2022 season player stats

Here are this year’s player stats. They’re a bit flakier than usual as I have put them together in a bit of a rush. Next year, I’ll note them down as I go. Last year I had the appearances as starts, used subs and unused subs but the thought of going back through all of my blog posts over this rotten season wasn’t that appealing. So this year we have all appearances lumped together which I guess loses a bit of the nuance of people coming on only for five minutes as subs and stuff like that. Top performer charts are at the bottom and I’ll put a few thoughts on those stats beneath each chart.

AP = appearances
Y = yellow cards
R = red cards
G = goals
A = assists
MM = man of the match (according to me)

1. Sung-Ryong JUNG (GK)

AP 41 Y 0 R 1 G 0 A 0 MM 1



2. Kyohei NOBORIZATO (DF)

AP 14 Y 1 R 0 G 0 A 0 MM 0

3. Koki TSUKAGAWA (MF)
AP 13 Y 1 R 0 G 0 A 0 MM 2

4. JESIEL (DF)

AP 14 Y 2 R 0 G 1 A 0 MM 2



5. Shogo TANIGUCHI (MF)

AP 41 Y 3 R 1 G 3 A 3 MM 1



6. JOAO SCHMIDT (MF)

AP 30 Y 6 R 0 G 2 A 0 MM 3



7. Shintaro KURUMAYA (DF)

AP 28 Y 3 R 0 G 4 A 0 MM 0


8. Kento TACHIBANADA (MF)

AP 41 Y 2 R 1 G 2 A 2 MM 0



9. LEANDRO DAMIAO (FW)

AP 29 Y 1 R 0 G 7 A 1 MM 1



10. Ryota OSHIMA (MF)

AP 12 Y 0 R 0 G 1 A 0 MM 0


11. Yu KOBAYASHI (FW)

AP 39 Y 1 R 0 G 9 A 5 MM 2



13. Miki YAMANE (DF)

AP 38 Y 5 R 0 G 3 A 6 MM 0



14. Yasuto WAKIZAKA (MF)

AP 42 Y 1 R 0 G 7 A 10 MM 0


15. Asahi SASAKI (DF)
AP 27 Y 4 R 0 G 1 A 2 MM 2


16. Tatsuki SEKO (MF)

AP 19 Y 0 R 0 G 1 A 1 MM 0



17. Kazuki KOZUKA (MF)

AP 17 Y 0 R 0 G 1 A 3 MM 1



18. CHANATHIP (FW)

AP 21 Y 4 R 0 G 2 A 3 MM 0



19. Daiya TONO (FW)

AP 40 Y 1 R 0 G 2 A 1 MM 2



20. Kei CHINEN (FW)

AP 36 Y 3 R 0 G 11 A 2 MM 1

21. Shunsuke ANDO (GK)
AP 0 Y 0 R 0 G 0 A 0 MM 0


22. Yuki HAYASAKA (GK)
AP 0 Y 0 R 0 G 0 A 0 MM 0


23. MARCINHO (FW)

AP 40 Y 2 R 0 G 15 A 7 MM 2



24. Ten MIYAGI (FW)

AP 28 Y 0 R 0 G 2 A 2 MM 1



25. Renji MATSUI (MF)

AP 4 Y 1 R 0 G 0 A 0 MM 0



26. Takatora EINAGA (MF)

AP 1 Y 0 R 0 G 1 A 0 MM 0



27. Kenta TANNO (MF)

AP 5 Y 0 R 0 G 0 A 0 MM 1



28. Taiyo IGARASHI (FW)

AP 1 Y 0 R 0 G 0 A 1 MM 0

29. Kota TAKAI (DF)
AP 1 Y 0 R 0 G 0 A 0 MM 0

30. Shuto TANABE (DF)

AP 2 Y 0 R 0 G 0 A 0 MM 0

31. Kazuya YAMAMURA (MF)

AP 32 Y 2 R 0 G 1 A 1 MM 2

32. Shin YAMADA
AP 1  Y 0 R 0 G 0 A 0 MM 0

41. Akihiro IENAGA (MF)

AP 43 Y 3 R 0 G 12 A 5 MM 5

Most appearances

1. Akihiro IENAGA - 43
2. Yasuto WAKIZAKA - 42
3. Kento TACHIBANADA - 41

3. Sung-Ryong JUNG - 41
3. Shogo TANIGUCHI - 41

It’s kind of shocking that the player with the most appearances was Ienaga, who is 36 years old. He was definitely one of the best performers though so obviously the hard work didn’t blunt his performances too much! Slightly shockingly he was involved in every single league game. And even more shockingly, he made it on to the pitch in every game we played this year apart from one. There were quite a lot of high numbers in this category which I guess isn’t surprising as Oniki doesn’t like to rotate much.

Most yellows

1. JOAO SCHMIDT - 6
2. Miki YAMANE - 5
3. CHANATHIP - 4
3. Asahi SASAKI - 4
5. Akihiro IENAGA - 3
5. Kei CHINEN - 3
5. Shintaro KURUMAYA - 3
5. Shogo TANIGUCHI - 3

Nothing much to see in the yellow card stats really. I’m not sure how fair it is to say this, but I think Joao Schmidt and Chanathip probably got yellows they might not have done if they were Japanese. It definitely seems to be the case that foreign players get booked for stuff that Japanese players don’t. I would also say that maybe Chanathip was desperate to do well and perhaps that’s why he got stuck in a bit too much at times. Maybe. A lot of yellows for Yamane too, probably because, (in my opinion), he couldn’t really be bothered for most of the season, got caught out and had to make some dodgy fouls to make up for his mistakes. But then again I would say that.

Most reds

1. Kento TACHIBANADA - 1
2. Sung-Ryong JUNG - 1
3. Shogo TANIGUCHI - 1

Three reds only. Of course all the opposition players cheated in all of those situations, right?

