shots stat is really misleading in this game, as plenty of our shots were little more threatening than backpasses. In fact they were less threatening I guess, as the keeper could pick them up. When we weren’t dollying the ball up for their keeper we were failing to score in even worse circumstances. Kengo missed an open goal. We got into great positions but consistently failed to pull the trigger. It was pretty frustrating. But not as frustrating as the next point.

We were sneaky, but they were dirty -

Our time wasting was pretty shocking to be honest. I never like to see this in a game, but I understand that it is an inevitable part of modern football. It’s definitely a thing that you get annoyed about if its the opposition doing it, but you’re fine with your own team doing. At least normally anyway, but I think we took the piss a bit in this game. Admittedly the onus was on Kashima to score, but it would have been nice if we had not slowed down the game to a snail’s pace. The last fifteen minutes was like an avant garde visual art/absurdist comedy piece where time after time we dithered on the ball drawing a foul from Kashima and then dithered over the free kick. It didn’t make for fun viewing, but I guess it was effective in seeing out the game and infuriating the Kashima players and fans. Quite how Kashima kept eleven players on the pitch, I don’t know, as there were some really awful tackles flying in. Jung seemed determined to physically attack each of our team, with a knee in Kengo’s dodgy back and other fouls all over the place. Bueno showed that nominative determinism can sometimes work in reverse, by being an all round bad player, with bad play and a very bad attitude. He charged over and went in swinging at Ienaga and Morita (who seemed to be only watching the aggro rather than getting involved) and didn’t even get a yellow. (Tojo the ref, was pretty poor in this respect in this game I thought, and I’m sure Kashima would probably agree, but for different reasons). Leandro again was a nasty piece of work. I totally understand their frustration as we weren’t exactly playing football, but after the first leg, this was an effective, if far from easy on the eye tactic for us to employ. And employ it we did. Again and again. And again. And again. A month or so ago there was talk about Kashima doing the quadruple, but now they’re down to only two competitions and judging on this game I don’t fancy their chances against Honda FC in the next round of the Emperor’s Cup and I wouldn’t think they’d be able to hang on at the top of the league if it weren’t for the fact that all the other teams around them are suffering their own implosions on a monthly basis. I’m really torn now on how I want the league to finish. As I said above, I think we won’t win it. FC Tokyo seem to be in freefall and I can see them slipping out of the ACL places. Yokohama blow extremely hot and then extremely cold and you’ve got to think they’ve got a cold spell coming soon. And Kashima are just a bit rubbish right now. Obviously, as our big local rivals I couldn’t really ever want FC Tokyo or Yokohama F Marinos to win the league. Which left me with Kashima as potentially being my preferred champion, which went against everything I have always believed in, as I’ve always disliked them. After witnessing their shithousery up close two games in a row, I now can't even be half-heartedly in favour of them winning the league. So where does that leave me? I dunno, but I guess I’m going to be disappointed however it turns out.

(Some) players remembering how to play -

Finally, a few words on various players. Morita seems to be finally regaining some of the form he once had and showing that he will hopefully be able to come good on the promise he’s showed in flashes. Since his goal he seems transformed and this was another great game for him. Defensively all round, this was a decent display so well done to all of those players. It was a marked improvement from the Kurumaya centre back and Morita right back starting line ups Oniki has tried recently. Oshima didn’t quite have the impact in this game that he had in the last game, but even so, it’s still great to see him back on the pitch. I think Oniki might have imagined that Oshima was going to be his saviour, riding back into contention near the end of the season and propelling us to a third league title. Shame that it’s come a bit too late. Kobayashi had another shocker to be honest. Pretty much the only positive things he did were in defence at corners. Up front he was a bit of a waste of space. We all know he’s a confidence player but he’s not been able to build up any confidence. I think he’s a good guy so I reckon he must be aware that Leandro Damiao is probably playing a lot better than him but never really getting the same opportunities. This can only be increasing the pressure on Kobayashi. Kengo was a bit sloppy in this game and Abe was pretty much absent again. I have no idea why Oniki would change the front four so much after the last leg. He can only be tinkering for tinkerings sake. Quit it! One bright spark was the fact that Ienaga did ok again. He’s still not back to the heights of last season, but he’s also considerably higher up than the lows he was in earlier this season. It’s very welcome! Lastly, I don’t think I’ve mentioned Ienaga’s weird warm up routine when he comes out before the game before. He basically uses a member of staff and leans on them at various angles and gets them to push him away from them. Quite weird, but I quite enjoy watching out for it now. In this game he was joined in bizarre behavior by Shimoda who almost immediately after coming on to the pitch did a couple of forward rolls and then a couple of backwards rolls, before getting up and carrying on as normal. I have no idea what they are doing, but fully intend to incorporate these things into my everyday life somehow.

