Vs Sony Sendai (home) 12/6/24 Emperor's Cup 2nd round

Kawasaki Frontale 2 - 0 Sony Sendai 

So, our first involvement in the Emperor’s Cup in 2024, giving us a chance to set a pretty poor (hang on, that’s a massive understatement, isn’t it? Perhaps, utterly terrible) league campaign aside and concentrate on maybe trying something a little different against new opposition. Definitely something to get excited about. I don’t really understand why people don’t want to go to these games. I think it’s much more interesting to see us play a university team  than slug out a 0-0 against a team we play at least twice every year. New! Excitement! Different stuff! Oh, hang on, it was Sony Sendai again. I’m not sure why we seem to play the same few teams every few years in this tournament. And I guess in the ACL too. We’ll almost certainly get Ulsan in our group when the draw is made for the 2024/25 edition. But at least we’d have the excitement of seeing some unfamiliar faces on the pitch, right? Wrong. I think this was pretty much the strongest team we could have put out, given injuries or lack of fitness (more on that later). Presumably Oniki saw us having last weekend off as the perfect justification to try absolutely nothing new. The only experiment Oniki is interested in is one designed to determine the length of people’s tolerance for exactly the same stuff every game. Still, with the first team out and playing a JFL team, we were bound to see some exciting attacking play and plenty of goals, right? Wrong again. This game showed the effectiveness of Oniki’s pass pass pass plan, which hasn’t really worked against most teams this year, and doesn’t work either against a JFL side. Not saying we looked like we might lose. There weren’t that many occasions when Sony Sendai came close to scoring. But I am definitely saying that the same could be said about us. Even when the opposition don’t really threaten and don’t have much of the ball we still can’t really make many chances. In his post match comments Oniki noted that he was pleased we could tighten things up at the back and not concede. I think we can all agree with this, but probably at the same time should acknowledge that the opposition were from three leagues below. With a game against Vissel Kobe coming up on Sunday, you’ve got to wonder quite how wise it was to play so many first team regulars. But at the same time it was utterly predictable that we would do so. Perhaps we’ll put the reserves out against Kobe again like we did in the Super Cup. Although to be honest, they played a lot better in that game than the first team have in most matches this year. Does this mean that Oniki has given up on the league and is basically focussing on getting a cup? Well, the first part probably makes sense as we’ve fucked up the first half of our league campaign so badly that we’re extremely unlikely to get anything out of it. But the second part is a bit dangerous as we all know that if you’re looking for the true weak point of Oniki’s management you’ll find that it is that he’s pretty bad in knockout games. I guess we’ll see when the team lineup is announced on Sunday whether there will be any changes. I’m guessing there won’t be. But we probably still won’t be able to assess things too clearly as we almost never find out about injuries and Oniki doesn’t rotate unless he really has to. So basically I haven’t got a clue what’s going on, so am not sure why I wasted your time speculating over these kind of things.

Cup fever burns bright at Todoroki!

Let’s talk briefly about players and this match. Perhaps this was the closest Oniki could reasonably get to his dream of playing a whole team of midfielders with Tachibanada at left back and Segawa at right back. Perhaps this is a tactical masterstroke as it leaves the opposition unsure which side of our defence to target as both look equally appealing. It worked better in this game, but once again, I think that was mostly due to the level of the opposition. Not sure where Erison has gone. Haven’t heard anything about an injury. Hope he’s not pissed off. Could understand if he was. Guess we’ll see if he has any involvement on Sunday. Miyagi was back making his first appearance (from the bench) for quite a while after a series of J2 loans with mixed success. It seems like he’s still the same kind of player, offering something a little more direct than our other players who play in that position, but that directness often meaning that he doesn’t pass, and tries to shoot instead, but to not much success. I don’t want to have a go at him though as these were his first few minutes for us for a long time. He had some genuinely exciting moments, but I wonder if these were exciting in comparison to Marcinho, who in this match, like in many previous matches proved himself to be very good at running fast and dribbling but pretty bad at passing, crossing or shooting. Of course this all sounds ridiculous as he assisted for the first goal and scored the second. But he’s definitely not at his best at the moment. It’s been a weird season for him with the two red cards probably affecting his game quite a lot. Hopefully he can get back to his best soon.

