Well that was a good result. A good result but maybe not a particularly exciting game. In fact even that’s a bit of an exaggeration. After we scored in the 54th minute we didn’t have another shot for the rest of the match. So definitely a bit of hanging on! But we managed to successfully see it out. I don’t write much about games I watch on the internet so there not much else to say apart from the pitch was awful and the ref made some ‘interesting’ decisions. Oh and that maybe without the ball we were almost playing a 4-4-2 it seemed, which is quite revolutionary for Oniki! That all changed after the subs and that coincided with nothing happening for us so that might be worth bearing in mind for the future. But anyway, three points. That’s three more than YFM. And no goals conceded. Which is seven less than YFM! Next up, Nagoya away on Sunday. They’ve battered Albirex Niigata tonight. Hopefully that exertion took it out of them a bit and they’ve used up all their goals for September. Fingers crossed!
Subs GK 22. HAYASAKA Yuki GK 98. YAMAGUCHI Louis FW 9. ERISON MF 10. OSHIMA Ryota (on for SEGAWA 75') FW 17. TONO Daiya(Yellow card 84') (on for WAKIZAKA 69')
FW 20. YAMADA Shin (on for KOBAYASHI 69') FW 26. YAMAUCHI Hinata MF 34. YUI Kota DF 35. MARUYAMA Yuichi (on for VAN WERMESKERKEN 90') FW 41. IENAGA Akihiro (on for MARCINHO 75') DF 44. CESAR HAYDAR
As I said I would in the last post, I missed this game as I was on a plane to the UK. With that in mind, this is going to be very brief. It seems that hell has frozen over as Oniki finally found a game he deemed to be meaningless enough to play some of the younger players. It was good to see Matsunagane, Tanabe and Myogan, (who got an assist but was again changed at half time), get some pitch time again and Ozeki was able to come on from the bench. It was a bit bizarre to see Oniki decide it was necessary to bring on Ienaga in the 82nd minute, but I’ll give him the benefit of the doubt as I haven’t seen the game aside from the highlights. (Very generous of me, eh?). It looked like we attacked with some purpose and we pretty much matched them for all stats apart from possession in both halves. And we all know that in the past we’ve been big on possession and low on actually making chances so that’s got to be an encouraging thing. Kamifukumoto also seemed to have a decent game. (Well, he made some good saves on the highlights and wasn’t at fault for either of the goals). Whether any of this will in any way affect next season remains to be seen. But we’ve made it through the group unbeaten and are now presumably preparing for a defeat to Kofu in the next round.
Next up, Christmas and New Year and I guess some Frontale Rabbit round up posts and the survey and stuff. Right now that seems like a lot of work though for what was aside from the ACL and Emperor’s Cup, a pretty terrible season. I’ll do my best though.
It’s fair to say that 2023 hasn’t been the greatest year for Frontale. Considering how badly we’ve played it’s something of a miracle that we still find ourselves involved in two competitions at this stage of the year. However this has been slightly skewed in 2023 by the late start of the ACL as they switch the schedule for the more standard late-summer-start-and-spring-finish season. So even in this year when we've been awful, it really would have been something for us to put ourselves out of contention after just the one group game. After such a terrible performance against Niigata, surely we were going to lose against the team that destroys our ACL campaign every year, right? Actually wrong, which was a delightful and very welcome surprise. Recently, writing these blog posts has become a real chore as there are only so many ways you can say ‘we’re terrible’. Given the result, this one should be a bit easier, but to be honest, we still weren’t that great. But for once we did the job. I’m going to keep this brief as I’m busy with work this week and this blog, whilst occasionally being a bit of a pressure relief valve, takes ages to write and offers no reward apart from getting a few Twitter likes and the thrill of occasionally irritating pompous opposition fans. I’m going to experiment with a shorter style as I probably can’t really afford to spend three hours doing these when I should be doing housework or actual work. Let’s see how that goes.