Most goals

1. MARCINHO - 15
2. Akihiro IENAGA - 12
3. Kei CHINEN - 11
4. Yu KOBAYASHI - 9
5. Yasuto WAKIZAKA - 7
5. LEANDRO DAMIAO - 7

Ienaga and Marcinho scored the joint most goals in the league, but Marcinho topped the charts with his goals in cup games. Damiao was number one last year with 31 goals! Over twice as many as the winner got this year. Perfectly in keeping with how this season felt, I guess. The top five had 74 goals combined last year. The top six this year got 61 goals. But there were more games last year.

Most assists

1. Yasuto WAKIZAKA - 10
2. MARCINHO - 7
3. Miki YAMANE - 6
4. Akihiro IENAGA - 5
4. Yu KOBAYASHI - 5

Last year’s assist king Yamane dropped into third place this year. I won’t moan about him again though. Wakizaka stepped up to take his place. There’s probably not much to say about assists other than that.

Most Frontale Rabbit ‘Man Of The Match’ awards

1. No-one - 10
2. Akihiro IENAGA - 5
3. JOAO SCHMIDT - 3
4. Kazuya YAMAMURA - 2
4. JESIEL - 2
4. Daiya TONO - 2
4. Yu KOBAYASHI - 2
4. MARCINHO - 2
4. Koki TSUKAGAWA - 2
4. Asahi SASAKI - 2

The runaway winner here was my grumpy ‘absolutely no-one deserved it’ awards. I should add that I don’t give these for games I don’t attend and those occasions aren’t included in the winning total. Neither was when I couldn’t really pick someone as no-one stood out. I should make it absolutely clear that on ten occasions this year I thought we were so useless that it pissed me off. Other than that, it’s no surprise that Ienaga got the most awards. I totally accept that my man of the match awards are often a little different from other people’s opinions, but that’s the benefit of writing a blog, I guess. Nice work Tsukagawa for getting it on two occasions, one of which was after he’d transferred to FC Tokyo.

2022 season ref stats

Here we go with the first of my 2022 season round up posts and as always I'll start with the easiest one to do, the ref stats. I think I always say that these stats are kind of pointless as obviously every game is different and has different card worthy incidents. Therefore, if you believe that all refs apply the same rules, (and of course we always are talking about the consistency of refs in the J League, aren't we?), comparing how many cards they've given doesn't really make sense. I do think it gives us a bit of an idea though of how we should feel about various refs. I've added the 2021 totals at the bottom, not just to rub in how awful we were this year compared to last year, but also to show how many more cards we picked up in 2022. I guess this comes with the territory when you're struggling a bit. In 2021 we had four more league games as there were two extra teams in the league. We had four extra cup games too. That was because we were awful in the cups this year. Even with eight less games, we still picked up 17 more yellows and three more reds this year. It hasn't been much fun, has it? To focus a little on the refs, and ignoring those who we've only had a single game with as we should probably consider more than one game to make these kind of sweeping generalisations, our big ref buddies this year were Fukushima, Kimura, Sato and Shimizu from a points gained point of view. Conversely we should be moaning about how few points we've gained in Araki's and Matsuo's games. The most card happy refs to us were Araki and Ikeuchi. Shockingly Kasahara didn't send off any of our players this year (at least not directly, think he was involved in one VAR decision). In conclusion, Fukushima was the best and Araki was the worst (the second part of which I guess I suspected before compiling these stats, but I had some others in mind too). Let's hope Fukushima refs all of our games next year and then we'll come away with a perfect points haul and no cards all year. But let's not cheer his announcement like some did with Iemoto a few years ago turning him against us for the rest of his career. Yes, I'm still bitter.

G - Games refereed
W - Wins
D - Draws
L - Losses
Y - Yellow Cards
R - Red Cards
AVC - Average number of cards per game (yellow = 1, red = 3)
AVP - Average points for us per game

ARAKI
G 4 W 0 D 2 L 2 Y 7 R 1 
AVC 2.5 AVP 0.5

ENOMOTO
G 1 W 0 D 0 L 1 Y 0 R 0
AVC 0 AVP 0

FUKUSHIMA
G 2 W 2 D 0 L 0 Y 0 R 0
AVC 0 AVP 3

IIDA
G 3 W 2 D 0 L 1 Y 2 R 0
AVC 0.66 AVP 2

IKEUCHI
G 2 W 1 D 0 L 1 Y 7 R 0
AVC 3.5 AVP 1.5

KASAHARA
G 1 W 1 D 0 L 0 Y 0 R 0
AVC 0 AVP 3

KAWAMATA
G 1 W 1 D 0 L 0 Y 0 R 0
AVC 0 AVP3

KIMURA
G 2 W 2 D 0 L 0 Y 3 R 0
AVC 1.5 AVP 3

KOYA
G 1 W 1 D 0 L 0 Y 1 R 0
AVC 1 AVP3

MATSUO
G 2 W 0 D 1 L 1 Y 1 R 0
AVC 0.5 AVP 0.5

MIKURIYA
G 1 W 0 D 1 L 0 Y 2 R 0
AVC 2 AVP 1

NAKAMURA
G 2 W 1 D 0 L 1 Y 0 R 0
AVC 0 AVP1.5

NISHIMURA
G 1 W 0 D 1 L 0 Y 1 R 0
AVC 1 AVP 1

OKABE
G 3 W 1 D 1 L 1 Y 3 R 1
AVC 2 AVP 1.33

SATO
G 3 W 3 D 0 L 0 Y 6 R 0
AVC 2 AVP 3

SHIMIZU
G 2 W 2 D 0 L 0 Y 1 R 0
AVC 0.5 AVP 3

TANIMOTO
G 2 W 1 D 0 L 1 Y 2 R 0
AVC 1 AVP1.5

UEDA
G 2 W 1 D 1 L 0 Y 1 R 0
AVC 0.5 AVP 2

YAMAMOTO
G 3 W 2 D 1 L 0 Y 1 R 1
AVC 1.33 AVP 2.33 

TOTALS
G 38 W 21 D 8 L 9 Y 38 R 3
AVC 1.23 AVP 1.86


*2021 TOTALS FOR YOUR REFERENCE*
G 46 W 31 D 13 L 2 Y 21 R 0
AVC 0.45 AVP 2.3

2022 Season survey questions

Here is the 6th annual Frontale Rabbit Blog survey. Totally cut and pasted from last year's one. Maybe the answers will be a bit depressing this year though... If you have any questions you think I should add, please let me know and I'll put them in. Please reply any way you want. Leave a comment on the post, send me an email to frontalefan(at)gmail(dot)com, tweet them, Instagram message me…. any way you can think of really. I'll follow up collating the answers when I've got some responses. And in the interest of getting as many replies as possible, it's in Japanese too. Thanks!