I think we had our first shot on target in this game in the 38th minute. That was our first goal. I think that’s something we need to take into consideration when we think about this game. The first 37 minutes were pretty much a waste of time and if we were playing a team from a higher league we could easily have been made to pay before we in any way troubled their keeper. Fair play to Sony Sendai who stifled our attack, but the truth is a lot of the stifling of our attacks was done by our approach and tactics. I wonder if we might even struggle to break down a team of mannequins with our 2024 version incisive attacking play. In previous years we’ve squeaked through our first match in this competition and then come unstuck in the next round when we came up against a J2 team in mediocre to poor form. So who have we got next? Ah, Oita, who before last night’s win against Kagoshima had lost one and drawn four of their last four games. The omens aren’t very good, are they? To be honest, there’s not much else to say. As I mentioned above, Marcinho scored and assisted and both were very nice, but maybe slightly undermined by  our bluntness for the rest of the game. Yamada got the other goal, and it was basically a tap in. I feel a little like playing him up front in the middle from the start is the same as playing Kobayashi there. It’s where they want to play, but never seems to have as good an effect as playing them either on the wing or introducing them up front from the bench. Guess that’s a problem with the system again. But the system won’t be changed, so I guess we should just get used to it if we aren’t already. I can’t imagine anyone who’s watched more than a couple of our games ever won’t be used to our system by now. This week’s J Talk Podcast said that things have been improving for us a bit in recent weeks. I guess we were starting from a pretty low level so improvement was probably the only way. However, I’d say that you shouldn’t ignore the fact that aside from the times we’ve managed to score, we’re still pretty crap and the last two results have papered over the cracks somewhat. I’d be delighted if the win over Nagoya and this win were the start of a great winning run, but I wouldn’t exactly say that we’ve been playing like we should be winning. At the same time, if we go on a massive winning streak whilst playing terribly and getting very lucky, that would also be quite amusing. And perhaps even more enjoyable than playing mediocrely and getting the same results. I would have no objections to this monstrous luck taking to the field with us on Sunday. That would be quite nice indeed.

So, yeah, next up Vissel Kobe away on Sunday, but away in the National Stadium. The Kobe players can wave at Todoroki from the Shinkansen as they pass en route from Kobe to their ‘home’ game against us. After that we’re away in Niigata the following weekend. Now that is always a fun trip and given that we’ll be returning home on the last train after the game, we’ll have to get plenty of ‘sightseeing’ in the evening before and on the day of the game. I expect to turn up to the game suitably refreshed. It really is the best way to enjoy our matches at the moment. Lovely!

Team

GK 1. JUNG Sung-Ryong
DF 30. SEGAWA Yusuke
DF 3. OMINAMI Takuma

DF 5. SASAKI Asahi
DF 8. TACHIBANADA Kento
MF 16. SEKO Tatsuki
MF 77. YAMAMOTO Yuki

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

Subs

GK 99. KAMIFUKUMOTO Naoto
MF 6. ZE RICARDO (on for YAMAMOTO 83')
DF 15. TANABE Shuto (on for SEGAWA 83')
MF 17. TONO Daiya (on for IENAGA 70')
FW 18. Bafetimbi GOMIS
FW 24. MIYAGI Ten (on for WAKIZAKA 83')
FW 26. YAMAUCHI Hinata (on for MARCINHO 65')

Goals

YAMADA (Frontale) 39' 1-0
MARCINHO (Frontale) 58' 2-0


My Frontale Man Of The Match

I'll skip this again this time.

Highlights 

Vs Sony Sendai (home) 6/6/18 - Emperor's Cup 2nd round

Kawasaki Frontale 3 - 2 Sony Sendai

Firstly, apologies for the lateness of this post. I’ve managed to fill the World Cup break with a few too many time-consuming non-football events and last week was a particularly bad but enjoyable cluster of them. The lateness of this post also has contributed a little to its vagueness. Usually I make do with a few notes, replays of the goals and significant events and my memories. Sadly this time due to the extra time between the game and me writing this, the memory part has faded a little. So, this will probably be a bit more general than usual. Oh, and there's a distinct lack of photos. Blame the rain maybe.