The starting line up looked like it could be a weird 3-5-2 but after the Niigata game it seemed destined to be back to 4-3-3. And so it was, despite Yamamura being listed as a midfielder, (very sneaky from us, presumably hoping that Ulsan would not have done any scouting at all). So it was with some trepidation that I awaited kick off. As I’ve said constantly 4-3-3 has been useless when it comes to scoring recently. It kind of was in this game too, with us having loads of shots which mostly went miles over the bar and not managing to test the Ulsan keeper until the 66th minute. I guess the crucial difference was that we were making plenty of good chances though. So now I wonder, and I don’t really like to say this, that perhaps 4-3-3 with Ienaga on the right is useless, and there could be a future for a more structurally disciplined 4-3-3. Ienaga seems to have disappeared recently which I guess must be an injury as I can’t see Oniki dropping him from the squad in a game where we could have so many subs. I think there’s still a role for him in midfield, but I don’t think we can justify making our attack so lopsided by accommodating his free role up front any more. Damiao seems to have a new lease of life and he got the nod in this game with Gomis on the bench. Miyashiro was back too and it seems like bad news for Kobayashi, who didn’t make it into the pitch at all again, so perhaps could now be considered bottom of the striker pecking order. This does seem to change with every toothless attacking week though. And when we did finally manage to score, the goal came from Tachibanada who thankfully was able to get a shot on target, unlike many of his contemporaries. We left it quite late though. Like I said, we made chances, (15 of them), and some were really good ones, but only four shots on target is pretty dismal. But who cares when we won? It’s a slightly weird but horribly predictable to say that we could have been four goals up within the first 15 minutes of the game, but failed to hit the target on any of these occasions. But at least we got to do a bit of attacking. Ulsan were quite happy to let us fart around at the back with the ball, doing absolutely nothing with it, (see, they had scouted us!), whereas we were hassling their back four and keeper constantly. Both approaches were equally unsuccessful till the 89th minute. At one point we had a two on one and made it into the box but somehow contrived to not even be able to have a shot from the situation. All of this would have been hugely frustrating if we hadn’t finally managed to score.
Probably the frustration would have been amplified by the fact that Ulsan didn’t do much in the game. They had a few very good chances, but like us seemed to be in pretty bad shape. They only had the one shot on target, so in retrospect, we totally dominated the game. Totally dominated it yet only managed to score the winner and only goal in the 89th minute. Ulsan were a big surprise actually. They always beat or frustrate us. They definitely are a bogey team, and currently sit top of their league, but really looked a shadow of the teams who’ve successfully messed with us and our delicate style in the past. After a first minute VAR check for a possible red card after an early potentially-aggro coming together they seemed to really fade. Maybe they’re focusing on the league this year (just like we are, right? 😉) or maybe they’re lulling us into a false sense of security so that they can totally destroy us at a later stage of the competition and smash our hearts into tiny pieces. They scored three times against Pathum in their first game but only once ever looked like threatening in this game. (It probably should be said that Johor scored four against Pathum in their second game. All set up perfectly for us to self destruct in our next game against them). Whether we were lucky to come up against Ulsan on an off day or whether they’re not as good as before, well, only time will tell. But we now don’t play them till the last group game, and you’d hope with the start we’ve made, that we won’t need anything from that game to secure our progress. But don’t forget we are 2023 Frontale, and can easily turn a silk purse into a sow’s ear. But let’s be tentatively… optimistic. Oh, and I almost forgot to say, one of the most entertaining parts of the game, was the fact that the linesman on our side couldn't stop himself from going on the pitch. Perhaps not as amusing when written down as it was at the time, but as I'm adding the photo below, I thought I'd better explain why.
What a surprise of a blog post, eh? Not much moaning, no jokes, not that
long, ending on a positive note! Don’t worry, normal service will
probably be resumed soon, as next up we have Avispa Fukuoka at home in
the Emperor’s Cup semi final on Sunday. Can Oniki build on this win? Can
we perhaps shoot a little bit more accurately? Can I write another
slightly shorter and less interesting blog post? All of these questions
will be answered in due course.
