Vs Saga Tosu (home) 13/9/24 J League match 30

Kawasaki Frontale 3 - 2 Sagan Tosu

I had mixed feelings after this game. It was an absolutely crucial win for us in a relegation six pointer. So obviously that means that I should be delighted, right? Unfortunately for me it came against probably the one team in the league I really don’t want to go down. Sagan Tosu is always my favourite away trip and given how their squad always gets picked apart by other teams, including us now, it felt a bit like kicking someone when they were down. Maybe in a normal season I wouldn’t be worrying so much about potentially ruining another club’s chances of survival. But the fact is, we’ve been shit all year and we weren’t that good again in this game and we got away with it, which for me all comes with some feelings of guilt. Presumably people will hail this as us getting back on track just in time for the ACL and demonstrating quite how great Oniki Frontale are. I think it’s another demonstration of how we can’t really beat anyone without a big dose of luck. We’ve lost to all of the bottom three. We got knocked out of the Emperor’s Cup by a team who aren’t doing very well in J2. We just about scraped past another bottom half J2 team in the Levain cup with our first shot on target in the 93rd minute. Whilst the atmosphere at the end of the game was quite rocking in the stadium after this match, it felt a bit like we were ecstatically cheering a Michelin starred chef for managing to make cheese on toast without cutting off more than just the one fingertip. So far have expectations fallen that a late fluky winner in a game at home against the team bottom in the league is celebrated like we’ve won the World Cup. But the points are the important thing, so let’s just move on to the next game and get this blog post out of the way with minimal fuss.

- Somewhat surprisingly there was some rotation from Oniki in this game. Utterly predictably the rotation ended with exactly the same midfield and with Tachibanada playing at full back. This time he was on the left, and naturally Sagan Tosu immediately targeted that side. It’s strange that when he was switched to right back their attacks seemed to switch to that side. Funny that, eh? But of course our Swiss Army Knife also had a go in midfield before the game was over. I don’t think he had a terrible game, but he’s not a full back, and Oniki’s determination to play his favourite players wherever he can fit them in to his favourite (and only) formation in pursuit of the goal of playing a full eleven of midfielders isn’t helping him or us. It was a bit of a surprise to see Erison start. It was no surprise to see him only get 45 minutes before being changed for Yamada. As usual, Oniki’s favourites get at least a 75 minute chance before perhaps being changed but anyone who doesn’t sit on his table at lunchtime has to prove themselves in the very rare and brief opportunities they are provided with. Yamada has done well this year, but he he’s had a lot more of these opportunities than other players. Perhaps Oniki is worried that he’ll do a Miyashiro, who last year was effectively our top scorer (if you remove penalties from the equation) from nowhere near as many minutes as his teammates. I was quite pissed off with Yamada at one point in this game when we broke through on goal and he had numerous opportunities to pass to a teammate who was free and would have probably scored, but instead tried to bulldoze his way through a couple of defenders before basically trying to kick the ball through their legs. And when I say through their legs I don’t mean a nutmeg, I mean trying to make the ball pass through a solid object in defiance of the laws of physics. As Wakizaka did this in a previous game and I lost my rag, I thought it only appropriate that I should give Yamada the same treatment.
 

- Perhaps Oniki is slowly starting to notice the fact this his way isn’t working. It’s only taken him three years, but perhaps he has a slight feeling that maybe using the same tactics and players might not suddenly start being the key to massive success. Wakizaka, once unsubbable is now getting changed in games. I guess the fact that he keeps starting games shows that Oniki is keeping any doubts he might have well under control, but maybe he’s started to notice he’s not playing very well. Miura didn’t start this game, which was a good decision. But of course he was one of the first players to be brought on. In his relatively short time on the pitch he made a really stupid foul when we were about to get a corner and handballed to give away a penalty. To be fair to him he did make a great pass for the winning goal though. I’m pretty sure he’s not as good as people think he is. At least not yet. He’s still kind of young and he’s definitely a decent player, but I don’t think he’s as good as Sasaki, especially when it comes to defending. He doesn’t seem to have completely settled in yet. He puts some really nice crosses in but everyone knows we almost never do this, so more often than not there’s no one there to get on the end of them. Perhaps we’ll see the best of him next year. Perhaps a different approach would suit him better. Perhaps he’d be better as a left winger instead of a left back. We’ll see I guess. Oniki’s flickers of awareness are almost certainly too little too late though. It’s probably significant that he came over to the fans after this game and that his name was sung after the final whistle. I’ve said in the past that I wish he’d come over to face the music when we’ve done awfully and he never does, so maybe it’s not a surprise that the one time he comes over is when we’d won an important game. Superficially, it seems that the reason for him coming over was to encourage us to support them in the soon to begin ACL campaign. I wonder if it also might have something to do with a possible announcement of him leaving at the end of the season which could come in the near future. It was all quite unusual anyway, so something’s definitely going on.
 

