Vs Kashiwa Reysol (home) 8/10/25 Levain Cup Semi Final 1st Leg

 

Kawasaki Frontale 3 - 1 Kashiwa Reysol 

I really need to have a think about this blog. I’ve been putting off writing this post all day and this was actually a fun game and a good result. If I can’t even be bothered after a 3-1 win, what hope is there for the next absolutely dull 1-0 defeat we suffer? Although I suppose I might have been putting it off because we basically play Kashiwa every few days at the moment so maybe that’s why I’m not overly enthused about writing about them again. The return leg of the tie is coming up soon, I’ve totally wasted today and then tomorrow and Saturday I’ll be working and busy. So this really is going to be thrown together with the absolute minimum of effort.

Us -

I thought we were pretty good. Well, in the first half anyway. Two nice goals, one penalty turned down by VAR for… well actually I have no idea and heard that I would be a bit pissed off when I saw it. I can’t find it, so perhaps the highlights packages are sparing the blushes of the officials. Again. Sung-Ryong continued in goal and did fine again. Definitely can’t be blamed for the goal. It’s a shame we once again failed to get a clean sheet but we were up against it for quite a lot of the second half so conceding just once and scoring three in total is fine by me. I guess the big talking points of the game will be the injuries. Miura off after only a few minutes and Oshima returning from injury and not long afterwards returning back to injury. Apparently both of the injuries are quite serious. Although it didn’t seem like it at the time as Oshima was initially moved up front, maybe to see if he could run it off. We’d used all our subs, but I would have thought that if it was bad we would have just taken him off straightaway. We’ll see, I guess. Well done to Tanabe for coming in and covering for Miura. He did well I thought. That’ll do for the us section.

Them -

Nothing original to say here. Not even going to mention the ‘Kashiwa Stupid’ flag. Guess I should mention one of their other flags though but this joke only works if you have Bob Marley’s ‘Buffalo Soldier’ in mind when you read the flag, which said ‘FOOTBALL SOLDIER’ (from the edge of Chiba). Couldn’t see the part in brackets but I suppose it was covered up by another flag, right? I’d say we were quite fortunate that Kashiwa didn’t have their shooting boots on. But maybe if they had done we would just have saved all of their shots anyway 😸. The stats at the end of the game looked like we’d really done a smash and grab on them, but on I don’t think Kashiwa’s many more shots told the story of the game. At the same time, not sure we deserved to win by two clear goals but I’ll definitely take it. As I said before, I’d be happy for us to win the Levain and they can have the league. Seems reasonable, right?

Ref -

Yamamoto Yudai. Was very irritated by him during the game. Will never know about that VAR for the penalty I guess. But did make a note about a terrible tackle on Tanabe in the second half which we didn’t even get a free kick from, let alone one of their players get a card. Will never know about this either. But as it was new era golden boy Yamamoto in charge we can probably presume he got it wrong. 

Next up, Kashiwa again. Hasebe will probably have to do some shuffling around at the back. I imagine it will be the same defence we finished the game with. He has said that we aren’t prioritising this tournament as we still mathematically have a chance in the league, but presumably this is what we are supposed to say and the truth might be different. So I’d expect pretty much the same players again aside from the injuries. The same result would be nice too!  

 

Team

GK 1. JUNG Sung-Ryong
DF 31. VAN VERMESKERKEN Sai

DF 22. Filip UREMOVIC (Yellow card 32') 

DF 5. SASAKI Asahi
DF 13. MIURA Sota
MF 19. KAWAHARA So
MF 6. YAMAMOTO Yuki
MF 14. WAKIZAKA Yasuto 
FW 17. ITO Tatsuya
FW 9. ERISON

FW 23. MARCINHO

Subs

GK 21. ANDO Shunsuke
MF 8. TACHIBANADA Kento (on for KAWAHARA 75')

MF 10. OSHIMA Ryota (on for YAMAMOTO 75')
FW 11. KOBAYASHI Yu 

DF 15. TANABE Shuto (on for MIURA 6')
FW 24. MIYAGI Ten (on for MARCINHO 75')
DF 27. KAMIHASHI Ryota
FW 41. IENAGA Akihiro
FW 91. Lazar ROMANIC  (on for ERISON 61')

Goals
YAMAMOTO (Frontale) 10' 1-0
VAN WERMERSKERKEN (Frontale) 23' 2-0
KOIZUMI (Kashiwa) 62' 1-1
ITO (Frontale) 85' 3-1

Highlights

Vs Kyoto Sanga (home) 2/3/25 J League match 4

Kawasaki Frontale 0 - 1 Kyoto Sanga

Oh blimey. Back to Earth with a bang after the highs… ermmm…. after the excitement… ermmm… after the relief (that’ll do) of Wednesday’s game. This was an awful match ruined by a useless referee which should have been a 0-0 with both teams being docked points for being shit. Maybe the absolute worst preparation possible for Wednesday’s ACL away game. Or perhaps it will prove to be the kick up the backside we need. After a promising start to the season we’re back to being pretty dodgy. Some things never change. Whoever the manager is, whoever the players are, we always struggle against Kyoto. If the poor game wasn’t bad enough, there were also some absolutely idiotic comments on the Frontale J League forum to irritate me. But I’ll try to spare everyone’s discomfort and get this out of the way with as little pain and effort as possible.