So, our first Emperor’s Cup game of 2018 and it was against Sony Sendai who it seemed wouldn’t put up too much of a fight, but actually gave us a bit of a scare, taking a two goal lead before we managed to grab a victory late on in the game. It was a rainy evening in Kawasaki and we named another slightly bizarre team. Given the long break and the apparent quality of the opposition you would have thought we’d go with a second string selection and send the first teamers away on holiday, but once again Oniki surprised, with quite a few first team regulars, whilst at the same time handing the crucial Kengo role to Wakizaka, who’s previously only had a brief appearance as a substitute. Once again, Neto was nowhere to be seen. There are rumours about him going to Nagoya which would be a huge loss for us. He apparently has a good relationship with Kazama and you’ve got to imagine doesn’t get on quite so well with Oniki, who seems to only begrudgingly include him and often leaves him out for the hugely promising but still pretty green Morita. If you’re reading this Neto, (as if...), please don’t leave! I would also have thought this would have been a good chance to give Saito some more pitch time. Perhaps he was rushed back a bit too soon, but you’d have to say that this would have been a decent opportunity for him to get more into the swing of things and perhaps even get his first Frontale goal. It’s good though for Sony Sendai that they were able to line up against some big names, as I’m sure that’s what they would have been hoping for. Looking back it’s easy to say, but I did question Oniki’s thinking at the time. It looked a bit like a hint of continuity with just enough unfamiliarity to make things a bit of a mess. Presumably during regular training, a lot of these players are on opposing teams, as whenever I’ve been to watch it, we usually seem to pretty much play the next game's starting eleven against the rest of the players. This weird selection also looked like it might be a mistake when Taniguchi went down with an early injury. This is exactly the kind of game where we don’t need to be losing an important player to a stupid injury. Especially at centre back where we’ve been short since the start of the season. Oniki always seems to have a grudge against at least one of the four we have, freezing them out for the smallest mistake whilst leaving the bigger names in the squad alone whatever they do.

Anyway enough about the selection and a little about the game. Right from the start it was clear to see that unsurprisingly, we were technically quite a bit better than them. We were moving the ball around nicely and had a couple of decent early chances, one from Wakizaka which went agonisingly just wide. Sony Sendai seemed pretty up for giving us a real game, running all over the pitch and closing us down. They were playing in a way that we’ve rarely seen recently, trying to play attacking football with a lot of energy, rather than sitting back and hitting the ball long for quick counter attacks. And they took the lead. It was pretty sloppy stuff from us with Edu missing a tackle and Kurumaya absolutely nowhere and then the cross missed by Taniguchi. Unsurprisingly, this goal seemed to shake us quite a bit. It was certainly unexpected. Equally unexpected was the fact that they didn’t sit back after scoring and were still coming at us. 15 minutes later they scored again and this threw us into a real mess. This time a long Taniguchi cross-field ball was seized on by a Sony Sendai player who Kurumaya seemed completely unaware of. Arai could have done better with the shot too. We’d been struggling a little at the back, Kurumaya was having a dodgy evening, along with the rest of the back four to be honest. Oniki responded to these defensive problems by subbing Wakizaka. Way to give him some confidence on his first start, Oniki! Not sure why he couldn’t wait till half time, especially to change something up front, given that the problems were mainly at the back. To be honest, it was just baffling and another example of Oniki apparently being completely unaware of any kind of mental effect this kind of substitution might have. Someone who is probably all too aware of that is Chinen, who was the player who came on. He’s really experienced Oniki’s fickle moods recently, going from starting member to dropping out right of the squad on a weekly basis. The change moved Ienaga into the Kengo role and Abe out on to the right, out of position again, (great work again Oniki). I really have started to wonder if he actually thinks these substitutions through or just picks the names he fancies swapping. We were a bit of a mess after the first goal but more of a mess after the weird sub. There was some booing at half time which is pretty unusual for us, and whilst I don’t agree with booing your own team, particularly during the match, I can totally understand why people felt the way they did. I was still fairly confident we’d be ok, but the substitution made me wonder if we were on some kind of self sabotaging mission in the cups this year. Could probably have said the same about our performances in a few of the league games too though.