 
Frontale Rabbitブログの年末恒例アンケートも5年目になりました。質問は昨年とほぼ同じですが、これ以外にも聞いたらおもしろいと思う質問があったらお知らせください。返答方法は自由 - ブログコメント欄、メール(frontalefan(at)gmail(dot)com)、ツイート、Instagramのメッセージなど。返答が集まったら結果を報告します！

 1. Game of season
今シーズン1番良かった試合

2. Player of the season
今シーズン1番良かった選手

3. Goal of the season
今シーズン1番のゴール

4. Disappointment of the season
今シーズン1番がっかりしたこと

5. Villain of the season (anyone, from any team or an official or...)
今シーズンの悪者(他のチームの選手でも審判でも誰でも)

6. Best away trip (if you've done one)
今シーズン1番のアウェイ遠征(もし行った場合)

7. Best stadium in the J League
Jリーグで一番好きなスタジアムは？

8. Opposition J1 team you like the most
フロンターレ以外でJ1で1番好きなチーム

9. Opposition J1 team you like the least
J1で嫌いなチームを１つ選ぶなら

10. Team you're pleased to see come up
J1に昇格してうれしいチームを１つ選ぶなら

11. Best thing about the J League
Jリーグで1番良いこと

12. Worst thing about the J League
Jリーグで1番嫌なこと

13. Trophy you would like to win the most next year
来シーズン1番欲しいタイトル

14. What’s your view of Oniki?
鬼木監督についてどう思いますか？

15. If you could have any J League player sign for Frontale, who would it be?
Jリーグの選手でフロンターレに欲しい選手は？

16. Which former Frontale player would you most like to see us re-sign?
元フロンターレの選手で、1番フロンターレに戻ってきてほしいのは誰ですか？

17. What’s your prediction for next season?
来年の予想

18. How do you feel about us having lots of players leaving for Europe?
選手がヨーロッパのチームに行くことについてどう思いますか？

19. How was VAR for you?
VARについてどう思いましたか？

20. Any other comments
その他コメント

Vs FC Tokyo (away) 5/11/22 J League match 34

FC Tokyo 2 - 3 Kawasaki Frontale

After months of saying the title is gone I can now confirm that the title has officially gone. It’s something of a miracle that it has taken so long for it to become an undeniable fact. We’ve dawdled and stumbled all year, but somehow have eked out enough results to stay in contention. When you consider some of the results we’ve got against teams near and at the bottom, it’s quite frustrating to have ended up only two points behind at the end of the season. But if we had won the league the exhilaration would have mainly come from the fact that we would not deserved it at all. As this post is supposed to be about the final game of the season, I’ll save my ‘high quality analysis’ as to where things went wrong for my season round-up posts. And as it’s no fun to think about our neighbours winning the league, let’s get this out of the way quickly and then not think about football for a while. Well apart from that Thai tour. But friendlies aren’t really that important, are they?

No real surprises in the starting line-up. Jesiel started instead of Kurumaya, presumably being completely healed after his injury and being on the bench last week. Aside from that one change, it was the same team who’d squeaked past Vissel last weekend. So again we had Tachibanada and Joao Schmidt both playing. See last week’s post and probably loads of previous ones to find out why I don’t think that’s a good thing. But it is Oniki who is in charge, so the best players/his favourite players will be squeezed into the same formation wherever he can fit them, rather than playing people in their favoured positions. It’s difficult to comment on whether it worked in this game or not, as the game as a normal contest was over after 29 minutes when Sung-Ryong got sent off. We were right behind it and to me it looked like he hadn’t even made contact and instead had kicked the ground. Definitely Adailton was looking for the foul as he was heading away from the goal. But I’m not going to say it wasn’t a red. It got referred to VAR so I’m sure they closely checked it. Don’t think the replay from the one angle on DAZN is particularly conclusive either way though if you go in with a ‘no contact’ mindset. I’m sure I’d be saying it was a definite if it was our attacker though. As I said, the red pretty much killed the game for us as an attacking force, except for giving the ball to Marcinho and getting him to run at the FC Tokyo defence and get fouled (no free kicks though, wink emoji here). Astonishingly though we scored three times. Wakizaka’s first was a lovely strike and went in whilst it was still 11 vs 11. (Or should I say 12 vs 11 as it would be stupid of me to not bore on about the ref Yamamoto being totally biased against us as is my wont. Anyway, more on him later). Our other two goals were kind of gifted to us. Morishige shepherding the ball out of play and then thinking he was much too skillful to do that and losing the ball to Tachibanada was a moment of real joy. Marcinho scuffing the finish and it looping over Slowik was either absolute genius or another big slice of fortune. The third was even better, FC Tokyo’s striker knee-ing the ball into his own net under no pressure at all. Lovely! Without these two uplifting moments in a game where we only had four shots because we spent most of it desperately defending it would have been a long afternoon and would have made useless Vissel Kobe’s failure to hand us the title extremely annoying. As it was, we had something to hang some slight happiness on to and got a little lift at the end of what has been a thoroughly underwhelming season bookended by two flukey wins against FC Tokyo. Joy!