Us -

First of all credit to Hasebe for the rotation. I think it was the right thing to do and definitely shows a break from the past. With a big game coming up on Wednesday and six games in the first 19 days of the season, (I knew the schedule was bad, but when I counted the days I realised quite how stupid it was), it’s clear that we shouldn’t be using the same players for all the matches. (I would mention what Oniki would have done here but I think we should probably move on and stop talking about him). Even disregarding the upcoming game I thought we still should rotate a bit as people are clearly dipping from their best already. Also I thought that Erison deserved a start up front after scoring the winner against Avispa. So, so far this is quite positive isn’t it? Probably though the player who is most out of sorts this year is Tachibanada, and for some reason he was kept in the team. Poor Tachibanada. Ever since he was made captain a few years ago, (presumably to try to stop him from leaving), his performances have dived off a cliff. And in this game he made another awful mistake, basically playing a perfect through ball for a Kyoto attack. Apparently he was trying to pass the ball back to Sung-Ryong. It was nowhere near getting there. I feel really bad for SR as he hasn’t played any games this year and then his potential clean sheet was lost due to circumstances completely out of his control. He’d made some good saves in the game but had no chance with the goal. Fair play to Hasebe for not taking the psychopath path and removing Tachibanada in the next set of subs, but it’s probably a good thing he took him off later. I don’t think he should be starting as long as he’s in the terrible form he is. He hadn’t had a very good game before his clanger anyway. It seems again that Tachibanada plus one other defensive midfielder approach is not a good idea. I don’t think two defensive midfielders work for us at all to be honest, and we played best this year when we had one player there with two in front, where the player staying back occasionally went forward and one of his teammates stepped in to cover. I’m thinking of Kawahara there with Yamamoto in front. In this match the midfield was a bit of a waste of time. Nothing happened there. Two players sitting next to each other doesn’t help us attack. And Yamauchi ahead doesn’t really seem the answer there either. I know I keep saying it, but I’d like to see Ienaga there if we’re not using Wakizaka. But anyway, there’s not much else to mention about us in this game as we were a bit rubbish. Even though we had 14 shots I don’t think we’d have scored yet if we were still playing. Erison did a good job up front winning the ball but had no support really. Verhon and Ito (on the left in his preferred position) didn’t do much. The fact is we never looked like getting anything other than a 0-0 out of this game. And in that way, not much has changed since last year. Some final conclusions for this part regarding Hasebe’s first choice players. I think it’s now clear he prefers Yamaguchi over SR. I think both have been let down by their teammates so can’t really say who should be there. I think it’s also becoming apparent that Hasebe probably favours Ienaga when fit on the right and Yamada up front. So some might say that he didn’t take this game seriously enough with his rotation. Presumably the same people would also criticise him for his team selections in the ACL saying he’s not taking that seriously either. I think the pecking order is becoming clear, but the fact is even when the first choice players were brought on in this match, we didn’t look any better. It was exactly the same really. So I think we have other more pressing issues to sort out. It’s still early on in what most of us probably thought would be a season of transition. And Hasebe has had a stupidly busy fixture list since he got his feet under the managers desk. The players left for the airport directly after this game so the intensity continues. Perhaps changes will come when he has a bit more time. I think the disappointing thing is that we’ve dropped off so far from the first few games of the year. However, maybe they were false dawns and we need to wait a while. I hope something is coming though, as the last three matches have been extremely reminiscent of last year.

Them -

Ah, Kyoto! When you hear the word Kyoto, what do you think of? Beautiful temples? Geisha? Tea ceremonies? Zen gardens? Bamboo forests? Or dull clogging anti-football? For me it’s becoming the latter. Kyoto came into this game with one plan and that was to boot us all over the pitch in an emulation of their managers legendary power harassment training style. Actually trivia fans, this was our second match in a row where we came up against teams managed by people who’d previously been dismissed for power harassment. Lovely! It’s a bit unfair to say they only had one game plan though as they rolled out a second one later on in the match after we’d gifted them a goal. That second plan was to relentlessly time waste, rolling around on the floor, dwelling endlessly on goal kicks and particularly annoyingly, changing a sub at the last minute after the player initially chosen to be subbed had dawdled, (hang on, dawdling isn’t right. It sounds much too fast and purposeful), to the edge of the pitch before the sub was switched to the player who was standing at the exact spot on the pitch that was as far as possible from any sideline. In Raphael Elias, it’s kind of strange to see a player with such a distinctively soulful moustache taking part in such clogger tactics. Almost as if you went to a Lionel Richie concert expecting some smooth pop and found out that he is now doing a side project that blends the dumbest mosh pit hardcore with power electronics. This is all just sour grapes anyway. They had the game plan that we knew they would have and once again we couldn’t deal with it. Their fans had traveled in numbers to support them. Double digit numbers admittedly, but in numbers all the same. And when the final whistle came all 57 of those away fans were justifiably proud of the battling (mainly kicking…) performance they’d put in. If we hadn’t gifted them a goal, perhaps they still would have won as they had as many shots on target as we did. But blimey, this was an ugly game where the real winner absolutely fundamentally was not football.