- I guess I’ve written all of this and not really mentioned much about the game. Business as usual for us in 2024 is a ridiculous amount of passing and not really many chances. We did a bit better in this game but I think that was more by luck than judgement and might say something about how wrecked Tosu have been by years of having their players plundered. Of course we dominated possession and in this game we managed a shot before the 43rd minute which is a big improvement. And unlike against Kofu we managed to hit the target on a few occasions. Tachibanada’s goal was a cracker. The second goal was quite nice too with a quickly taken free kick. Quite out of character for us to do something other than pass the ball backwards to a player a metre away or blast the ball over the bar from a set piece. But probably there is some significance in the fact that the goal came about from some quick thinking, rather than our master manager’s plan of attack. The winner came from a Tosu player basically chipping his own keeper for the assist, so we can't really claim any credit for that. So don’t get any ideas about us being a free scoring force. We’d done pretty well up until our first goal. After that, for the rest of the half I think the only shot we had was for the disallowed goal and we were really hanging on. I don’t know if part of the plan was to get a goal and then defend the slim lead, but it seemed that it might be and to be honest it was one we weren’t very good at. The second half was pretty ragged and looked like a game where both teams were desperately trying to score but at the same time seemed to be playing a sport they were not particularly familiar with. It felt like a real relegation scrap… which I guess it was so maybe I shouldn’t be surprised by that. This probably all contributed to my feeling that we were a bit lucky to win and Sagan Tosu were unlucky to lose.
 

- A few words about the opposition and the officials. Well actually, I guess I’ve said a lot about Tosu already, but maybe one last mention that they are a team who are like a bucket which has been patched up so many times with gaffer tape that it’s now more gaffer tape than plastic. It’s not difficult to feel sorry for a team with comparatively few resources who basically have to rebuild at the start of every year but who this year had the extra death blow of losing half of their starting eleven mid-season. I’m sorry Tosu. If you go down, I will miss you and hope you can come straight up, (presumably after having all of your remaining players snatched at the end of the year). The ref was Nagamine, a new one to me. And he did relatively little to linger in the memory which is high praise. We had a few interminably long VAR checks, but that’s nothing to do with him. I hope he remains an unremarkable ref in the future given that as far as I am concerned, that is exactly what a ref is supposed to be.

So next up, the ACL and it’s..., let me check..., although obviously no-one ever needs to check, because of course we’re going to play Ulsan. We’ve been awful all year and naturally they are top of their league so it looks like it’s not going to be easy. Last year we didn’t mess up this fixture quite as much as we previously have, but there is the massive caveat that we are utterly trash right now. Might be one to watch through your fingers. After that we have recent pantomime villains Nagoya away, obviously not in Nagoya but instead in a stadium about an hour from Nagoya. For some reason this year they’ve messed up and scheduled the game to be at a time that it is possible to get back home from. They must be furious with themselves for the oversight.