The second half started much the way the first had finished. Sony Sendai still seemed to have more players than us, being all over the pitch, pressuring us everywhere. Presumably they’d tire at some stage, but we really needed to get back into the game quickly if we wanted to not be on the end of a giant killing. Thankfully Hasegawa put us back on track fairly early in the second half. It was the second decent headed chance he’d had in the game and this one he put away. Another lovely cross from Ienaga. We were on the road back to some kind of respectability. Presumably not wanting to let any momentum build, Oniki made another substitution shortly afterwards. Nobori was the one coming on, which made sense as Kurumaya was really not at the races. Perhaps after his last storming appearance showing Nishino what he was missing, he’d now retreated into disappointment about not going to the World Cup and consequently lethargy. I joked that he’d probably instead remove Edu and put Kurumaya in the middle. I was astounded to see him do exactly that. Clearly Oniki has a big problem with Edu. After the game he commented he was frustrated that all of our attacks were breaking down at Edu and he couldn’t stand watching it anymore. Perhaps he had seen something I had not noticed in the slightest but I’m not even sure our centre back is really supposed to be building attacks. I thought they were supposed to do the defending. We did start to get something going though, but I think this was mainly due to Nobori being on the pitch rather than Edu being off it. Nobori and Hasegawa we’re combining well down the left and we were making good chances. Our second goal was a well placed shot from Elsinho after Ienaga had a shot blocked. We had 25 minutes to try to complete the turnaround. They were reduced to trying long shots but to be honest, they’d scored from one of them in the first half, so we couldn’t be too complacent. Chinen was having a good game. He definitely gives us a bit of clout up front and had a lovely overhead attempt which unfortunately didn’t go in. Abe also slammed a shot off the post. The winner came worryingly close to the end for us and heart-breakingly close to the end for them. It was another well placed finish from Ienaga after some nice work from Suzuki who had replaced Abe in what was the only rational substitution we’d made all evening. While I celebrated it wildly as if we’d just staged a cracking comeback in the cup final, I did feel for Sony Sendai. They’d done a great job against us but just ran out of steam at the end. They’d played much better football than some of our J1 rivals (not necessarily technically, but certainly aesthetically). We were through to the next round where we’ll play Mito Hollyhock away. I’m looking forward to a trip out there to tick off a new ground.

I’ll speed through some brief positives and negatives. Positives, we’re through and scored some nice goals. Negatives, we made really hard work of it. Some of our big name players seemed to have their mind elsewhere and put in limp performances. But the big one has to be Oniki again. The first two substitutions seemed a bit illogical, changing an attacker when the defence was all over the place and a defender when we were trying to push on a bit. Hopefully he hasn’t done any lasting psychological damage to Wakizaka, who by no means deserved to be subbed after 38 minutes. And it doesn’t seem very professional to so directly point the finger at Edu, particularly when it relates to an attacking problem. With substitutions, he seems to get an idea in his head and go ahead with it without any really thought as to how it might affect the team as a whole and seems happy to persist with playing players out of position in order to make some kind of change that only he feels is necessary. I don’t know if it’s just me who feels like this, but he just doesn’t seem like he completely knows what he’s doing and seems keen to point the finger at individuals whilst being oblivious to any of his own mistakes. As I said on twitter after this game, we won this game in spite of our manager, rather than because of him. I think you could say the same about quite a few of our results this year too.

Next up we have the next round of the cup away to Mito Hollyhock on July 11th. After that we’re back in league action, away to Consadole Sapporo the following Wednesday. In between now and then we have the World Cup. I have to admit I’m finding it a bit hard to get as excited as I usually do about it though. Oh, and I’ll put up some mid-season posts soon.

Team

GK 30. ARAI Shota

DF 18. ELSINHO

DF 23. EDUARDO

DF 5. TANIGUCHI Shogo

DF 7. KURUMAYA Shintaro

MF 19. MORIYA Kentaro

MF 25. MORITA Hidemasa

MF 41. IENAGA Akihiro

MF 28. WAKIZAKA Yasuto

MF 16. HASEGAWA Tatsuya
FW 8. ABE Hiroyuki

Subs 

GK 24. ANDO Shunsuke

MF 2. NOBORIZATO Kyohei (on for EDUARDO 59')

FW 9. AKASAKI
DF 17. TAKEOKA Yuto

FW 20. CHINEN Kei (on for WAKIZAKA 38')

MF 22. SHIMODA Hokuto

MF 27. SUZUKI Yuto (on for ABE 86')

My Frontale Man Of The Match

Many more average and bad performances than good ones in this game to be honest. Morita did a decent job, Ienaga was his usual excellent self, Chinen is regaining some confidence and Abe toiled away out of position for a large portion of the match. Just feel like it should go to…

HASEGAWA Tatsuya - Nice finish for his goal, and showed what problems he can cause the opposition when he’s involved in a game. Keep up the good work! 

Goals 

 

FUJIWARA (Sony) 18' 0-1

MIURA (Sony) 33' 0-2

HASEGAWA (Frontale) 52' 1-2

ELSINHO (Frontale) 66' 2-2

IENAGA (Frontale) 89' 3-2

Highlights