Team
GK 1. JUNG Sung-Ryong
DF 13. YAMANE Miki
DF 3. OMINAMI Takuma
DF 31. YAMAMURA Kazuya
DF 2. NOBORIZATO Kyohei
MF 8. TACHIBANADA Kento
MF 16. SEKO Tatsuki
MF 14. WAKIZAKA Yasuto
FW 30. SEGAWA Yusuke(Yellow card 48')
FW 9. LEANDRO DAMIAO
FW 23. MARCINHO
Subs
GK 22. HAYASAKA Yuki GK 99. KAMIFUKUMOTO Naoto
MF 6. JOAO SCHMIDT
FW 11. KOBAYASHI Yu DF 15. TANABE Shuto
FW 17. TONO Daiya (on for SEKO 77')
FW 18. Bafetimbi GOMIS (on for SEGAWA 83')
FW 20. YAMADA Shin (on for LEANDRO DAMIAO 77') FW 24. MYOGAN Toya
MF 28. OZEKI Yuto
DF 29. TAKAI Kota
FW 33. MIYASHIRO Taisei (on for MARCINHO 70')
Goals
TACHIBANADA (Frontale) 89' 1-0
My Frontale Man Of The Match
Don’t really know what to do with this. We seemed to be better than
the opposition, but no one really stood out as we didn’t have to do
much and mostly couldn't actually do much in front of their goal. However, given that they were restricted to just five shots in the
game, I’m going to perhaps slightly randomly give it to….
OMINAMI
Takuma & YAMAMURA Kazuya - for once Sung-Ryong didn’t have much to
do, which this year is something I’ve only been able to say when he has
been on the bench.
Perhaps this is the first time I have started writing the game’s blog post whilst the match is still happening. I like to think this makes me more journalistic with a tight deadline, but at 3-1 down and looking like we’ll never score again, the truth is that even writing blog posts is more fun than watching this match. Looks like another ACL campaign has been finished by Ulsan but to be honest we can’t really blame anyone but ourselves. Well, actually some of ourselves… if that makes any sense. In the spirit of sour grapes I’m going to rush through this and put it out quickly. I have no desire to think about another failed ACL campaign for any longer than I have to. I guess after all the fifth round of games have been played we’ll have some idea if we still have even a glimmer of a chance of progressing but I’m guessing this post will be up and never looked at again by me by the time that happens. This is a game in which we’ve missed so many good chances and haven’t bothered to defend properly for any of their chances. All the positivity and confidence we gained from the second Johor game has long gone. Oniki could have started the game with the dull as ditchwater double defensive midfield and perhaps ground out a 0-0. Instead he decided to go for that approach only when we were 3-1 down already. We’ve just scored… But it’s almost certainly too little too late as the ref will probably blow up before the injury time elapses as they have in ever one of our games. He did. Game over, literally and almost certainly metaphorically for us in the competition. The final game against Guangzhou which was already kind of pointless has now become exceedingly pointless. Unless Guangzhou beat Johor and then Johor beat Ulsan. A record of two draws, one win and one loss against the teams who don’t finish last in the group will almost certainly not be enough to see us through as a second place team so our only chance would be those results mentioned above. (Actually, a Johor win and then a draw in the Johor Ulsan game might be enough too). We gave Ulsan goals in this game with some absent defending and tactics and failed to take hardly any of our chances. Even the absolute gimmes. And plenty of passing of the ball across the defensive line as we trailed by two goals set to go out. Back to the worst of our 2022 performances again with only a one game break where there was any hint of brightness. After we went against Ulsan last year Hasegawa and Joao Schmidt were frozen out of the team for the rest of the season. I wonder who Oniki will hold responsible this year? I suspect it won't be the same people as I think. Don’t blame the shit pitch, don’t blame Shanghai pulling out and screwing up the system. Blame… I’m not going to point fingers but I have people in mind. But at the same time, I have crappy days at work sometimes too. If I kept having them though, maybe I’d think about a career change.