Team

GK 1. JUNG Sung-Ryong

DF 31. VAN WERMESKERKEN Sai

DF 5. SASAKI Asahi
DF 44. CESAR HAYDAR
DF 8. TACHIBANADA Kento

MF 19. KAWAHARA So
MF 10. OSHIMA Ryota

MF 14. WAKIZAKA Yasuto
FW 41. IENAGA Akihiro
FW 9. ERISON
FW 17. TONO Daiya

Subs

GK 98. YAMAGUCHI Louis
DF 2. TAKAI Kota (on for OSHIMA 69')
DF 13. MIURA Sota (on for VAN WERMESKERKEN 60')

FW 11. KOBAYASHI Yu (on for SASAKI 90+9')
FW 20. YAMADA Shin (on for ERISON 46')
FW 23. MARCINHO (on for WAKIZAKA 69')

FW 30. SEGAWA Yusuke (on for TONO 81')

Goals

TACHIBANADA (Frontale) 11' 1-0
KUBO (Tosu) 51' 1-1
IENAGA (Frontale) 61' 2-1
KIYOTAKE (Tosu) 90+1' PEN 2-2
YAMADA (Frontale) 90+10' 3-2 

Highlights

Vs Sagan Tosu (away) 15/5/24 J League match 14

 

Sagan Tosu 5 - 2 Kawasaki Frontale

This morning in our hotel in Fukuoka, I decided to have a shower. I’d had one before bed last night but woke up feeling disgusting for some reason. Having checked the various bottles by the shower the previous night I reached for the one at the back and proceeded to attempt to wash myself with conditioner. Using a substance utterly unfit for the job in an act of carelessness, brought about by a feeling of confidence that was misplaced. Starting the day exactly the way Frontale had finished the previous evening. Perfect! Thankfully I was in the shower and could just wash away the error. Sadly the humiliation of a completely gutless and useless defeat isn’t so easy to rid ourselves of. Anyway, that’s enough chat about me showering. I’m sure it’s not an image that any of us wants to dwell on. This is going to be a thrown together post as I’m now on the train heading to our first in-between-games destination. I won’t be home till Sunday night after the Gamba game so this post will look horrible till then. And maybe for some time afterwards too. But once again I think that is a kind of appropriate metaphor for this dog’s breakfast of a season. The last time we won two games in a row was the first leg against Shadong and the Super Cup final. We know what happened in the second leg though, and when it comes to importance, the Super Cup makes the Levain Cup look like the World Cup final. Don’t get me wrong, I quite like the Levain Cup, and it should be more fun this year in its new format. And let’s not be under any illusions the Levain Cup is probably our best chance of salvaging anything from this season as we’ll be dropped in at a later stage of the competition due to our “ACL commitments”. Right now though, for us to have any chance of winning it we’d probably need to be dropped in at the start of injury time in the second half of the final with a seven goal head start. We’re totally shit this year, apart from in tiny bursts when the players seem to ignore what they’ve been instructed to do by our esteemed manager. Even when we have what looks like a good result, all you have to do is watch the whole game and you’ll realise that any gloss you might imagine you’ve seen is just an illusion. If the opposition doesn’t turn up in an absolute state, or give us a few free goals or get a red card, we’ll pretty much stand no chance of getting anything from a game. Sometimes the opposition does that and we still get nothing. After every game we get the same nonsense from Oniki, and then for the next game we get the same nonsense plan from Oniki. A common refrain from people who don’t like any Oniki out talk is “But who would take over?!?!”. Right now I think anyone could do a better job. Well maybe anyone apart from Nanami who’d probably somehow manage to get us to the JFL in one season instead of the three that Oniki has planned. There must be some doubts amongst the players about his abilities. There seems to finally be some doubts in the stands too, as after this game there was some booing of our players. It was a surprise and I’m not really in favour of it, but I am all in favour of shouting out “This is fucking shit!” as we concede our fifth goal. I don’t know if Oniki ever comes to talk to the supporters after a game as in these kind of situations I’m usually out of the stadium pretty quickly. Why prolong the agony? If the players have tried hard but come up short, fair enough, give them a clap. But at this game when they came over there was nothing for me to clap about. So I didn’t. A bit of silent treatment might help I think. I find the guy booing and shouting “I came all the way to Tosu to see this!” equally as pointless as clapping and singing to them after an awful game. They know they’ve had a shit game. And plenty of other shit games before it. I think the whole “I’m not angry, I’m just disappointed in you” parenting thing is the right approach. 