A few words on FC Tokyo. I didn’t notice during the game, but looking at highlights I was dazzled by Adailton’s perfect and brilliant teeth. Perhaps this explains the weird face he pulls when he celebrates goals. If you’ve spent decent money at the dentist, you want to show them off with a gurn. Sadly we saw this celebration twice. Mercifully it wasn’t more than twice. Sure, they had an extra player, but they caused us a lot of problems, and if it wasn’t for that apparent innate FC Tokyo desire to shoot themselves in the foot, they probably would have had a better season. I suspect once Puig has got rid of some of the dead wood at the end of the season they’ll be in a position to make a much sterner challenge next year. He seems like a nice guy too, coming over to commiserate with us over our total title failure. At least that’s what I heard. I didn’t hang around after we’d said goodbye and kind of well done to our players at the end of the game. Tsukagawa seems like a changed man. He was at the heart of a lot of what FC Tokyo did in this game. Just shows what happens when you give a player a chance I guess. I think lots of players sink and disappear with us because they never get more than a minute or two played well out of position. But this is supposed to be the FC Tokyo section so I’ll save that talk for a later post. Tsukagawa also made the highlights reel for some extremely high and wide blasts into the stands. It’s a good thing he wasn’t on the goal scoring form that he was against YFM that saved us losing another one of our title race nine lives when we lost to Shonan. Slowik is still not good at all with the ball at his feet. We probably would have made more use of that if we hadn’t played 2/3 of the game with 10 men. The queues were horrible at this game. When looking at the make up of the crowd, which seemed to be about at least one third Frontale fans, you’ve got to imagine that they aren’t used to getting such crowds at Ajista. I met up with the FC Tokyo Kai Guys and had a nice chat in the line for the official FC Tokyo beer, which seemed to be being served at about one customer every couple of minutes, (I dunno, perhaps they were hand-squeezing the beer direct from the beer tree, rather than pouring it in the normal way so it took a bit longer?), and then had to give up on both the beer and the chat to join another really long and slow moving queue to get into the stadium before kick off. Perhaps the fact that our seats were all reserved meant that Frontale fans were all turning up at the same time to enter. But I know that other fans who were entering about an hour before had the same issues too. Oh and of course no post about a Tamagawa Classico in Chofu would be complete without the usual laughing at ‘You’ll Never Walk Alone’ which was being blasted through the speakers in order to make up for the fact that no-one was singing it. Perhaps they only know the words to the chorus. Or perhaps it all feels a bit weird to them. I guess the Kai Guys don’t really want to sing it considering the team it is associated with in England and the teams they support in England. I think we were a bit rude to start singing our song whilst it was playing, but it is a derby and I think it was quite funny to drown their prerecorded song out.

Finally, let’s talk about Yamamoto the ref. My game notes are mainly his name and ‘absolute…’, ’total…’, 'unbelievable...' or 'absolute total unbelievable...' followed by four letter expletives. I’ve addressed the red card above so don’t think I’m moaning about that. He gave almost nothing else though. He definitely didn’t give the two fouls that lead directly to the two FC Tokyo goals. He also was quite happy to see us play for as long as possible with nine men when Taniguchi was off the field after treatment and was made to run round to the touchline at centre of the pitch, desperately trying to get back on, while the ref, with the action on the other side of the pitch did his best to not notice him. I had a bad feeling about Yamamoto before the game, which is weird as looking back on our games he’s officiated this year, I didn’t have much to moan about. He’s definitely made my shit list now though. Of course, if we’d won the league, I probably wouldn’t be moaning about the ref so much. But imagine how much I’d be moaning if we had lost this game as well as the title! Moaning at refs is a great way to let off steam, and to also cover up for the inadequacies of your own team’s play. It’s always good if you can blame someone else for your deficiencies. But in this case, well, he was just useless.

So that’s it. Next up, no-one. Ah, actually Thailand. Friendlies aside, the season is over and it’s barely November. We’ve come up short in the league whilst also failing miserably in every other competition we’ve played in this year. So not exactly a vintage year for us. I think I made 2019 comparisons at the start of the season and they have come all too true. Although this year, we came kind of close to winning the league. But could we truly have said we deserved it? I don’t think so. I also don’t think YFM did either though, so maybe we should just cancel this year. What do you reckon? I guess the next few days and weeks will be full of talk about who is leaving and who is staying. Perhaps I’m not just talking about players. I think if we’d won the league perhaps Oniki would have gone. But as we’ve come up short, maybe he’ll be here again next year. And that is apparently what the early rumours are saying. There’s a lot to do before we start next season. Once again, we’ve barely rotated all year and have absolutely no idea when it comes to having a plan B. We still can’t break down teams who just want to defend. Aside from Marcinho and penalties our attack seems to have been totally blunted. And who would have thought that not having any defenders and having one of our best players start the season with a long term injury without getting any cover in would have meant that our defence has got worse too? Anyway, I’m sure we’ll all have a nice break and will come back next year with the usual bordering on deluded optimism and niceness that we start every year with. Good luck to Taniguchi and Yamane at the World Cup (perhaps you might actually notice Yamane in a game. I don’t think I’ve spotted him in a Frontale game for a while. Wink wink, nudge nudge, eh?), and good luck to the rest of us in forgetting this year’s failure on all fronts as quickly as possible!