Ref -

It seems that the pool of golden boy refs is getting smaller every year due to retirements, but the J League’s current chosen one Yamamoto Yudai was back in town. Here are some words from previous posts on games he’s had with us:

‘Yamamoto is a useless attention seeking waste of space of a ref’

‘myriad of mistakes [from] my most disliked ref of the season so far’

‘Yamamoto, whose every action managed to irritate me in this game.’

‘keeps the game flowing, by always dishing out one level less of punishment than is deserved’

‘My game notes are mainly his name and ‘absolute…’, ’total…’, 'unbelievable...' or 'absolute total unbelievable...' followed by four letter expletives’

And you can pretty much just copy those for this game. You could say Tachibanada cost us the game, but I’d say Yamamoto should take at least 50% of the blame. When one team is coming to foul, a referee wanting to let the game flow whatever happens will obviously favour them. There was an absurd lack of yellow cards in this game. I know it’s a new directive from the J League to not give them out so easily but it’s clearly going to lead to teams fouling incessantly. It wasn’t only Yamamoto who was to blame though. His linesmen were equally useless. How the ref and the linesman could come to completely different decisions for something that had happened directly in front of both of them, I don’t know. I suppose the silver lining in that situation is that perhaps at least one of them was right. But wild inconsistency in decisions again. What some refs will give as a red, others don’t even think is a foul. Elbow in the back to Erison with no attempt to get the ball, not even a foul. And then as the attack continues the slightest touch from Erison on a Kyoto defender who is apparently mortally wounded by the contact, well of course, blow the whistle and give them a free kick. There definitely seems to be a tendency in the J League for refs to treat foreign players differently when it comes to physicality. If a bulky Brazilian is fouled, well clearly it must be a dive as they are so big and strong. If the same player makes a challenge, clearly it’s a foul as they are too big and strong. An offside was given against Erison who was clearly in an offside position but had stopped before the attack started and was walking back away from the goal as the attack continued on the other side of the pitch, nowhere near him. Erison was never going to get anything from Yamamoto in this game. I don’t know if it would have been the same if Yamada was playing. I presume so, given that Yamamoto likes to ‘let the game flow’. He even likes to let half time flow. When Erison was fouled at the end of the first half, he refused to let the physios on, (as I think he did in the whole of the game actually. Little did we know that Yamamoto is actually a qualified doctor who can diagnose from just a quick look), and instead blew up for half time. By the time Erison was back on his feet Yamamoto was already back inside the stand presumably high-fiving his colleagues on another classic Yamamoto performance. As much as I moaned about Kyoto’s physical anti-football style, it’s a legitimate tactic, so if they want to do that, fair enough I guess, and it was effective on this occasion (and many previous ones against us too). But the referee went so far as to not only enable it but actually actively seem to encourage it. Good riddance Yamamoto. Hope we don’t see you again this season.

So yeah, a pretty grim game. As I said above, we didn’t deserve to win. We probably didn’t deserve to draw, but equally Kyoto didn’t deserve either of those outcomes either. It was an ugly and pointless 90 minutes. We’ve had a bit of luck so far this season so maybe this was where karma came in and luck went against us. But I’m not sure we can say we were unlucky. If you never look like scoring it’s unlikely you’re going to win. It’s still early days and I think everyone would agree that we have a more important game coming on Wednesday. So if we’re not useless for that game, I guess we’d all accept the lessons we learned in this match (if indeed there were any lessons to be learnt. Maybe don’t pass the ball to their striker with your defence pushing forward? Don’t let the ref Yamamoto near a football pitch ever again? Maybe that one’s out of our hands…). It’s easy to point fingers at the opposition and the ref but the fact is we weren’t up to it in this match. Next up, two ACL games, first away and then at home against Shanghai Shenhua. Then after that we are away at Okayama. Of course the first two games are crucial, but I think the third is also pretty important as we’re starting to stutter in the league. At least it will be a new stadium to tick off! And maybe we might have got our act together a bit by then. Fingers crossed.

Team

GK 1. JUNG Sung-Ryong
DF 5. SASAKI Asahi
DF 44. CESAR HAYDAR

DF 7. KURUMAYA Shintaro
DF 15. TANABE Shuto
MF 19. KAWAHARA So

MF 8. TACHIBANADA Kento
MF 28. PATRICK VERHON
MF 26. YAMAUCHI Hinata
MF 17. ITO Tatsuya
FW 9. ERISON

Subs

GK 98. YAMAGUCHI Louis
DF 2. TAKAI Kota (on for CESAR HAYDAR 46')
MF 14. WAKIZAKA Yasuto (on for YAMAUCHI 57')
FW 20. YAMADA Shin (on for TACHIBANADA 77')
FW 23. MARCINHO (on for ITO 57')
FW 24. MIYAGI Ten

DF 31. VAN WERMESKERKEN Sai
FW 41. IENAGA Akihiro (on for PATRICK VERHON 57')
MF 6. YAMAMOTO Yuki 

My Frontale Man Of The Match

Despite this game being a massive steaming turd of a match, I feel I have to recognise a couple of players.