Next up… oh fuck it, you know who it is and it’s an utterly pointless game anyway. Go Frontale do something else instead and stay as far away from Frontale and football as you can for a while. Honestly, it’s for the best for all of us.
Of course I couldn’t go to this game and had to watch it on DAZN. Therefore this post will be free from detail or insight and extremely thrown together. More than usual to be honest, as this was a very hard watch. Perhaps I shouldn’t have consumed so much alcohol mid-afternoon to celebrate completing the process of renewing my visa. Perhaps if I hadn’t done so I may have been able to concentrate a bit more on the game. But to be honest, I think it would have been hard for anyone to get any real enjoyment out of this game which really should have finished 0-0. Ulsan did a bit better in the first half. We did a bit better in the second. We were hamstrung but a total lack of ideas as we have been for most of 2022. As I don’t know much about Ulsan I won’t try and guess what was holding them back. All in all this was a dull, dull game. At least from my point of view. My notes are so slight that if I did bullet points in this post, the bullet points would mostly probably just be a sentence each, so instead I will quick fire them out in this paragraph and be done with it. Oniki stuck with the team that beat Kashiwa in what at the time felt like an exciting performance but on reflection might have just looked like it because the preceding two games had been so bad. Who would have thought that moving from 4-3-3 to 4-2-1-3 in the previous game and then to 4-2-3-1 in this one would have blunted further our already pretty blunt attack? Apparently we switched back to 4-3-3 in the second half but to be honest this is all just theoretically moving numbers around as there was no real change in shape or tactics again. And even though we had more shots and most of them were on target, we only really tested their keeper on a couple of occasions. Their goal looked like it was perhaps offside and definitely was a handball but there’s no VAR in this tournament and I will never say that I wish there was. Our goal was apparently due to an elbow on their keeper if he is to be believed, but seeing as no-one was near him, it seems that he was just trying to spare his blushes after dropping an absolute clanger after making a few good saves. To get my other boring points out of the way, Damiao missed a really good chance, we wore our away kit even though it was supposedly our ‘home’ game, and the ref blew up early for half time. Did I miss anything? Well, maybe you could say I missed the last two hours of my life which I’ll never get back and am unlikely to ever look back on with any kind of enthusiasm. But yeah, I thought it would probably be a draw before the game and that was both what happened and what both teams probably deserved, and it was kind of fun to get that draw with a last minute equaliser. Even if it came from an opposition player basically saying to us, ‘here’s the ball, have a shot at this open goal’. We’re still shite this year, and still we’re endeavouring to elevate our shiteness further whenever it comes to taking part in the continental competition. Next up, on paper an easier game against Guangzhou’s kids but one which I’m sure we’ll still labour through. What joy! Go Frontale!
Down to two competitions! Out of both the Levain and the ACL within 10 days, (don’t forget that the ACL is our main target for this year…). What a time to be alive! To be honest though, we can probably be fairly pleased with how we did in both competitions due to this massive injury crisis that just keeps on giving. The world may be under the impression that the most highly contagious disease that is going round right now is Corona virus, but I think we have a case for saying it is Frontale centre back injury disease instead. Out of the four ‘centre backs’ we use all four have now been injured in the last month. Jesiel managed to come back after only missing one game but I’m sure 120 minutes won’t have done him much good. We’ve had the fun experience of another midfielder getting a go at centre back in this game, so add Tsukagawa to the list of players who is now susceptible to the defender injury pandemic. I really don’t know what I can write about this game as it was pretty dire. People always talk about games being a real advert for the competition. This was more like a public information film warning against the dangers of following or watching football. Any kids watching will now have surely been mentally scarred by 120 minutes of tedium followed by a competition where 5 members of both teams basically attempted not to fall down a hole whilst kicking a ball.