Team 

 

GK 1. JUNG Sung-Ryong (Red card 29')

DF 13. YAMANE Miki

DF 5. TANIGUCHI Shogo

DF 4. JESIEL

DF 2. NOBORIZATO Kyohei

MF 6. JOAO SCHMIDT

MF 8. TACHIBANADA Kento

MF 14. WAKIZAKA Yasuto

FW 41. IENAGA Akihiro

FW 11. KOBAYASHI Yu

FW 23. MARCINHO

Subs

GK 27. TANNO Kenta (on for NOBORIZATO 33')

DF 7. KURUMAYA Shintaro (on for WAKIZAKA 46')

MF 10. OSHIMA Ryota (on for JOAO SCHMIDT 59')

MF 17. KOZUKA Kazuki

MF 19. TONO Daiya

FW 20. CHINEN Kei (on for KOBAYASHI 59')

MF 31. YAMAMURA Kazuya (on for MARCINHO 80')

 

My Frontale Man Of The Match

 

Backs against the wall stuff and a big old mess of players playing in weird shapes due to the red card means it's a bit difficult to judge people fairly. But one player really stood out for interception after interception and tackle after tackle...

JESIEL - a bit of shame for him to have been associated with such a lacklustre season considering he was injured for so long. Was immense in this game and we would have finished the season on an even bigger downer if it hadn't been for him.

 

Goals

 

WAKIZAKA (Frontale) 19' 0-1

ADAILTON (FC Tokyo) 47' 1-1

MARCINHO (Frontale) 61' 1-2

ADAILTON (FC Tokyo) 74' 2-2

OWN GOAL (FC Tokyo) 75' 2-3

 

Highlights

Vs Vissel Kobe (home) 29/10/22 J League match 33

Kawasaki Frontale 2 - 1 Vissel Kobe

I know that recently I’ve started every blog post with a disclaimer that I don’t have much time to write it and therefore will have to bash it out quickly. This time I might reach new heights of bashing it out quickly. I’m playing my first concert for three years next week and haven’t practiced anywhere near enough. In order to avoid proper in person embarrassment I’m going to risk online embarrassment by neglecting this post and doing even less ‘research’ than usual. This wasn’t a great performance from us but we did enough to tale the points. I do feel that this is all too little too late though and that two losses against Shonan, two draws against Jubilo and a few other dodgy games will cost us dearly. YFM sadly didn’t continue their awful form and instead gave Urawa a spanking. Now we just have to hope that Vissel Kobe’s desire to not have the trophy given out on their home ground is greater than FC Tokyo’s desire to not have a bit of card given out at their home ground. We need a Vissel win. A draw in that game will necessitate quite a big victory for us in our game. When I say quite big I think we’re talking about all time record big. So, fingers crossed Vissel can do the business. And that we also can. I’m not that confident about either of these things actually happening to be honest. A few quick words about the game before I throw out some facetious comments about the opposition. We were pretty shot shy again. And Tachibanada and Joao Schmidt playing together in the midfield once again stifled our attacking. At least that’s they way I see it. One or the other works best as far as I’m concerned. But what do I know? I was a bit confused why we were putting so many crosses into the box when our attackers aren’t that tall and their defenders were. Plenty of good opportunities were wasted that way. But you know, we won, so best not moan too much.

On to the opposition baiting. Kobe lined up in their pre-match training wear looking like they’d planned a team outing after the game to watch ‘This Is England’ and were going to go in skinhead fancy dress. Osaki complemented this with his ‘sax player in the backing band of an early 80’s white boy soul singer’ haircut. Osako is clearly looking to force his way back into the national team having perhaps heard that Moriyasu is on the lookout for the kind of player who can constantly foul from behind and whinge a lot. Vissel at the end of the 2022 season seem like a team with good footballing brains but without the footballing bodies to pull off their ideas. I guess the body deteriorates before the mind does. Certainly my mind is currently doing its best to catch up with my body. Or perhaps readers might think that both are equally degraded. It seems a little more difficult to poke fun and laugh at Vissel now that  they are trying to assemble the Japan national team of three or four years ago rather than the Barcelona team of about double that time ago. I’ve heard people saying that maybe Iniesta will perhaps be bowing out at the end of the year. Not sure if this is in any way true, but if he is, it seems only right that they go out on a big win, doesn’t it? Good luck to Vissel. We’re all supporting you!

And with this all out of the way mercifully quickly, let’s look ahead to next week at the Ajinomoto Stadium. As I’ve said, we’ve got to win. That’s it really. I’m pleased that it’s a singing game, but I suspect that our singing at the end of the game will be more of the ‘well done, you tried your best but results elsewhere mean that your efforts were in vain’ style than unbridled joy at a miracle coming true. Then after that I can get on with some end of season posts and the usual survey. Lots to look forward to, eh

 

Team 

 

GK 1. JUNG Sung-Ryong

DF 13. YAMANE Miki

DF 5. TANIGUCHI Shogo

DF 7. KURUMAYA Shintaro

DF 2. NOBORIZATO Kyohei

MF 6. JOAO SCHMIDT (Yellow card 44')

MF 8. TACHIBANADA Kento

MF 14. WAKIZAKA Yasuto

FW 41. IENAGA Akihiro

FW 11. KOBAYASHI Yu

FW 23. MARCINHO

Subs

GK 27. TANNO Kenta
DF 4. JESIEL (on for NOBORIZATO 71')

MF 10. OSHIMA Ryota (on for JOAO SCHMIDT 62')

MF 17. KOZUKA Kazuki

MF 18. CHANATHIP

MF 19. TONO Daiya (on for MARCINHO 87')

FW 20. CHINEN Kei (on for WAKIZAKA 71')

 

Goals

 