ERISON & TANABE Shuto - the former did a very different job up front that we get from Yamada, winning the ball and looking to lay it off to others. Sadly this didn’t work in this game but maybe we could try playing both of them together as that seems to be the screamingly obvious option right now. And Tanabe, who was insanely criticised online had a really solid game I thought. Of course he’s going to struggle to get past Miura who’s been perhaps our best player so far this year, but I’m really happy Tanabe seems to be progressing.


Goals

OKUGAWA (Kyoto) 49' 0-1

Highlights

Vs Albirex Niigata (away) 9/10/24 Levain Cup Semi Final 1st Leg

Albirex Niigata 4 - 1 Kawasaki Frontale

With a two legged-tie, the first leg can sometimes be a tough sell. We never do particularly well away at Niigata and this fairly hastily arranged game on a Wednesday evening, with us having a shit year definitely fitted that bill. So instead I went to work, feeling confident that we might do the business as recently my absence from our games has meant that we play well and my attendance meant that we just pass the ball endlessly. And as this is basically only the first half nothing would really be decided and all the excitement would come in the second leg on Sunday, right?  Well, unless we got so utterly battered to the point of almost making the second leg irrelevant. It’s a bit of a shame that happened, particularly after we smashed Machida last weekend. But somehow utterly predictable. You might imagine I would have run out of original ways to get irritated by Oniki but perhaps I’ve found another relatively new one after this match. We’ve done well in a few games recently where Oniki has finally given in to the calls to play 442 with an approach that puts a bit more emphasis on trying to score than trying to rack up passes. Yamamoto and Erison were back in the team together, (admittedly due to Oniki running out of options so definitely more by luck than judgement), and were playing well. Quite why Oniki decided to break up that partnership for every game that followed a good performance, I don’t know. All the years he’s been sticking with the same formation and the same line up in spite of us playing awfully. Finally he perhaps accidentally came up with something that did work and suddenly he wants to rotate and change the formation between every match. It’s almost as if he got a win to take the pressure off and then decided to immediately revert to working on his plan of getting his favoured formation and players back and blasting regardless of the fact that it is a terrible idea and there’s any evidence it will ever happen. Even when he’s won some games doing something different he still thinks that his original way is the best. It’s infuriating, but utterly predictable.

As I have only seen the highlights of his match, I’m not going to write anything about it apart from the moan above. Actually highlights isn’t really the right name for them. From our point of view It was more like a blooper reel. I think I can only remember two shots of ours being in there and the rest was Yamaguchi looking frustrated whilst picking the ball out of the back of the net. 568 passes for just the one shot on target. Really awful stuff, real Oniki stuff. Barring an insane comeback, Oniki’s fucked another competition at almost the first time of asking. I am really looking forward to the end of the season. Well, as long as it brings the end of his time with us. If it doesn’t, I might look into the possibility of somehow hibernating for the whole of 2025. I think we’ve reached the stage now where all of the success that he brought us has been undermined by his utter uselessness for the last three or four years. If we somehow managed to win this tournament it would be kind of undeserved as we were parachuted in to the quarter finals against a J2 team and barely scraped through. And to be honest, as petty as it sounds, I don’t really want Oniki to finish his time with us with any kind of success. He should have gone a long time ago. We shouldn’t have offered him at least the last two contract extensions, but equally he shouldn’t have accepted them. I think he’s going to be really shown up in his next job, particularly if it’s at a big money basket case team.

To make a very clumsy cooking comparison, when he took over from Kazama, he basically had to only make the change of putting the deliciously cooked meal on a plate and serving it, rather than employing the risky but admittedly more exciting route of flinging it across the room, forkful by forkful directly into the diner’s mouth. As the years have passed Oniki has used up all the pasta, run down the spice rack, gone through everything in the freezer and is now wondering why no one has done the shopping. At the same time, the kitchen is now about to properly catch on fire. Although he accidentally avoided a massive inferno on a few previous occasions by accidentally turning the gas off whilst trying to switch the lights on, he’s made sure to go back and set things on fire again immediately afterwards as he was worried that going straight from building catching fire to safety was a bit too much of an adventurous step. He’s still trying to make that original meal without realising he’s put all his new ingredients into the wrong containers. And let’s be honest, after we’ve been made to eat the same meal for eight years, even if the cooking had improved it would still be quite boring. As it is, it’s now an almost inedible mess and the best we can hope for is that we don’t get food poisoning from it. On a couple of occasions he had a go at using the rice and curry sauce he found to make a curry and it was nice! But a bit too spicy for his taste, so afterwards immediately went back to attempting to use the rice and curry sauce to make an omelet instead and was shocked when it didn’t seem to work. I know this lengthy analogy doesn’t really work, but writing it was marginally more fun than watching us play football right now.