Before the game I was wondering if we were being a bit sneaky with our social media posts and who was pictured in them, hoping that we might have a pleasant surprise when the starting line up was announced. But no, everyone is still injured and pretty much everyone who was pictured and was eligible to play was on the bench. We even had two spare goalkeepers. Can never be too careful I guess. I guess the only thing of interest in the line up (aside from the centre backs, which wasn’t that interesting as it was the only two vaguely fit ones that played) was a front three of Ienaga on the right, Damiao in the middle and Kobayashi on the left. Apparently this was with the intention that we could switch to a 4-4-2 if we needed to. Whether we did or not, I don’t know, because all we basically did was give away the ball in midfield or hoof the ball up the pitch (giving it away). Ienaga always seems to go where he wants so it’s difficult to work out what the actual shape was. I have to say, halfway through the game I began to doubt even the limited tactical knowledge I have on football. I couldn’t decide whether it was an awesome tactical battle with both teams’ constant thrilling innovations being parried by the opposition or whether it was just one of the worst games of football in the world ever. Judging by Twitter, the prevailing opinion seems to be the latter. Four shots on target in total. Two each. For us that accounted for 16% of all our shots. For them it was 12%. So at least we won in that respect. We can take the moral high ground and claim that our beautiful high quality attacking play deserved more. Or maybe not. I think it was pretty significant that we made no subs for 86 minutes and then only made one change. For the last 25 minutes of the 90 we had plenty of players who could barely walk, let alone run and play football. But Oniki didn’t change anything, I guess because he didn’t think he could make any improvements. Or he didn’t know what to do. Or he didn’t trust the players he had on the bench (which is something of a problem as I can’t see many of the starting eleven being good for a game on Saturday away in Tokushima. Not sure if they will have to quarantine again). Or probably it was a bit of all three options. Or a lot of all three options. This is all skirting around the issue which is that basically, WE’RE FUCKED! (pardon my language). On Twitter it was said that this was a bad result for YFM as we’d now be able to concentrate on the league. This is kind of true, but you’ve got to think that going to extra time with a squad that is already close to breaking isn’t going to help us in these upcoming games that we have. From Saturday we have four games in 12 days. I would guess that we’ll see some unfamiliar faces on Saturday, but I would also guess that Oniki won’t change much as he never really does and he can’t really change much at the moment. It’s useful that I have covered all bases with those predictions. So, the injury and tiredness situation isn’t good. How about the morale situation? Hmmmm, maybe not great either… That’s only 2 wins in the last 8 games. So yeah… we’re fucked.
A few words about our opponents and an attempt at a few jokes. When looking at the massive empty stand with UH FC on it, I cam to understand the ‘uh’ quite quickly, it being the sound that came out of my mouth most often in this game. I’ll leave it to your imagination what the FC might stand for. This is all just a joke though as I don’t have any malice for Ulsan. Certainly they are much better at the dark arts that I think we are. There were quite a few tasty challenges and a fair bit of rolling around on the floor. The two things that really hurt about this defeat were: 1 - we lost in a penalty shoot out to a keeper who looks like he’s been down the Ulsan equivalent of Camden and got himself a few mini dreads and a bit of a perm and dye where his bowl cut used to be. I feel that it gave him an unfair advantage when it came to saving penalties. 