MARCINHO (Frontale) 20' 1-0

KOBAYASHI (Vissel) 51' 1-1

IENAGA (Frontale) PEN 84' 2-1

Highlights

Vs Kyoto Sanga (home) 12/10/22 J League match 25

Kawasaki Frontale 3 - 1 Kyoto Sanga 

Whoever wins the league this year, one thing is for sure. The winner won’t have won due to them having played the best the most times, but more having for choked a bit less than their rivals on less occasions. Once again this was another match day for us where the more significant action was happening in a different stadium. And actually in the Nissan stadium again. I’ve never particularly been a fan of that stadium but I’m starting to quite enjoy the results that are happening there recently. And a big thank you to Jubilo Iwata. I guess they felt they owed us something as we’d given them a couple of points in two absolutely awful games this year. Looking back, maybe we should have agreed to win one each and then we’d only be one point behind YFM instead of two. All of this is a lot of fun to talk about but we’ve probably got to admit that although lightning usually doesn’t strike twice, it strikes three or four times even less often. Jubilo and Gamba have done us massive favours but now we need Urawa and Vissel to do the same. And we’re playing Vissel next so somehow we need them to be terrible in the next game and then great in the last one. And we have FC Tokyo in the final game who smashed Cerezo 4-0 in their midweek game. That’s Cerezo, a team who we have drawn three times with and lost once to this year. It’s been a weird year and although our season by all rights should have been finished at least a few matches ago, it just keeps limping on. It’s the hope that kills you, I guess. And now we have another big old break till our next game. With my optimist hat on, (a hat I rarely wear), this long break is perfect for Kevin Muscats and YFM to get good and panicky and dwell deeply on their last two defeats, their confidence crumbling, resulting in then finishing the season with four consecutive losses. With more realistic headwear in place, it will probably just give them an opportunity to draw a line under those defeats and get back into some kind of shape to take the title. I’ve been saying for months that the title was gone so surely you weren’t going to expect me to change my mind now, were you? I will say though, the last two matches have been a lot of fun, haven’t they?

 

Minimal information in this section about the match. The usual quality you’d expect from me. Tachibanada was back and Joao Schmidt was absent due to a yellow card ban, so once again we were spared the double defensive midfielder thing. I hope Oniki has noticed that we’ve won the games where we haven’t played both of them together. It’s a shame as they both play really well in the defensive midfield role. This doesn’t mean that we need to play both of them though. During his red card break it seems that Tachibanada has been talking with Damiao, as before he got his goal in this game, I couldn’t ever have imagined him scoring with an overhead. I may be making the finish sound a bit more dramatic than it actually was, but it was great to see him come back from his disappointment with a goal. Taniguchi saw Yamamura score last weekend and clearly thought he’d like to get in the action too. And it was a lovely finish from Marcinho, who seemed to direct the ball home using his privates. I’m sure no-one cares how they go in at this stage though. We probably could have had more as we were well on top in the first half. At the same time though, even though we won by two goals, the end wasn’t exactly comfortable and Kyoto hit the woodwork a couple of times. They looked terrible in the first half for the most part and I was quite shocked how a few subs really turned things round for them. I thought they had some really good ideas from set pieces, but at the same time didn’t have the players to pull them off. Delighted about that to be honest. Cho has a reputation for being a manager that can get his team out of the relegation scrap but I’m not sure he’ll be able to do it on this occasion if they start their remaining games the way they started this one. There was a big flag with his face on it in the Kyoto end which for some unknown reason seemed to have the word ‘HUNT’ written under it. No idea about that. They also had plenty of those flags that the more racist groups of fans love so much and which go down very badly in the ACL. We did alright I think, but perhaps are running mainly on confidence and form right now. We rode our luck on quite a few occasions, but got away with it. I don’t have anyone to moan about in this game, but I will say that Marcinho and Ienaga have every right to be feeling totally knackered and maybe need a rest. Marcinho kept running for the whole game but like against Shimizu when he had a late chance to put the ball in an empty net from the halfway line, he just seemed to be lacking a bit of power. And Ienaga really slowed down as the game progressed, doing his usual drifting thing but, drifting around the pitch at half speed. Recently they have been undroppable and quite rightly so. But this break has come at exactly the right time. I probably would have subbed Ienaga if I were the manager, but as I’ve said many times, if I were the manager, we’d be in big trouble. And I suspect that Oniki and Ienaga have their eyes on the top goal scorer chart. He couldn’t add to his tally on this occasion though but hopefully he can before the season ends. Marcinho is only one goal behind too though. A quick word on Tanno, who has hardly had any opportunities in his time with is. He made an absolutely amazing save in this game, but once again was denied a clean sheet. I don’t think this was his fault, but he just seems to be unlucky that when he comes in, we gift the opposition some nice and easy chances. Or perhaps the same thing happens to Sung-Ryong but he manages to stop them. Anyway, well done to Tanno. I’m not worried that his kicking isn’t as good. If I know that, I’m sure the team does and probably shouldn’t be putting him in quite so many dubious situations. But yeah, nice work, and I hope you like your new song.

 

So, yeah, this is all a bit light. But I spent a lot of time at this game checking Flashscore and hoping that YFM were still drawing, and then hoping they were still losing. We didn’t set the world on fire but we did the job, which is more than can be said in plenty of games this year. So, very satisfying. Two games to go and they are Vissel at home and Chofu away. It’s a bit of a shame that we have to wait a few weeks till we can play again but as I said, it should give some players some time to rest a bit. Kobe are usually tricky for us, but we play better against them at home so there’s that to hang on to. And FC Tokyo have a slight shot at the ACL and would no doubt be delighted to deny us if it did come done to the final day of the season. But it’s not in our hands anyway so there’s no point talking about this kind of thing. Keep those fingers crossed and I have no shame in loudly proclaiming that I’m really supporting Urawa in their next match, which will be happening at the same time as ours, so if all goes well, expect me to not be paying much attention for our next game either.