Next up, our almost certain elimination from another competition due to our manager completely fucking things up. As I didn’t see this game, some of you might think it’s a bit unfair to criticise Oniki so much. But don’t worry, I’ve seen plenty of his uselessness already, so even from a distance feel I can spot an Oniki dog’s dinner when I see one. After that, we have Gamba at home next Friday for yet another Friday Night J League. Let the joy overflow!

Team

GK 98. YAMAGUCHI Louis
DF 31. VAN WERMESKERKEN Sai
DF 5. SASAKI Asahi
DF 44. CESAR HAYDAR
DF 13. MIURA Sota
MF 8. TACHIBANADA Kento
MF 19. KAWAHARA So (Yellow card 81')
MF 14. WAKIZAKA Yasuto
MF 23. MARCINHO
FW 17. TONO Daiya
FW 9. ERISON

Subs

GK 22. HAYASAKA Yuki
FW 11. KOBAYASHI Yu

DF 15. TANABE Shuto
FW 20. YAMADA Shin (on for ERISON 46')
FW 26. YAMAUCHI Hinata
FW 30. SEGAWA Yusuke (on for MARCINHO 54')
DF 35. MARUYAMA Yuichi (on for CESAR HAYDAR 54')
FW 41. IENAGA Akihiro (on for TONO 46')
MF 77. YAMAMOTO Yuki (on for TACHIBANADA 69')

Goals

TANIGUCHI (Niigata) 25' 1-0
OTA (Niigata) 45' 2-0
HASEGAWA (Niigata) 50' 3-0
HOSHI (Niigata) 53' 4-0
SEGAWA (Frontale) 71' 4-1

Highlights

Vs Ventforet Kofu (home) 4/9/24 Levain Cup Quarter Final 1st Leg

Kawasaki Frontale 1 - 0 Ventforet Kofu  

After perhaps what was one of the most infuriating experiences of the season we’ve moved on to what was perhaps one of the most… erm… underwhelming wins of the season. Parachuted into the Levain Cup with only eight teams remaining, at the start of the year this would certainly have looked like the easiest way for us to get our hands on a trophy this year. With our campaigns in every other competition lying in tatters, the Levain Cup is now our only way of getting anything out of what has been an even worse season than last year. With the return leg coming up soon, this post will be in the shorter style that I always attempt but which often gets thwarted by my waffling. Here we go.

- This was a win but it was far from convincing. Before the game, imagining that it would be exactly the same team as it always is, I suspected we’d draw the match and then lose late on in the second leg. An uncharacteristic rotation from Oniki, (more on that in a minute), meant that I was actually quite excited to watch this match. As it was, this was pretty much the same as ever really, with some ponderous build up finally resulting in some bad shooting, all just with some different faces on the pitch. The long ball tactics that Oniki conjured up for the Consadole defeat and which were a crucial part of what he thought was a good first half performance in that game are now gone. I couldn’t see any unique approach for this game. And let’s be honest, even when Oniki does change something, it’s basically the equivalent of swapping the tangerine slices for mandarin ones in his fruit salad, a change which is pretty difficult to notice and which has no real significance or effect. All of which underlines the fact that Oniki’s negative influence remains strong. This was the absolute easiest possible game for us in this stage of this cup. A home leg against a J2 team who are resolutely mid-table this year. But we only managed to win thanks to a mis-hit shot in the first half before a lot of wasting of chances. Due to the new rules, Kofu using a concussion sub meant that we could have made six changes from our bigger than usual bench. But the master Oniki only made four, and even those made us play worse than we had been doing before he intervened. I don’t know what the opposite of a golden touch is, but whatever it is, Oniki seems to have it. The fact that he rotated, whilst both welcome and extremely surprising, was also quite confusing. He usually doesn’t do this kind of thing apart from against non-league teams. Does this mean that he is really worried about relegation and is saving our ‘best’ players for the league? Does it mean that he saw how awful we were against Consadole and wanted to shake things up? There’s no way to tell. Particularly as he obviously included Wakizaka, who’d played pretty badly against Consadole. Oh and of course Tachibanada, but at right back naturally. I suspect for the next match he’ll revert to the Consadole line up, but maybe with one change. I think he’ll drop Sai (for absolutely no reason), play Tachibanada at right back and put Kawahara in midfield. Maybe I’ll be proved completely wrong, but that’s my guess.