A few words about what went wrong in this game, as if it wasn’t utterly obvious. Some truly terrible individual errors for all but one of the goals. I don’t want to single him out, but Tachibanada’s cock up for the last goal was quite emblematic of our season, pissing around with the ball just outside of our own penalty area for absolutely no apparent reason or purpose, then lose the ball and concede. We kept a clean sheet in our last game but Oniki decided to change things for what I guess he considered to be the easier of our two games this week. Hmmmm. To be honest though, I think that was probably the right thing to do. Perhaps though he shouldn’t have got the central defence pairing that conceded five goals to Jubilo back together. Wonder if Oniki has spotted that yet? Hat trick hero from the last game? Leave him at home. Players who’ve been having a bit of a nightmare recently? Keep them in! To be fair to Oniki we had a reasonable first 20 minutes. Players looked like they wanted to try to attack and we were trying some forward passes. We scored from a corner! Naturally it wasn’t a Wakizaka corner. I think maybe Takai let his first league goal go to his head though, as although in this first period he was spraying the ball around nicely, as the clock ticked on things started to fall to pieces for him and the team as a whole. As soon as we conceded the first it was like we’d been told we had to play the rest of the game blindfolded. All the confidence evaporated and we became awful. We struggled to get out of our own penalty box, let alone our own half. And as always, that pointless, pointless passing. Pass it along the defensive line, centre back to centre back to keeper to centre back to right back who gets in trouble but somehow gets out of it and passes back to the centre back etc. All of this finally results in Kami hoofing the ball upfield for the opposition to start building an attack. Absolutely no forward movement. Any opposition coach scouting us must just be rubbing their hands. ‘We don’t need to try to make chances, they’ll make them for us. Just pressure them a bit at the back and they’ll give the ball away’. I’ve got no idea how we managed to score a second goal. Even in the stadium it seemed like lots of people hadn’t noticed we’d scored. Looking at the replay it seems like it was some great persistence from Yamada. But to be honest that was about all he did in the game. He stayed on the pitch for the whole game though. Oniki’s substitutions in this match were awful. The defence was a total mess in the first half, conceded three but it still took him till the 58th minute by which time we’d conceded our 4th to change anything. We desperately needed a goal but it took him until the 68th minute to bring on Erison, our marquee signing this year. I can’t imagine Erison is going to play himself back into form with 20 minutes at the end of a game now and again. And always, it’s just the same system and approach. And the same excuses. And the same points made in these increasingly dull blog posts. We had more shots than them apparently, (I find this hard to believe to be honest. It certainly didn’t feel like that). We had loads more possession than them, (very easy to believe. But utterly pointless possession). They scored five times and we scored once and scrambled one in. 

Oh, the ref was Kasahara. He usually hates us and seems to want to sabotage us, but I think we hated ourselves and sabotaged ourselves more in this game. So another no-moans-about-the-ref blog post!

So what should we do going forward? Well the thing that would really make a difference I think is to fire Oniki but of course that’s not going to happen and he won’t quit till he’s confirmed our relegation and even then he probably will think he’s got a good chance at doing well in J2. (I disagree. There’s no way we’ll get away with this crap and pointless football there). If we dropped every player who had a nightmare in this game we’d have to change all of the back four apart from Sasaki, the goalkeeper, one third of the midfield and probably two thirds of the attack. Actually, maybe that would be kind of fun. But as I always say, if one player has a nightmare, you can blame the player. If it’s more than half the team you’ve probably got to blame the manager. I’m not a manager or tactician so I can’t tell you what we should do, but it’s pretty clear what we shouldn’t do, isn’t it? Ditch the slow build up and pointless passing. Maybe, I dunno, try something different. Remember when Oniki took over? There was a consensus that he was doing the right thing by tempering the attack crazy Kazama style slightly and giving us some defensive solidity. Eight years on and somehow Oniki has eliminated both the attacking and the defensive solidity. So what exactly do we have left? Passing! That’s what we have! Lots of passing! Who needs attacks or goals when you have passes? Oniki’s culinary style is to chop his ingredients finely. Then chop them again. And then again until the vegetables have become a big mush, at which stage he throws the ingredients in the bin and starts the process again. Who needs to eat dinner when you can just enjoy the most basic part of cooking over and over again? Chop chop chop. Pass pass pass. Chop pass pass chop. And then throw any aspirations of doing anything in 2024, of winning a game, of even scoring a goal, throw them all in the bin. So in conclusion, I dunno what to do, but please for the love of god don’t do EXACTLY THE FUCKING SAME THING AGAIN. And I dunno, maybe try to attack a bit.