 

Team 

 

GK 27. TANNO Kenta

DF 13. YAMANE Miki

DF 31. YAMAMURA Kazuya

DF 5. TANIGUCHI Shogo

DF 2. NOBORIZATO Kyohei

MF 8. TACHIBANADA Kento

MF 18. CHANATHIP

MF 14. WAKIZAKA Yasuto

FW 41. IENAGA Akihiro

FW 11. KOBAYASHI Yu

FW 23. MARCINHO

Subs

GK 21. ANDO Shunsuke

DF 7. KURUMAYA Shintaro (on for NOBORIZATO 79')
DF 15. SASAKI Asahi

MF 17. KOZUKA Kazuki (on for WAKIZAKA 79')

MF 19. TONO Daiya (on for CHANATHIP 62')

FW 24. MIYAGI Ten (on for MARCINHO 79')

FW 26. EINAGA Takatora

 

My Frontale Man Of The Match

 

A decent performance from plenty of people so it’s a difficult choice. Chanathip was back and had a good game with a great cross for the first goal. Was nice to see Tachibanada back in a more comfortable position and getting a goal but I think I’ll give it jointly to…

TANUGUCHI Shogo, YAMAMURA Kazuya and TANNO Kenta - bit weird to give it to the two centre backs and the goalie as we did concede, (I haven’t watched the replay so might be dropping a clanger here), but I thought all three of them did their bit when it came to keeping us reasonably solid at the back. And loving those Yamamura runs forward which seem to be rubbing off on Taniguchi too now.

 

Goals

 

TANIGUCHI (Frontale) 9' 1-0

TACHIBANADA (Frontale) 22' 2-0

MARCINHO (Frontale) 61' 3-0

PAULINHO (Kyoto) 70' 3-1

Highlights 

 

Vs Shimizu S Pulse (home) 8/10/22 J League match 32

Kawasaki Frontale 3 - 2 Shimizu S Pulse

So we live to fight another day! Possibly YFM want to make me look as stupid as possible as I’ve been saying we have no chance of winning the title for months now. Usually when they slip up, we do the same and fail to take advantage. And then of course there are those days and those games where they win 4-0 (away at Nagoya where we scraped a 1-1) and we either draw or lose. So now we sit here five points behind with three games to go. Of course there’s nothing more I’d like than for them to totally choke and for us to win the league. But that would require us winning our last three games, (at home against Kyoto and Vissel and away to FC Tokyo), and them slipping up twice in their last three games (at home to Jubilo and Urawa and then away at Vissel). So it’s not going to happen. And then I will be able to moan again about our horrendous results in ‘easier’ games that has totally messed us up this year. But we did win this game and it was fun. Two things that can’t be said about any of our last three games. The usual pre-game display of the league table on the big screen was met with the absolute minimum smattering of light applause, perhaps done more from muscle memory rather than actually as a reaction to what was being shown on the screen which didn’t look at all good. Perhaps the clapping might be a bit stronger on Wednesday but it’s still not really very nice viewing. Oniki’s hand was forced when it came to the starting line up as Jesiel, Sung-Ryong and Kurumaya were injured and Tachibanada was banned after his red card against Sapporo. So we were finally rid of the double defensive midfield thing, (or at least two defensive midfielders being played together anyway), which worked against YFM (just about) and has been more certain to happen recently that the inevitability of all of our eventual deaths. In the same way that we all must meet our maker one day, Oniki’s tactics too expire. But much like human beings in ghost stories or the bible but not in real life, I suspect that there will be a resurrection of the Tachibana Joao Schmidt midfield double, probably in the game after next. (Joao Schmidt is banned for the game on Wednesday). I think I always say this but I’m really busy right now and have a hell of a lot of things I need to do before the end of the month, so please excuse this post for lack of detail. And I should probably apologise to both readers and myself for the almost certain excessive length of this post. (Reading back, it doesn’t actually seem that long!) So let’s get on with it.

This was something of a weird game (and that’s not even mentioning the fact that Kozuka was back on the bench and joined there by Einaga! (Guess that really shows how short of numbers we were. I’m in favour of both of those things, but I’m pretty sure Oniki isn’t). Singing was back at Todoroki but it was a weird kind of singing. Given that we get pretty close to filling our stadium most weeks (well about 4/5 full anyway), we were never going to go for the massive revenue reduction that having stadium wide singing involves, (you need spaces between each spectator so obviously can’t get as many people in). There’s also the issue of us having a lot of season ticket holders in reserved seats. Well, we did have anyway, as a short while ago those reserved seats were canceled leading to the reintroduction of the dreaded early morning get your spot in the queue system. Thankfully our seats are on the upper tier and therefore are still reserved allowing us to stroll up as close to kick off as we want, safe in the knowledge that we will be able to get a decent spot. For some reason we still go about an hour before. Not 100% sure why, but I guess spending time at the stadium with nothing to do is an addiction it is difficult to kick. But reserved seats on the upper tier meant no singing for us, and instead we had to just clap along to the singing coming from the lower tier. And what a lot of singing there was! It sounded great to be honest and I wish I could have joined in. But I have done my fair share of singing recently at away games, so it wasn’t quite as much of a wrench as it could have been. The return of sining also brought about something I was calling for in a previous post, a song for Tanno! And as Kengo was in attendance we got a chance to sing his song too and then rolled out a few more for other players who have left without us having one final sing song for them. I think it was the first time we have sung Kozuka’s song too as he’s been invisible for a while now. It’s good that it was Shimizu visiting for a singing game as their drumming and singing is always great. To be honest though, I didn’t hear that much of it in this game. I guess I’m at the other end of the stadium though and I suppose that the limited numbers visually don’t look that different but do in fact sound quite different. The ref for this game was Shimizu so I was anticipating writing that he was biased and should not be allowed to referee his own team (funny observation, eh?), but I don’t recall him being that bad! Certainly he was a bit slow cracking down on some unbelievable time wasting for the 20 minutes Shimizu were ahead. But to be fair to him, he was equally lax when we were time wasting when we were ahead at the end of the game. 