Next up, Gamba away, another one of those fixtures where we always suck, and this year against a team who could realistically be pulled into the relegation places. Not the best game to have at this stage. I guess it will either be a dead rubber for us or depending on other results, a possible start of our charge to a third consecutive title. But we do have to win all our games for that to have any possibility of happening. Also, we still need all these teams who keep slipping up (at times when we've slipped up even more), to keep slipping up. It’s not going to happen, but I guess we can still dream, can’t we? And then a week later, the Levain Cup Final, a trip back to the scene of some of our most notable recent failures, the Saitama Stadium. Fingers crossed for this time, eh?

Team

GK 21. ARAI Shota

DF 2. NOBORIZATO Kyohei

DF 5. TANIGUCHI Shogo

DF 34. YAMAMURA Kazuya

DF 7. KURUMAYA Shintaro

MF 6. MORITA Hidemasa

MF 22. SHIMODA Hokuto

MF 41. IENAGA Akihiro

MF 14. NAKAMURA Kengo

MF 8. ABE Hiroyuki

FW 11. KOBAYASHI Yu

Subs

GK 1. Sung-Ryong JUNG

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

MF 10. OSHIMA Ryota (on for SHIMODA 57')

MF 16. HASEGAWA Tatsuya  (on for ABE 52')

FW 20. CHINEN Kei

DF 26. MAGUINHO

MF 28. WAKIZAKA Yasuto

My Frontale Man Of The Match

As mentioned above, it certainly won’t be going to anyone at the top of the formation as we were so bad up front, I feel like scoring no goals flattered us. The defence was solid, but I’m not sure quite how much they had to deal with, and I’m going to generalize and possibly bend the truth for the purpose of this announcement, most of it was stopped by….

MORITA Hidemasa - Give a player a goal and he’ll play better. Give him a song before the next game and he’ll step it up another notch. Stood out in a fairly mediocre if effective team performance and recently seems to be making important tackles and the right decisions when he has the ball. Keep it up!

Goals

None 

Highlights

Vs Jubilo Iwata (home) 14/9/19 - J League match 26

Kawasaki Frontale 2 - 0 Jubilo Iwata

As seems to always be the case recently, I’ve left it a bit late to do this post. Hopefully I haven’t forgotten everything about the game. This was a welcome return to winning ways in the league and has perhaps got people excited again. Let’s be realistic though, this was a pretty fortunate result. Jubilo hit the post very early in the game and the bar in the second half. We scored twice, both times with the ball miraculously passing through the keeper’s hands and went on to miss a hatful of pretty easy chances. Kobayashi was the main culprit again, though Hasegawa also missed when it looked easier to score. But we won! But it was against the bottom team in the league... So, I dunno, take some optimism from the game if you want, and I suppose a win is better for morale than anything else, but I feel like this game demonstrated our shortcomings as adequately as some of the recent defeats and draws. If you want to be ultra negative, and lets be honest, I usually do, this was also a result which is going to paper over the massive cracks in our season and delay any possible change of manager. Jubilo are a horrible team of cloggers who managed to dominate possession against us at home, mainly because we kept giving them possession though absolutely rotten passing. I guess at least we are shooting a bit more recently. But when three of those shots were the absolute solid gold clangers that we dropped in this game, perhaps shooting a lot becomes pretty meaningless. Anyway, here’s what we might have learned (but probably already knew), from this game.