- A bit about the stinker performances in this match. I mentioned Wakizaka above and whilst people might think I have an agenda against him, this was definitely another terrible game for him. He seems obsessed with desperately trying to do something fancy and is prepared to make stupid mistake after stupid mistake in pursuit of this ultimately pointless goal. Along with that I guess I’m sore because he tried to shoot when a simple sideways pass would have presented a teammate with an open goal which would have made the second leg a bit less worrying, and the fact that he seems so determined to dominate the score sheet that he was blocking Erison’s goal bound shots. (Do I need to put the winking face in here? Or do people understand this is not entirely serious?) He’s obviously not a bad player but he’s not playing well at the moment and Oniki’s insistence on including him endlessly is pissing me right off. Another kind of unfair thing to say but which I apparently seem to feel obliged to declare is that at the moment Miura really doesn’t seem to be as good as people think he is. Sasaki was much better at left back and we got worse after he was switched to the right. This all feels a bit harsh though as it’s not the players’ fault. It is Oniki’s fault. And as it’s not a great look to whinge when we’ve won, I’ll leave the moaning at this and then presumably pick it up again after the next match. In conclusion, we won, but it wasn’t a massive test, and thanks to our one dimensional approach, it’s one that we could easily have failed.

- A few words about the debutants. Kawahara was probably the stand out player. Which isn’t exactly great news when you consider that’s the one area of the pitch that we have the most cover in. He looked good in the tackle and had a nice range of passes. I’m optimistic about his future, IF he gets a fair crack. Hayder had a solid debut too I thought. It looks a bit like he’s going to be the Jesiel replacement. I don’t know if Jesiel will be leaving us but the fact that he keeps getting injured is a bit of a concern. We haven’t seen the best of Jesiel for a few years now, so hopefully Hayder can fill the gap that Jesiel has left due to his injuries. Having a reliable centre back would free up Sasaki to play on the left where I think he’s better. But anyone who remembers when Jesiel joined us will recall that in spite of him looking better than the rest of our centre backs, he was only given a shot once there were no other options, so maybe we shouldn’t expect Oniki to see Hayder have a good game and then play him again. Yamaguchi did fine but was only really tested on a couple of occasions. I’m still a bit miffed by Oniki’s treatment of Hayasaka who now seems to be back to third choice after a defeat where he wasn’t at fault. It was also kind of baffling to see Yamaguchi given man of the match in the stadium considering how little he had to do and the level of the opposition. I presume Oniki doesn’t pick this award, but jeez, it seemed like there was some kind of emotional bullying going on to both Hayasaka (who after coming through our youth team finally got a chance, was shockingly let down by the players in front of him and was immediately exiled) and Tono, who would have been expected to get it given that he scored the only goal. Yamaguchi did his job and made a couple of decent saves, but when you consider that Kofu didn't really have many chances and the fact that it wasn't some kind of against all odds protection of a goal that was getting battered it seems a bit strange to single him out for special praise.

- Once again, nothing about the opposition or the ref. This was a fairly uneventful game. It was a shame that Erison’s goal was ruled out by VAR but even from the initial replay on the big screen before VAR was even mentioned I wondered if it might be. We in the stadium certainly didn’t see enough replay angles to make any conclusive decision but there seemed to be enough for the ref to change his mind when at the monitor. He did have to watch it quite a few times though to decide on what I guess is supposed to be a clear and obvious error. The cancellation of the goal really took the wind of our sails though. That wind was only a light breeze though, but I guess it shows quite how on edge everyone is at the moment and how their confidence is pretty fragile. But I have no issues with the decision, and the subs Oniki made had a greater negative impact anyway. Oops here I go again with the whinging…

Next up the second leg in Kofu on Sunday. I made my team prediction above and don’t particularly want to predict a result. And don’t need to predict anything tactical, do I? 😉 After that we have a relegation six pointer against Sagan Tosu the following Friday. Way too much Friday Night J League remaining this season for my liking. If we do slip up on Sunday and then go on to slip up again next Friday we could be in a hell of a lot of trouble. There are a lot of teams behind us but at the same time the points difference isn’t much and recently we’ve been known to give our rivals in that area of the table a gift-wrapped three points for free. And after Sagan Tosu we still have to play Kyoto… And when the ACL starts will have a fixture pile up. And presumably still just the one idea. Blimey.

Team

GK 98. YAMAGUCHI Louis
DF 8. TACHIBANADA Kento
DF 44. CESAR HAYDAR
DF 7. KURUMAYA Shintaro
DF 5. SASAKI Asahi
MF 19. KAWAHARA So
MF 77. YAMAMOTO Yuki (Yellow card 61')

MF 14. WAKIZAKA Yasuto
FW 30. SEGAWA Yusuke (Yellow card 51')

FW 9. ERISON
FW 17. TONO Daiya

 

Subs

GK 22. HAYASAKA Yuki

MF 6. ZE RICARDO

DF 13. MIURA Sota (on for YAMAMOTO 74')
DF 15. TANABE Shuto
FW 18. Bafetimbi GOMIS
FW 20. YAMADA Shin (on for ERISON 74')
FW 23. MARCINHO (on for SEGAWA 83')
FW 26. YAMAUCHI Hinata
FW 41. IENAGA Akihiro (on for WAKIZAKA 74')

Goals

TONO (Frontale) 27' 1-0

My Frontale Man Of The Match

In such an underwhelming game I wouldn’t normally give this out but given that the decision in the stadium was a bit of a weird one I feel like I should balance that out. No offence to Yamaguchi but as he didn't really have that much to do, it’s going to…

KAWAHARA So and SAKASI Asahi - Kawahara looked a lot better than some others who’ve played in midfield for us this year and looks very promising. Sasaki had a good game in his preferred position. Presumably if Oniki continues to Oniki he won’t get the chance to do that very often though.