Next up Gamba away on Saturday. Presumably back to the two man defensive midfield to shore things up which in turn will ensure that we score NO GOALS. Fingers crossed for a 0-0 then. Recently we’ve always been pretty bad at the Suita stadium and anyone who thinks that is likely to change is a braver and more optimistic person than I am. But then again, if we played badly there when we were supposed to be good, perhaps in this shittest of shit seasons we might do well? Hmmmm. Anyway, I going to get this online ASAP so I can enjoy the rest of the week. It should be a lot of fun. Well, right up until the point I remember that we have to go and watch this ponderous and pointless crap again. Bravo Frontale!

Team

GK 99. KAMIFUKUMOTO Naoto
DF 31. Sai VAN WERMESKERKEN

DF 3. OMINAMI Takuma
DF 2. TAKAI Kota
DF 5. SASAKI Asahi
MF 8. TACHIBANADA Kento
MF 17. TONO Daiya

MF 16. SEKO Tatsuki
FW 41. IENAGA Akihiro
FW 20. YAMADA Shin
FW 23. MARCINHO

Subs

GK 1. JUNG Sung-Ryong
DF 4. JESIEL (on for VAN WERMESKERKEN 58')

MF 6. ZE RICARDO
FW 9. ERISON (on for IENAGA 68')
MF 14. WAKIZAKA Yasuto (on for MARCINHO 58')

MF 26. YAMAUCHI Hinata (on for SEKO 68')
DF 30. SEGAWA Yusuke (on for OMINAMI 78')

My Frontale Man Of The Match

Alcohol - the stronger the better to tolerate this shit.

Goals

TAKAI (Frontale) 13' 0-1
YOKOYAMA (Tosu) 26' 1-1
YOKOYAMA (Tosu) 37' 2-1
MARCELO RYAN (Tosu) 44' 3-1
IENAGA (Frontale) 45+3' 3-2
HARADA (Tosu) 47' 4-2
KAWATA (Tosu) 75' 5-2

Highlights

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

Sagan Tosu 0 - 1 Kawasaki Frontale

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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



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

Team

GK 1. JUNG Sung-Ryong

DF 13. YAMANE Miki

DF 4. JESIEL

DF 31. YAMAMURA Kazuya

DF 2. NOBORIZATO Kyohei

MF 8. TACHIBANADA Kento
MF 17. TONO Daiya

MF 14. WAKIZAKA Yasuto

FW 33. MIYASHIRO Taisei

FW 11. KOBAYASHI Yu

FW 30. SEGAWA Yusuke

 

Subs

GK 99. KAMIFUKUMOTO Naoto

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

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

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

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

DF 29. TAKAI Kota

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

 

Goals

 

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

Highlights

Vs Sagan Tosu (home) 7/5/23 J League match 12

Kawasaki Frontale 1 - 0 Sagan Tosu

Another game for us when it was absolutely pissing it down. Unlike in Fukuoka where I was fully expose to the elements, on this occasion I was thankfully undercover in my usual seat. That’s probably where the similarities to the Fukuoka game end. Oniki shuffled the pack (slightly) on this occasion finally breaking the three match no changes run. I think it was long overdue, and perhaps he should have changed a bit more if we’re being honest as we looked quite tired again. But I totally get it. He’d been scrabbling around for so long, the long standing way we got wins had totally stopped working and the shuffling of line ups wasn’t changing anything. He got a draw against Urawa, kept the same line up and then got a win. And then another one. So I didn’t think he’d change anything unless it was absolutely necessary. I guess he thought Nobori was tired and you can’t blame him for favouring Marcinho over Tono now he is fit again. Everyone else though is going to keep playing until they physically break down. We now have a bit of a break till our next match with no midweek fixture. So probably the same line-up in the next game.