Da Mystery of First Teamin’-

Yeah, I know that title doesn’t really work, but never mind. Basically what I’m trying to express (repeatedly, post after post after post...), is that I don’t think anyone knows who our first team are now, least of all Oniki. It seemed like he’d done a bit of rotation for the Levain Cup but after those two games we went with a pretty similar team in this game. This was a brave selection from Oniki and I suppose you could say it paid off, but you could probably equally say that we might have won more comfortably if he hadn’t been so ‘brave’. Perhaps the biggest shock for me in this game was the fact that Arai started in goal. Sure, Sung-Ryong has been a bit wobbly recently but I thought, as had been the case for the past few years, he had a lock on the goalie spot. Perhaps Oniki was looking to stem the flow of goals recently, but to be honest Taniguchi has been at fault for most of them and he’s undroppable (previously because he was an Oniki favourite, and now for that reason also but particularly as we have zero cover in that position due to Michael James being allowed to leave and Jesiel joining Nara on the sidelines through injury. I heard that Nara is back in training so perhaps we’ll see him soon. Yamamura, the right footed attacking midfielder, did a decent enough job though I don’t think he’s suited for that position. It’s funny isn’t it, that Yamamura is another player who could probably do a job on the right of midfield, but we’re still preferring to play left wingers there? Anyone would think that the manager hasn’t got a clue what he’s doing. But anyway, back to Arai. He also did a decent job, keeping a clean sheet but not really having a great deal to do as Jubilo seemed to only either hit the woodwork or blast wide. We do definitely lose something with him not being as good on the ball as Sung-Ryong, but I guess you could say he’d kept a clean sheet so deserved to stay in the team, rather than be replaced by Sung-Ryong who has been conceding an average of two goals a game recently. Oh, that’s right, Arai also conceded twice in the last game, didn’t he? Maybe a clean sheet now gets you two games before you’re discarded. Oh, and you know that striker who came on in the last game and scored? Of course he was never going to get a starting spot. Much better to retain the guy who can only score when it’s disallowed. We were begging for Leandro Damiao in this game as the Jubilo defence were a bunch of hefty brutes kicking lumps out of our forward players. Of course he didn’t make it off the bench though. I dunno, this is all a mystery to me now. I have no idea what Oniki is thinking. I have no idea what some people have to do to get consecutive starts in this team. I have no idea what some people have to do to not get a start. With four of our top five earners in the squad on the bench, (see here for the wages), something seems a bit strange. Either we’re paying some people way too much, or we’re picking the wrong teams.

JAPANESE ONLY! -

Up to this point I have jokingly referred to Oniki being a secret agent of Kashima trying to destroy our club but being so useless that we did well in spite of his efforts. I’ve also ‘joked’ about him having a problem with our current and former Brazilian players. I wonder perhaps if Oniki is actually being employed by Urawa fans instead as he has finally reached his
apparent goal of fielding a ‘JAPANESE ONLY!’ team. Even the subs he made were Japanese. Recently I can’t help but feel he doesn’t want Brazilian players. He certainly doesn’t cut them the same slack regarding performace as he does certain Japanese players. Perhaps he also doesn’t like Koreans. And New Zealanders. I know this is all ridiculous, but I’m pretty sure Neto left because of a bust up with Oniki, Edu was clearly an extreme last resort for him and frozen out completely most of the time, Elsinho despite being constantly one of the best right backs in the league decided to go for a new (mid-table) challenge at Shimizu as he felt undervalued by Oniki. This year, Jesiel was nowhere near the team until Oniki was left with almost no other option. Leandro Damiao and Maguinho could score double hat tricks and still get rotated out for the next few games. I don’t seriously think he’s a racist (although I suppose it could be true). But the fact that players who aren’t Japanese seem to be held to a different standard to Japanese players does seem to be almost a dictionary definition of racism. There’s a reason that there are limits to the number of foreign players in the J League, presumably to stop rich clubs naming a team of eleven foreigners brought in on big wages and running away with the league, (sorry Vissel, maybe soon they’ll change the rules for you). Foreign players provide an option for teams to supplement their team with talents and skills that they may not be able to find in the available Japanese player pool. After two big money DAZN titles, we’ve instead decided to use up our foreigner spots paying players to sit on the bench. Presumably we hired an extra translator this year because they would have a lot more work on, trying to keep our foreign signings occupied on weekends as they wouldn’t actually be needing those players to actually play football.