Highlights

Vs Machida Zelvia (home) 7/4/24 J League match 7

Kawasaki Frontale 0 - 1 Machida Zelvia

Aaaaaahhhhh. Another lovely day out at the football! What could think better than getting out the house in a lovely spring day, having a beer at the stadium, singing the songs of and cheering for your favourite players as they enter the pitch and then watching another 90 minutes where we almost entirely failed to have a shot on target?‘But come on’, you say, ‘Don’t exaggerate!’ I apologise. We did have one shot on target. I can’t remember it, but the stats say so. And ‘Don’t be so glum’, you say, ‘This is only one game’. And once again, I have to hold my hands up and acknowledge my error as we’ve had plenty of shots on target recently. In fact we’ve had a massive 13 in total in our last five games. Accounting for additional time in games, I reckon that works out at a wonderful one shot on target every 38 minutes. So it’s kind of unfortunate that I can’t remember yesterday’s one shot on target. If we carry on in this way, and why on earth would anyone ever imagine that we’d try to play in any other way, I’ll have to make sure I pay more attention and enjoy, if my calculations are correct, the 81 remaining shots on target we will have in the next 31 league games. And let’s look on the bright side. If we’re only having one shot on target every 38 minutes, I guess that means our conversion rate is pretty good, as we’re scoring about once every 70 minutes. Bravo! Who says I’m never positive on here? So what was there apart from the feast of shots on target in this game? Well I guess we had the league debut of Ze Ricardo and a first start for Yamauchi. Naturally they were the first two players to be changed, apart from the injured Jesiel. (More on that later). After all it’s the Oniki way to give new players a little sniff of the action and then withdraw them at the first opportunity, apparently believing that it is them who is letting us down, rather than all the other players who’ve played all the other games that we’ve been terrible in. Or, dare I say it, could it be the manager who is still going with the same idea, which has diminished in effectiveness so significantly that it must now be at minus levels? Our game plan literally now helps the opposition beat us. It used to be the case that if you liked seeing attacking play and goals we would be a good team to watch. That probably remains to be the case, but now we’re a good team to watch because the opposition will almost certainly attack and score. This year has been rotten so far. We’ve lost at home to both of the promoted teams. BRAVO! We’ve lost to a team that currently sit in 17th and have only one win this year. BRAVO! Still, at least it means that I can get to the pub quickly after the match as I don’t think there’s much point in staying to wait to clap the players after the game. I think they probably feel pretty embarrassed to have to come and stand in front of us. Aaaaahhhh.

Us -

It’s a shame that I can’t have a bit more fun in these posts at the moment. There’s no room for funnies and it’s all just a bit bleak, isn’t it? I’m sorry to sound like a broken record, but this one’s got to go down as another Oniki disaster. In retrospect, the surprise inclusion of two centre backs on the bench probably hinted at what would most likely happen. Clearly Jesiel wasn’t fit to start the game. Almost immediately he was stretching after every effort, looking like he was injured. But was he removed? Of course not! Far better to wait till he was really properly injured and we’d conceded, right? Oniki has done this before with Jesiel too. We know he’s a great player but we also know that he’s a bit injury prone. After he got back to some kind of fitness after a long injury, he was absolutely unnecessarily used as a sub away at Sagan Tosu a few years ago and came on and got another big injury. We can only hope that this isn’t the case again. Not only did Oniki failing to take him off when he was clearly not in a good way probably worsen the injury but also basically gave them their goal. Jesiel could hardly move at that stage so it’s no wonder that they cut through us with ease. Also it probably didn’t help that Oniki still insists on playing a striker at right back. It’s no surprise that opposition teams like to attack down that side. More often than not, they’ll either get past him or they’ll get a free kick. I don’t blame Segawa though. I blame the manager who thinks he’s a better option there than all the right backs we have. I guess we can at least be slightly thankful that Tachibanada wasn’t available for this game as if he had been, Oniki would probably have played him at right back and moved Segawa to left back. No idea what’s happened to Tachibananda to be honest. We don’t normally get this kind of information so that’s no surprise, I guess. Oniki is a problem. He’s been grasping so hard for something, anything to turn our form around. Well anything other than making some big changes to the team and tactics. Of course we know those can’t be tampered with, right? So when we got a bit of a flukey win against FC Tokyo he felt he’d found his magic formula. And decided to wring it to death through three games in nine days. A not-in-perfect-condition Jesiel shouldn’t be playing three whole games in nine days. Ienaga is almost 40 and he too was expected to play for the majority of those three games too. And even for the younger and fitter players, I suspect the relentless shitness of our play has got to be grinding them down a bit.