We weren’t great in this game, but this fixture normally finishes 0-0, so for us to nick a goal and turn the 0-0 into a 1-0 win is very welcome. It was our first home win in the league since…. October 29th! Bloody hell! I know the last season finished early but this really does hammer home quite how bad we’ve been this year. But now that’s three wins in a row, right? Well, yes it is, but of those three wins, aside from away at Fukuoka they’ve been fairly tight. At Kyoto it took us till the 94th minute. In this game we had loads of shots but missed plenty of good chances. Yeah we hit the woodwork on three occasions (I think), but their keeper only had to make four saves in the whole game. Marcinho looked very dangerous in his approach play, but seems to have lost his shooting skills a bit. Hopefully they’ll be back soon. Apart from when we hit the woodwork, I can’t remember anyone else having a decent chance, which almost certainly says more about my memory than anything else. The club stats said Seko had the most shots (4) and he went off at half time. I guess those shots were at the other end of the pitch, but I don’t remember them at all. Not saying this wasn’t a fun match to watch. My notes say ‘kind of entertaining but nothing really happening’ and I think that nicely sums things up. Our new tactics seem to be to go quite direct, playing some lovely long balls out to the wings, starting some very exciting attacks. Oh and then as soon as we get to the opposition’s penalty box, immediately slowing things down, which seems like a bit of a waste of time and negates any benefit of the initial directness. And then after we scored, we really shut things down. I was astonished when I saw the stats that showed we had almost 3/4 of our shots in the first half and that we only had five shots in the second half. Given that we’d hit the woodwork twice before we scored in the 52nd minute, this does reinforce the feeling that we spent most of the second half hanging on to what we had, the final 40 minutes of the game resulting in no more than two shots for us, none of which were on target (if my stats are right). We definitely were wasting time in the second half with lots of this being done (legitimately) by Kamifukumoto and with us trying to keep the ball by the corner flag for most of the final ten minutes. Not exactly confidence inspiring. But yeah, this is a fixture we struggle in and we managed to win. And the players must be more tired than I am, and I’m pretty tired. So on the whole, a thumbs up, I suppose.

 

Nothing much to say about the ref again (I think there was nothing much to say about him the last time either), which I guess means he’s a good ref. Not a lot to say about Sagan Tosu either. I quite like them as a club so will avoid making any arsey comments about them. I know that’s what some people come here for, so I’m sorry if you’re disappointed, but I suspect there will be plenty in the next post.

 

Next up, the Tamagawa Classico and praise the lord, even though it’s the away fixture, we don’t have to go to Chofu for it! But curse the lord, it’s at the National Stadium instead, a stadium wholly unsuited for football and quite unsuited for having a good time. This time we’ll be in the away end, unlike my previous two experiences there, but I suspect the view is equally bad there too. FC Chofu have had an up and down season with their last game being a significant down. Hopefully they will fail to bounce back and we can compound their misery. I’m not wholly confident that will happen though. Fingers crossed it will!

Team 

 
GK 99. KAMIFUKUMOTO Naoto

DF 13. YAMANE Miki

DF 3. OMINAMI Takuma (Yellow card 74')

DF 29. TAKAI Kota 

DF 7. KURUMAYA Shintaro

MF 6. JOAO SCHMIDT

MF 16. SEKO Tatsuki

MF 14. WAKIZAKA Yasuto

FW 41. IENAGA Akihiro

FW 33. MIYASHIRO Taisei

FW 23. MARCINHO

Subs

GK 1. JUNG Sung-Ryong

MF 8. TACHIBANADA Kento (on for WAKIZAKA 78')

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

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

FW 17. TONO Daiya (on for MARCINHO 68')

FW 20. YAMADA Shin (on for MIYASHIRO 86')

DF 31. YAMAMURA Kazuya

My Frontale Man Of The Match

 

There has been one big constant in our recent turnaround and that has been great performances from the player who I’m giving this to, who has basically made himself undroppable and is now keeping our captain out of the team. It’s got to go to…

JOAO SCHMIDT - again, just great. Always involved and on this occasion almost scored too. 