2 - It also hurt that we weren’t able to go and at least get some travel enjoyment out of another horrible ACL exit. Instead we were sitting at home watching another rotten game on DAZN and they even amped up the rottenness by piping some ‘mild excitement’ crowd noise in to the stadium to really build the ambience. The fact that you could hear the managers shouting over it suggests that maybe it wasn’t actually that loud, and was perhaps even more pointless than we might have first thought. One weird thing was the fact the for the first time (I think) I saw someone get in the way of the main camera in the stand at the side of the pitch. You expect this on a high energy morning magazine type TV show perhaps but I don’t think I’ve ever seen it at a football game. This was particularly bizarre when you consider that there was hardly anyone in the stadium. I do feel some empathy though for the guy who had the whole stadium to stand in and ended up standing in front of the camera. Bit embarrassing. I guess contractually, I should also be a little angry about something, so let’s moan about the horrific penalty spot. Clearly Hasegawa’s Gareth Southgate-esque penalty (still rising as we speak. Pizza Hut advert on the way perhaps. All a bit niche those references…) was affected by the pitch giving way beneath him as he went to kick it. Not sure we can say the same about the other misses. And it affects both teams the same anyway. I was a bit miffed by the linesman saying Sung-Ryong was off the line for a save, the penalty having to be re-taken, only for it to be saved again, and then apparently not bothering to apply the same rule for the very next penalty by us, (which admittedly we put way over the bar, but it would have been nice to have had another go). Perhaps he felt his job was done. But yeah, I’m clutching at straws. There’s no way you could really say we deserved to go through and I can’t help but feel it would have been better if we just had to forfeit the game. We wouldn’t have had to bother with all the extra effort, travel, possible covid exposure, disappointment, general shitness and without all of these we would have probably been in a better place for the rest of the season. But I kind of expected this. The seeds were sown when Mitoma and Tanaka left and weren’t replaced, were watered by a massive amount of games and nurtured by a ridiculous run of injuries. We can lament the injury situation, moan about winning the group with a perfect record and still getting drawn away to the one other team with a perfect record, the horrible penalty spot and probably plenty of other things but you know, two shots on target in 120 minutes probably tells the story and surprisingly it wasn’t to do with any defensive frailties. If we manage to come out of this year with any title it will be a blessing as right now we look pretty out of sorts and like we’re about to collapse. Uh…. FC.
That’ll do. I wrote more than I thought I would given how terrible the game was. Next up, another horrible watch on DAZN. Tokushima away was the game I was most looking forward to this year but we’ve been denied it. Like we have been denied most of the good away trips (please, please, please let us be able to go to Tosu…). Corona football is a pretty disheartening thing. Of course Corona itself is much, much worse! But to be honest, I’m starting to think I will enjoy the games I can’t attend much more if I don’t actually watch them on DAZN and instead listen to the sound of the electro magnetic waves the computer is making instead. But this probably says more about my music taste than anything useful so let’s leave it here. Go (get some rest and at least a little bit of mojo back please) Frontale.
Team
GK 1. Sung-Ryong JUNG
DF 13. YAMANE Miki
DF 28. YAMAMURA Kazuya
DF 4. JESIEL
DF 2. NOBORIZATO Kyohei
MF 6. JOAO SCHMIDT (Yellow card 117')
MF 22. TACHIBANADA Kento
MF 8. WAKIZAKA Yasuto
FW 41. IENAGA Akihiro
FW 9. LEANDRO DAMIAO
FW 11. KOBAYASHI Yu
Subs
GK 21. ANDO Shunsuke
GK 27. TANNO Kenta
MF 3. TSUKAGAWA Koki (on for YAMAMURA 111')
DF 15. ISSAKA Zain
MF 16. HASEGAWA Tatsuya (on for KOBAYASHI 110')
MF 17. KOZUKA Kazuki
FW 19. TONO Daiya (on for LEANDRO DAMIAO 110')
FW 20. CHINEN Kei (on for WAKIZAKA 86')
FW 24. MIYAGI Ten
DF 30. TANABE Shuto
Goals
No way!
Penalties
CHINEN (Frontale) 0-1
LEE C-Y (Ulsan) 1-1 HASEGAWA (Frontale) 1-1 (missed) WON D-J (Ulsan) 1-1 (missed)
TONO (Frontale) 1-2
LEE D-J (Ulsan) 1-2 (saved) JOAO SCHMIDT (Frontale) 1-2 (missed) YUN I (Ulsan) 2-2