We're probably either about to blast the ball over the bar and into
the stand or more likely play it back to Sung-Ryong

And then think about the players who are watching from the stands, seeing how terrible we are playing and are still not really getting a look in. But you know, keep on with the same stuff, right? Do that short passing stuff at the back to ‘draw out the opposition’. If you manage to not lose the ball and successfully draw the opposition out, as soon as you get to the centre circle, be sure to pause, pass the ball back, generously letting the opponents get back in position in their line of ten defenders. Joyous stuff! Under no circumstances try to attack. Make sure that Erison doesn’t get the ball. If by some chance he gets the ball, make sure that he has no support. Keep those lovely sideways passes coming. In this game it was an impressive 559 passes per shot on target. On Wednesday against YFM we only managed 304 passes for our one shot which must have been a huge disappointment. In this game we had 62% possession, a massive 17 shots to their 7 but still they managed to get double the amount on target. Is it just me, or is our football just a complete waste of time? We’ve often spoken about our football as being a kind of art installation, where the aesthetic is more important than result. So I’m sure everyone in the stadium really enjoyed the first 38 minutes of the game where we didn’t even manage a shot off target let alone one on target. Once again our starting line up did nothing and it was only when we made changes that we started to do something, But let’s be honest, even then we didn’t do much. Looking back I guess the real highlight for me was seeing that arsehole Tani get sent off. I’ve had a problem with him since he got a Damiao overhead goal ruled out by crying because he’d poked himself in the eye or something. Of course we didn’t bother taking advantage of the extra man and instead contrived to just come up with more ways of missing the target. Confidence and effectiveness must be at an all time low. Presumably the best way to solve that is by keeping the same tactics for the next five games. DON’T. UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES. SHOOT. And don’t ever change anything.

Them -

In this match our art experiment came up against its polar opposite. Machida were ugly, thuggish and dull. Oh, and effective, so the opposite in that way too. They took their chance and I don’t think you could say we even really made a chance.  I don’t think they’ll win any admirers for the way they play and I can’t imagine anyone outside of Machida will take much pleasure in them winning. They didn’t even look that good. But they did crucially look better than us. Their manager, aside from his stone age approach to the game should be derided for his white trainers, suit and white t-shirt combination. But should be praised (faintly, reluctantly) for coming up with (perhaps that’s not the right word, maybe digging up) tactics that work. We all knew they’d play like this and we probably would have been able to deal with them if we hadn’t decided to play a striker at right back and a defender who could barely move. I think that in spite of the piles of cash they’ve spent and that they have stashed in various places around their stadium, they are probably in a false position at the top of the league. But as long as they keep playing teams who are both as shit and as overconfident in their abilities as us, they’ll probably keep winning.

Ref -

Only one line will suffice here, I think. Yamamoto is a useless attention seeking waste of space of a ref. But even he’s not as bad at reffing as we are at playing football.

Banner wisdom -

‘This is Machida’

There were a few things in their flags to have a look at. ’No-one likes us, we don’t care’ for example. Yeah, but not really for the same reasons no-one likes Millwall. A stone island logo flag to attempt to sure up the hooligan thing. Oh, and of course one of the Japanese imperial flags that knucklehead fans in plenty of teams love. But the highlight has to be ‘This is Machida’. I know plenty of people believe Machida is in Kanagawa, but I’m a little surprised that the fans didn’t know better. Maybe that flag makes more sense at home games, eh?

Next up Cerezo Osaka away on Saturday. There’s a nice beer truck outside the stadium. Aside from the red card, the highlight of this game for me was watching a boy try to push big bits of beautiful looking clear ice through a drain cover after the match. There’s definitely a way to extend that into our season / supporter’s money / players’ careers going down the drain, but I’ll let you do that bit yourself. Let’s hope I can find some ice and a drain on Saturday as I think the football will be awful again. Something to look forward to, eh? Unless Oniki changes something. But as far as I know there isn’t a porcine airport near the stadium so I think it’s unlikely pigs will be flying.

 

 

Team
GK 1. JUNG Sung-Ryong
DF 30. SEGAWA Yusuke

DF 4. JESIEL
DF 2. TAKAI Kota

DF 5. SASAKI Asahi
MF 6. ZE RICARDO (Yellow card 23')
MF 77. YAMAMOTO Yuki

MF 14. WAKIZAKA Yasuto
FW 41. IENAGA Akihiro
FW 9. ERISON (Yellow card 56')
FW 26. YAMAUCHI Hinata

Subs
Team
GK 99. KAMIFUKUMOTO Naoto
DF 3. OMINAMI Takuma (on for JESIEL 35')
FW 11. KOBAYASHI Yu (on for IENAGA 66')
DF 15. TANABE Shuto
MF 16. SEKO Tatsuki (on for ZE RICARDO 46')

FW 17. TONO Daiya (on for YAMAUCHI 46')

FW 20. YAMADA Shin (on for YAMAMOTO 82')

Goals

FUJIO (Machida) 32' 0-1

 

My Frontale Man Of The Match

 

If you've come to this section, expecting there to be anything here, you have made a big mistake.

 

Highlights