Goals

 

WAKIZAKA (Frontale) 52' 1-0

 

Highlights

Vs Sagan Tosu (home) 31/8/22 J League match 20

Kawasaki Frontale 4 - 0 Sagan Tosu

I wonder if when we look back on this season we will congratulate Oniki for his determination to get us focused on the league by falling at the first hurdle in pretty much every other competition. Of course I’m joking but our new found clearness of vision/lack of options seems to have really given us a bit of a boost. Combine this with us actually playing players in position and perhaps you have an explanation for our recent successes. Of course this could all come tumbling down soon. Perhaps on Saturday away at Shonan. Or perhaps the following weekend at home against Sanfrecce. But before that happens let’s enjoy the fact that we’re top of the league again for the first time in months. Yeah, this is partly due to YFM still being involved in the ACL… oh that’s not quite right, perhaps I should say ‘being involved in the knockout stages for the absolute shortest time possible and then afterwards having a long rest, hopefully with the fact that they’ve lost their last four games weighing on their mind.’ Before any non-Frontale fans feel the need to remind me, I’m fully aware that they made it one stage further than we did. Let’s be honest, it would be a really weird year when we didn’t manage to mess up the ACL in a new and exciting way. I don’t particularly need that kind of innovation though and in future would settle for us doing a bit better even if it meant we wouldn’t be treated to a unique way of exiting the competition even when faced with a relatively easy route through. People might accuse us of not trying, and in a way, I wish we were not trying. It would be a lot easier to accept than playing our best side and still crashing our limply. Anyway, a small dig at YFM has turned into a massive diversion and every diversion I go down means that the limited time before our next game is shrinking so I’d better get on with this.

 

We’ve gone four wins in a row in the league now, which we need to do if we’re going to get anything out of this season. It’s not in our hands though, we still need YFM to slip up so it’s not in any way comfortable. Sagan Tosu at home (otherwise known as 0-0) is always a bit of a frustrating game. It’s strange that the fact that this game is always 0-0 is so ingrained in my mind, given that we won it 1-0 last year. The previous three years were 0-0 though and the one before that was 1-1. So I guess I was basically right to assume that this game would be frustrating and a slip up. Perhaps we got the 0-0 against Tosu out of the way in the away fixture this year. Whatever the score at that fixture, you won’t find me upset as I love that trip. And I think Sagan Tosu are a generally quite likeable team. Which makes it slightly unfortunate that we handed them a spanking. I can think of plenty of other sides who I’d rather do that to. At the same time, I’m not going to let any sentimentality get in the way of enjoying this win. We’ve finally started scoring some goals, although poor old Kobayashi still can’t get on the scoresheet as hard as he might try. Damiao seems to still be out injured. And maybe Nobori has picked up something again as he was absent from the squad. Chanathip however is not injured as far as I know, but seems to have drifted out of the picture completely. I think the reason for this is our usual plethora of midfielders and dearth of midfield spots. I’m pleased that Joao Schmidt has kept his place as recently he’s been on fire. So he has to be in the defensive midfield spot, which means that Tachibanada has to play somewhere else. Thankfully Oniki has moved him forward a bit instead of playing him at left back. I’d prefer him in the defensive midfield spot (but then what would happen with Joao…), but he seems to be getting better at playing slightly further forward. So then that leaves Wakizaka, who’s also be doing well recently. Maybe we could play the other midfielders a little further forward then…. But if we’re talking about Chanathip that really didn’t work and I’m pleased to see that Oniki has stopped trying it. Also, you cant really drop Marcinho or Ienaga at the moment. So basically, we’ve got too many good players to fit our formation so obviously someone is going to miss out. I hope the players who are missing out aren’t getting too frustrated though. If we keep winning it seems like we shouldn’t be changing things around too much. So yeah, basically I think we’ve been doing well because we’re playing players in their natural positions and we’re focused. And maybe have got a little fortunate at times. But good form means good results and that means confidence which hopefully feeds back round to the good form. Obviously it has to end at some stage but it would be nice if it didn’t, wouldn’t it?