A few words about the game itself. I think Shimizu did a pretty good job in the first half and the game was quite end to end, with a bit of a lack of quality when it came to shooting from both teams. Checking the stats I was quite shocked to see that we dominated them in the first half as it certainly didn’t feel that way. We did seem to be playing some more attacking stuff though, even if we couldn’t quite get through the Shimizu defence. One thing that was abundantly clear was that every dangerous attack for Shimizu came from them going down Yamane’s side. He was usually somewhere else though, which I guess is the reason for them focusing on that side. Yamane is a bit of an enigma for me. Sometimes he’s great, but more often than not recently he really looks like he doesn’t give a shit, particularly when it comes to anything he is supposed to do in his own half. This match was the Halloween game and we were treated to a special team line up video mentioning what the players were scared of. Taniguchi saying ‘DOGSO’ got the biggest laugh but Yamane’s ‘crows’ really should have said ‘defending’. But I suppose he’s not scared of defending, he just has no interest in doing it. I think he was at least partly to blame for both of the Shimizu goals (although I think one of them looked like it came from a foul on one of our players that wasn’t given, at least to me anyway). I haven’t watched them back as the second one in particular felt like a horror show at the time and I don’t want to be reminded of it. But the feeling as it happened was that there was acres of space where Yamane should have been and the man himself was trotting around in the centre circle waiting for someone to give him the ball. I guess this is what can happen when you have a player who is undroppable. Our utter lack of cover in that position, coupled with Oniki’s reluctance to play anyone there unless he really really has to means that Yamane can basically do what he wants. And as he’s playing so much, I guess he’s tired, and if you like scoring goals more than you like defending, I guess you’re going to scrimp when it comes to the latter. It was great to see Tono, Kobayashi and Yamamura score in this game. Of course I like it when any of our players scores, but those three scoring was extra nice. And it was also nice to see us attempting to repeat our game against Sapporo but actually managing to stop conceding after taking the lead for the second time. In order to once again show you how much I know about football, I was castigating Oniki for canceling the triple substitution he had ready to make when we scored our second. My feeling was that we’d scored from a corner but had not been creating much anyway, so just go ahead with the subs. But of course I was wrong as the lift the equaliser gave us propelled us on to score again two minutes later. So yeah, nice work Oniki, and Neil is stupid. At times the game felt like it was going to boil over, particularly when we got back into the game. There were some fruity tackles going in and the Shimizu fans were already annoyed about Taniguchi bumping in to Gonda at the end of the first half and him not returning after half time. I think they might have been clutching at straws though as there clearly wasn’t anything in it. Gonda being withdrawn meant that we once again got to see Okubo, who I have in the past said looks like an estate agent playing at being a footballer. I don’t know if they comparison translates from UK estate agents to Japanese ones, but it really works for me. With this in mind, and with the fact that the J Talk Podcast likes to translate Sagan Tosu’s home ground to ‘The Real Estate Agent In Front Of The Station’ stadium, I’d like Okubo to be referred to hereafter as ‘The Real Estate Agent In Front Of The Goal’. I think it kind of works… It’s weird that Shimizu have two former FC Tokyo keepers. It’s also weird that Okubo aped his teammate and also dropped to the floor following the lightest of contacts, as (I think) Marcinho light brushed the sticky out bit of his slicked back mullet. To be fair to him, he did get up quite quickly and I’m just using this as a way to say rude things about his haircut. Feel free to hit back at me similarly. That’s probably about it, isn’t it? Maybe I could mention that Kobayashi still doesn’t quite seem to be back and banging. He had his usual first few dodgy shots in this game but unlike a few years ago, didn’t follow it up with some top skills and goals. Well, he did score a goal and it wasn’t the easiest of finishes, but it was basically having to angle the ball into an unguarded net. But he put it in, so well done to him. I think he’s a confidence player and just needs to get some minutes and get himself back into a bit of form. It’s a shame that we only have three games left really, isn’t it?

Next up, Kyoto Sanga at home on Wednesday. The away game was one of our most ridiculous performances of the season and a real gift for both Kyoto and YFM. Hopefully we’ll be able to do a bit better in the return fixture. It would be difficult to do any worse to be honest. As I mentioned above, we’ll be spared the double defensive midfield thing for this game so maybe we’ll be attacking a bit more than we have recently. Who knows, it might even be fun! Probably not though. I’ll be keeping an eye on the YFM Jubilo game whilst we’re playing but I can’t really see lightning striking twice in a week. Jubilo probably do need to win to stay up though so hopefully that will motivate them. And then after that we have a seventeen day break before the following game. I know the schedule this season has been totally messed up by moving the World Cup to the end of the year, but we do seem to have been playing an insane amount of matches back to back and then having massive breaks. Perhaps it will be better next year, but I think I heard that everyone including ACL teams will be playing the Levain group games next year, so that probably just means even more fixture congestion and more trouble for people trying to write blog posts between matches. Good luck to us all! I want to say fingers crossed we keep on winning, and I will, but at the same time, double fingers crossed YFM keep on losing. Nice to end on some positivity!

Team 

 

GK 27. TANNO Kenta

DF 13. YAMANE Miki

DF 5. TANIGUCHI Shogo

DF 31. YAMAMURA Kazuya

DF 2. NOBORIZATO Kyohei
MF 6. JOAO SCHMIDT (Yellow card 54')

MF 19. TONO Daiya

MF 14. WAKIZAKA Yasuto

FW 41. IENAGA Akihiro

FW 11. KOBAYASHI Yu

FW 23. MARCINHO

Subs

GK 21. ANDO Shunsuke

DF 15. SASAKI Asahi (on for NOBORIZATO 90+1')

MF 16. SEKO Tatsuki

MF 17. KOZUKA Kazuki (on for CHINEN 90+1')

FW 20. CHINEN Kei (on for TONO 60')

FW 24. MIYAGI Ten (on for KOBAYASHI 87')

FW 26. EINAGA Takatora

 

My Frontale Man Of The Match

I think that aside from the shocking goals we conceded we generally did alright in this game, but at the same time, no-one in particular stood out, so maybe I’ll skip it again, but this time not for the usual negative reasons.

Goals

 

TONO (Frontale) 28' 1-0

SHIRASAKI (Shimizu) 49' 1-1

CARLINHOS (Shimizu) 57' 1-2

YAMAMURA (Frontale) 76' 2-2

KOBAYASHI (Frontale) 78' 3-2

Highlights