The usual substitutions moan -

The only explanation I can find for another set of useless changes by Oniki is that he was actually going for the Japanese only thing. Even when our left winger is subbed, Abe is still not allowed to play there, being kept on the right. Then the other two subs were pretty stupid, replacing a midfielder with a striker, therefore moving to 4-4-2. Then 13 minutes later removing a striker for a midfielder and switching back to the previous formation. I thought managers were supposed to use subs to change the game for the better. Oniki seems to use them to muddle things and give the other team a chance. Wakisaka had played pretty well, being our biggest attacking threat and being presumably full of energy given his youth. But he was still changed. The only possible reasons for bringing Kengo on in the 78th minute were either to add to his J League appearance total (actually, do sub appearances count?), or to frantically try to return us to the shape that Oniki had destroyed through making the previous change.

Songs of (exaggerated) praise -

Two weird things happened with songs in this game. The first felt pretty bad to be honest and although I am an enthusiastic song singer I couldn’t bring myself to participate. When the keepers come out for their warm up we ALWAYS do that BANG, BANG, BANG-BANG-BANG, BANG-BANG-BANG-BANG, OLE! song. BANG being used here to represent the sound of a drum and clap, not particularly accurately. Instead we greeted the keepers entrance by singing Arai’s song, presumably sending a clear message to Sung-Ryong that despite being our number one for the past three years, we were delighted to see him on the bench. it felt really weird to be honest. By all means celebrate the fact that someone else is getting a chance, but I felt that it could only be taken as a bit of a diss to Sung-Ryong. I wonder if he’ll be leaving at the end of the season. The other weird song thing was that that OOOOOOHHHHH song that is usually reserved for us when we’re leading by three or four goals was wheeled out at 2-0. I know us doing well has been a bit of a rarity recently, but have we descended so far that leading 2-0 at home against the league’s bottom team is enough for us to wheel out out beautiful football domination song? All seemed a bit weird to me and I wonder if our recent shittiness has sent everyone a bit crazy.

J2bilo -

Bit of a cheap shot, and one which works much better when spoken rather than read, but there’s really only one place that Jubilo are going to be playing next year and it’s in J2. They were rubbish. When they weren’t booting us all over the pitch they were booting the ball off the side of the pitch. There was a real lack of quality on show from both teams, to be honest. I know they could have scored twice when they hit the bar, and that they looked a bit better in the second half, thanks to Oniki’s tactical tinkering, but the fact that they were bad against us, a team some rotten form at the moment shows just how bad they are this year. Moriya must be really regretting his decision to move there. He won’t get picked because he’s not a tall guy who kicks people. Hopefully he can find a new club next year, even if it is another J2 team as I wouldn’t wish Jubilo on anyone, even my worst enemy. I feel for their fans!

Oh, and goals -

Oh yeah, we scored and it was another one for Wakizaka (drop him immediately!) and a first goal for Yamamura, with a finish that, surprise surprise suggested that maybe he isn’t best suited to playing at centre back or in defensive midfield. There’s no point telling Oniki though, as hardly anyone gets to play where they want to in this team.


Next up, an away Emperor’s cup tie at Kobe. Possibly the least enticing draw possible, apart from maybe another trip to Kashima. I wanted to go, but the fact that it would involve an overnight stay, plenty of expense and I would be doing the trip by myself put me off. Also the dynamic pricing probably means that we’ll be charged ¥10000 per ticket in order to recoup some of the outlay for their latest ex-Barcelona player. Kobe are rubbish, but let’s not forget that we also are rubbish. Can’t say I’m that confident, but it would be lovely if we could effectively end their season. Although I suppose they are still in a relegation dogfight. After that, it’s… Kobe at home in the league the weekend after next. If we could only win one of these two matches, I guess the cup would be better, as the league is over and done with, barring a miracle. Two wins would be a lovely slap in the face for Mikitani tough, so let’s all hope for that. Go Frontale!
 