 

A quick word about goal scorers. As I said above Kobayashi is desperate for a goal and I would have loved him to have got one but sadly it wasn’t to be. But we did have a few feel good goalscorers though. Oshima got the man of the match in the stadium probably because he scored, is often injured and people like him. It was very much a feel good moment when the ball dropped to him to smash home. Even Kobayashi whose chance had been saved, causing the ball to drop to Oshima looked pleased which shows what a nice guy he is. I hope he scores soon and is happy. Joao Schmidt looked insanely happy when his header went in. It was well deserved given how well he’s been doing in recent times. And Chinen got another goal on his first start after coming back from injury, allowing me to once again roll out my ‘goal maChinen’ nickname for him which works much better on paper than when said out loud, but is justified given how he seems to pop up and score a lot more than our other strikers. He’s definitely not to everyone’s tastes but I think he’s unfairly maligned and hope he continues putting the ball in the back of the net. It would be remiss of me to not write something about the other goal which was perhaps the most enjoyable one. Probably two of the most well known things about Sagan Tosu are the fact that they often punch above their weight and then throw in a total stinker of a performance, so basically are quite unpredictable. Well except when it comes to playing us when they are resolutely solid and unbeatable. The other thing is that their keeper continues the proud tradition of ex-YFM keepers and likes to go walkabout and gift what I believe are known as ‘Iikura chances’ to the opposition on a semi-regular basis. Well, except when it comes to playing us… But both of these ‘so reliable that they could be carved in stone’ commandments were broken in this match and Marcinho was able to take advantage with a lovely chip which I was so sure was going in that I celebrated a bit early. Which could have been awkward if it had hit the bar. But it didn’t, and it was glorious. 

Next up, Shonan away, a perennial banana skin and a team that beat us 4-0 at our place a few months ago. So perhaps we owe them one but they are fighting for survival so it won’t be easy. Hopefully we can continue our run and at the same time enjoy the news of a Tsukagawa hatrrick for FC Tokyo as they beat YFM 3-0. I don’t often hope FC Tokyo win, but I’ll certainly be hoping for that result on Saturday!

Team 

 
GK 1. Sung-Ryong JUNG
DF 13. YAMANE Miki

DF 5. TANIGUCHI Shogo

DF 4. JESIEL

DF 7. KURUMAYA Shintaro
MF 6. JOAO SCHMIDT

MF 8. TACHIBANADA Kento

MF 14. WAKIZAKA Yasuto

FW 41. IENAGA Akihiro

FW 20. CHINEN Kei

FW 23. MARCINHO

Subs

GK 27. TANNO Kenta

MF 10. OSHIMA Ryota (on for WAKIZAKA 64')

FW 11. KOBAYASHI Yu (on for CHINEN 74')

MF 16. SEKO Tatsuki (on for TANIGUCHI 88')

MF 19. TONO Daiya

FW 24. MIYAGI Ten (on for MARCINHO 64')
MF 31. YAMAMURA Kazuya (on for JESIEL 74')

 

My Frontale Man Of The Match

In the stadium they said Oshima, but I’m not going that way as he wasn’t on for that long and his goal was merely the icing on the cake. It’s a bit of a bore from me again, but I’m going to give it to the two players who are really on top of their game recently…

JOAO SCHMIDT & IENAGA Akihiro - just doing the business, relentlessly, mercilessly and unstoppably right now. Long may it continue!

Goals

 

CHINEN (Frontale) 26' 1-0

JOAO SCHMIDT (Frontale) 47' 2-0

MARCINHO (Frontale) 56' 3-0

OSHIMA (Frontale) 87' 4-0

 

Highlights