Team

GK 21. ARAI Shota

DF 17. MAWATARI Kazuaki

MF 34. YAMAMURA Kazuya

DF 5. TANIGUCHI Shogo (Yellow card 21')

DF 7. KURUMAYA Shintaro

MF 6. MORITA Hidemasa

MF 22. SHIMODA Hokuto

MF 8. ABE Hiroyuki

MF 28. WAKIZAKA Yasuto

MF 16. HASEGAWA Tatsuya

FW 11. KOBAYASHI Yu

Subs

GK 1. Sung-Ryong JUNG

DF 2. NOBORIZATO Kyohei (on for HASEGAWA 65')

FW 9. LEANDRO DAMIAO

MF 14 NAKAMURA Kengo (on for KOBAYASHI 78')

FW 20. CHINEN Kei (on for WAKIZAKA 65')

MF 25. TANAKA Ao

MF 41. IENAGA Akihiro

My Frontale Man Of The Match

As said above, not exactly a great performance, but given that he’s keeping Kengo and Ienaga out of the side in that central midfield spot, (although who knows what Oniki’s really thinking. Perhaps they’re being rested for when we have nothing to play for in any competition…), it has to go to...

WAKIZAKA Yasuto - still quite raw, gives the ball away at times, but does it in a way that makes me think, ‘ooooh, that was a good idea that didn’t quite come off’, rather than ‘what on earth are you doing?’ Seems to want us to score goals! He even shoots! Keep it up Yasuto!
 

Goals

 

WAKIZAKA (Frontale) 22' 1-0
YAMAMURA (Frontale) 35' 2-0


Highlights

Vs Meiji University (home) 3/7/18 - Emperor's Cup 2nd round

Kawasaki Frontale 1 - 0 Meiji University

Our first involvement in the Emperor’s cup of 2019 gave me an excellent opportunity to forget my numerous moans and groans about our season and just enjoy a game of football with the added excitement of it being a cup match with there being a big distance between the two teams in terms of league and stature. I don’t really understand why attendances for these kind of games are so low (although we did get the biggest attendance of the round, helped in no small measure by there being loads of Meiji University fans in the ground). I enjoy the romance and excitement of the cup, and was looking forward to seeing some different players in action for us. Unfortunately this excitement and enjoyment didn’t make it through the whole 90 minutes intact though. And midway through the second half I was back to my doomiest and gloomiest. Attending our games had again become a bit of a chore, (especially the home games, ironically), and Oniki’s ongoing agenda of sucking all the enjoyment out of watching Frontale was once again at the front of my mind. This game was live on NHK, so now plenty of people in Japan have had the opportunity to be thoroughly bored by us. This wasn’t a great advert for Frontale. It could have been a great advert for Meiji University if they’d brought their shooting boots. But as it was, we scraped through on a single own-goal victory. I’m quite aware that I am moaning non-stop recently, and as Ben pointed out on my recent J-Talk podcast appearance (listen here), sixteen other teams in the league right now wouldn’t mind trading places with us. But while watching these performances continues to slowly chip away at me mentally, I will have to keep on whinging. Here’s what we already knew but have had reinforced by this game and possibly one new thing if you’re lucky.

(Strength in) squad depth -

This game saw some players get some valuable game time. Shimoda actually managed to get on the pitch and did a great job I thought. His set pieces were particularly good and it was from one of them that we scored our goal. Sorry, they scored our goal. Yamamura got a start and it was at centre back, which I think is a first for him this season. Oniki has played him in midfield and up front, but now he’s completed his set. He looked pretty good too, as did his partner Michael James. Well until the last quarter of the game anyway, when everyone looked pretty dodgy. Maguinho is still with the club! It may come as a surprise given recent match day squads. I really feel sorry for him to be honest. He’s not getting a chance, and Oniki is presumably going to drop him for the next game. Kurumaya played at left back! Praise the lord! Actually, he probably had a better game against Jubilo when he was at right back, but I’m standing by the assertion that left back is clearly where he should be playing. Abe was back and very willing to shoot, which is a bit of a rarity in our team. I can only guess that Oniki wants us to pass the ball into the net and the fact that Abe shoots is a contributing factor to his lack of match time this season. Fujishima could have had a look in for a first bench appearance in this game, but he’s picked up a serious injury I believe, so that was pretty unfortunate for him. But it did give Ando a chance to be part of a match day squad again. I still can’t remember the words to his song. I’m not sure who is currently our third choice keeper, and I guess as long as Fujishima is injured, we’re not going to find out. In the pub after the match, I was pondering on who I would select if we had an injury free squad. It’s difficult! Almost every area of the pitch has decent competition for places, and you’ve got to think that whoever we select, we should have a strong team. Sadly though it seems that whoever we select, we have an under-performing team.

The importance of the manager -

This is some mystery in how far the effects of a good manager go for me, but having one clearly makes a difference. It’s common to see a good squad stinking the place up, only to be completely revitalized by new leadership and new ideas. The new manager bounce is undeniably a thing. Therefore, you’ve got to think that the old manager splat is also a thing. We seem stale and lacking in ideas. Our one system for the last two years doesn’t seem to be working anymore and experiments with 4-4-2 have been pretty fruitless too. Of course, this is all said with the caveat that we’re not doing so badly, but it’s clearly a case of a lot of mediocre performances getting mediocre yet just about positive results. Perhaps the league is pretty weak this year and this might help explain things. It’s churlish to complain about being in second and probably in a better position than we were in last year at this stage, but jeez, this is pretty depressing stuff at the moment. Occasionally we’ll cut loose and attack and shoot and score, but more often than not, we bundle a deflected goal in and then desperately hang on to either a one goal lead or a one-one draw. We pour forward attractively but it is usually all ultimately pointless. If it comes to pass that we fluke a shooting opportunity it’s either smacked high or wide or dollied straight to the keeper. Unsurprisingly, the front players look devoid of confidence. I think most of the squad know that the slightest error will probably see them dropped. No-one is given a chance to play themselves into some form. Substitutions almost always have a negative effect on our shape and play and seem pre-ordained and unrelated to what’s going on on the pitch. The most predictable part of the game yesterday was the withdrawal of Damiao and Maguinho. Amusingly, it came just after the two had combined to create a chance. If it had gone in, it would have been a fantastic example of the nonsense of Oniki Frontale. I keep saying this, but I think it’s undeniable that he has a problem with Brazilian players. So why do we keep signing them? Jesiel is probably the only one of them who has any chance of securing a starting spot right now, and that’s in part due to Nara’s injury. I suspect he’s only one mistake away from being replaced at centre back by Kurumaya though and sent into exile. In every game, at least 2 out of 3 of our substitutions are absolute nonsense. Perhaps the only one that made any sense in this game was the introduction of Kengo, which had a brief positive effect on the pitch and lifted the crowd. Unfortunately, Chinen being left as the lone frontman saw him really lose his fizz. I’m not sure it’s a good position for him to play. He’d been doing much better with a partner up front. In spite of everything, at this stage of the game, we still looked ok. However, the introduction of Wakizaka for Shimoda completely destroyed our shape, leaving Ao by himself in the defensive midfield spots and with no-one really sure what they were supposed to be doing ahead of him. I have no idea what Oniki was thinking with this change. Wakizaka did ok, but the change totally disrupted everyone else. It can be no coincidence that this was our dodgiest part of the match. Meiji had more than enough chances to knock us out. We were rubbish. They were unlucky. I don’t feel great about constantly criticizing Oniki, and I don’t particularly want to see him sacked. He said after the game that he was disappointed with the performance, but ultimately, he’s one of the few people in the stadium who can actually do something about it. I’d just love it if he did a bit of a better job.

Plucky and honorable Meiji -

Meiji did a perfect job of playing their plucky underdog part in this game and as I said above were unlucky not to win in the end. I think Arai only had to make a couple of easy saves, but they had some very good chances. If they had managed to get the ball on target from any of these many opportunities this would have been a very different game. They did a good job of really getting into us, pressing us hard and disrupting us successfully for most of the game. It’s a real shame for them that they went out via an own goal, but perhaps in a way it’s better to lose unluckily than to be beaten due to your inadequacies. On paper, this should have been a relatively easy victory for us, (even more so considering Meiji had their three best players absent playing in a different match), but it by no means was. I think many people looking at Frontale this year would say we’re doing alright and whilst the results just about back this up, the performances tell a different story. I’m delighted it didn’t go to extra time as I was sick of watching this from about 60 minutes in, but we could have had no complaints if it had done. Pleasingly, the Meiji players went all round the ground after the match and got a great reception from our fans. I certainly clapped them harder than I had clapped at any other time in this game. Displeasingly, we made them wait whilst we did a totally unnecessary Vai La De Frontale which most of the players looked embarrassed about and which felt a bit of an extravagance given what had preceded it. Perhaps though, our fans lead by the Kazoku are recently grasping any opportunity for positivity and celebration. I can’t blame them to be honest, but I think we could have been a bit more classy and skipped the song this time.


So, we’re through and we’ll meet Okayama in the next round. I have glossed somewhat over the action in this game again. I could have said the Manabu was captain, that Michael James had a diving header saved, that Abe was unlucky to hit the bar with a lovely lob, or that their keeper did a great job of keeping them in the game in the first half. Instead though, I think I’d rather just keep on with the moaning. Meiji deserved more than they got and we deserved less. But such is football, and it’s not exactly uncommon for a team doing well to grind out results through poor performances. Doesn’t make it much fun to watch though, does it? Next up we have Sagan Tosu at home on Sunday evening. Torres seems now to be footloose and fancy free having announced his retirement so it seems unlikely that we’ll have a repeat of last year's game where we battered them but it finished 0-0. Far more likely is us sharing a high scoring draw with them or even getting beaten. I’m working a little along the lines of a reverse jinx with this negativity, so we’ll see if that works. I’m pretty down about all this at the moment. Would love us to show even a tiny glimpse of some excitement as I don’t have many games left before I’m off on my summer holiday where I can probably watch a different team disappoint me! At least that holiday will give you all a break from this blogging misery!

Team

GK 21. ARAI Shota
DF 26. MAGUINHO

DF 34. YAMAMURA Kazuya
DF 29. MICHAEL JAMES
DF 7. KURUMAYA Shintaro (Yellow card 45')
MF 25. TANAKA Ao

MF 22. SHIMODA Hokuto

MF 8. ABE Hiroyuki

MF 19. SAITO Manabu

FW 9. LEANDRO DAMIAO

FW 20. CHINEN Kei

Subs
GK 24. ANDO Shunsuke

DF 2. NOBORIZATO Kyohei (on for MAGUINHO 61')

DF 5. TANIGUCHI Shogo

MF 14. NAKAMURA Kengo (on for LEANDRO DAMIAO 61')
MF 16. HASEGAWA Tatsuya

MF 28. WAKIZAKA Yasuto  (on for SHIMODA 86')

FW 30. MIYASHIRO Taisei

My Frontale Man Of The Match

This was by no means a vintage performance, but there were some positives perhaps. Yamamura was solid in his first start at centre back. Arai did what was required. Kengo looked bright when he came on (at least until Oniki totally smudged our shape), but given that he is probably not going to get much of a go of it this year as he’s stuck behind two Oniki favourites in the the pecking order, I’ll give it to…

SHIMODA Hokuto - great performance in the middle, passing and tackling with ease and doing exactly what was required. Typical that Oniki took him off! Real bonus was his set-pieces which were much more dangerous than those of any of the many other players who’ve been taking them recently and lead to our marvelous goal.

Goals  

OWN GOAL (Frontale) 15' 1-0

Highlights