Vs Albirex Niigata (away) 11/3/23 J League match 4

Albirex Niigata 1 - 0 Kawasaki Frontale

Once again let’s try (and probably fail) to keep this brief. I think this game was perhaps the worst 90 minutes I’ve seen us play for ages, and that includes some truly shocking performances over the years. Fair play to Niigata as they scored against us, (although our defence is still a shambles), and they stopped us from scoring, (although our attack is also a shambles. And that’s not mentioning the midfield which is perhaps the part of the pitch where we are most ineffective). So many players were off the pace and giving the ball away under no pressure that it must be something more than just everyone having a dip in form and playing badly at the same time. Oniki doesn’t have much choice when it comes to picking players at the back due to season upon season of ridiculous transfer inactivity in that area. The current run of red cards and injuries which continued in this game, (Yamamura off at half time, apparently injured), is nothing more than what could easily have happened at any stage over the last few years. Until now we’ve been kind of lucky in not having too many injuries or suspensions at once. The fact is though that we’re playing like crap at the moment and I struggled to even really applaud the players when they came over at the end of the game. Sure they’d tried hard, but so many were so bad. Again. Still we were persisting with mostly the same starting members in league games in the midfield and up front. Presumably we would also be doing so at the back if we hadn’t lost almost all of our defenders. Thankfully the new tactics appear to have been abandoned. Yamane was in a role more like in previous seasons but still contrived to fuck up and give them a goal. I screamed so hard at him and Ienaga fucking around in a dangerous area and losing the ball that I gave myself a headache for the rest of the day. I’m pretty sick of Yamane to be honest. I’d love him to stop fucking up and start being a bit more of a team player but I don’t think it will happen. And still he gets one of the highest scores for a player in our team from some websites. In the same way that Moriyasu is blinded by the light of players playing overseas no matter how shit the level, it seems many J League watchers are blinded by the light shining out of Yamane’s backside. Yes, he’s now our only national team player, but on his recent (the last six months or year perhaps) performances I don’t think he should even be playing for us. He’s been directly at fault on numerous occasions and is always the first to shout at a teammate when they slip up. Oniki would probably do well to realise that it’s not always best to pick the ‘best’ players regardless of position or form and it’s maybe better to instead try to make the best team. Due to the ongoing defensive crisis Yamane is clearly safe at the moment though. No idea how long Yamamura will be injured for but there are some rumors going round that Tanabe has been recalled from his loan at JEF as he wasn’t involved at all in their last match or training apparently. Probably will turn out that he’s also injured. He’s only played 24 minutes so far this season anyway, and Oniki seems to have never really liked him that much. We’ll see, I guess. {Between writing this bit and putting it online he has indeed returned to us. I hope for his sake that it’s not a complete waste of time. Perhaps it could even be a really good opportunity for him and do us some good. That’s your lot for positivity in this post, so I hope you enjoyed it.}

Other than the Yamamura injury, Oshima is inured again. It was a bit of a weird one as he didn’t seem to go down and walked off the pitch without any apparent signs of a problem. But I guess it’s not a huge surprise. And, (I know people aren’t going to like this…), it might help our midfield out a bit. The Oshima Wakizaka Tachibanada midfield has been pretty shit so far this year. The individuals are all great players but playing them together hasn’t worked. Now Oniki will have to try something different. Presumably it will be bringing Tono in and someone new onto the bench. As I said above, I kind of feel that the midfield has been where the biggest problems have been. We can’t keep the ball there, and the only passes we make there are backwards ones. The few attacks we’ve made have come from longish balls bypassing the midfield. The situation has been the same in every game so far this year and if I’ve noticed it, I’m sure Oniki has too. But he seems wedded to the same stuff every week. I don’t want to blame the players too much. There seems to be some kind of horrible funk hanging around stinking up everything we do right now. It would also be quite unfair to blame the forwards. They haven’t really had that any chances. Well Marcinho has had a couple of great ones but he too seems to be off the ball a bit this year. I’m going to break down our goals scored and conceded further down to compound the misery so more on that later. A few years ago with Kobayashi playing we’d always miss our first few shots whilst he got his aim sorted out. But there was always a feeling that the goals would come as we’d keep making chances and he’d click. In this game we had only six shots in 90 minutes and on average just the one on target every 45 minutes. In this game both came at our end. I can remember the weak Marcinho header but the other one was probably so slight that it dissolved into the Niigata air as soon as it was saved. It has certainly leaked from my memory. By contrast Albirex had almost twice as many shots and if it wasn’t for Sung-Ryong we could have lost by three or four goals. Presumably some experts on Twitter will be calling for him to be dropped. 

The ref was pretty cack in this game I thought, but aside from what looked like a definite penalty that he didn’t give us in the second half, all I have are really just grumbles about bookings. The inevitability of Joao Schmidt being booked for probably his first tackle and their midfield getting away with hack after hack is such a common complaint for me that I don’t even know why I’m bothering to make it. Even if he had given us the penalty we probably would have tried to play it short or backwards anyway as we do with almost every free kick. We are still completing those lovely passing triangles though, halfway inside the opposition half on the wing before going back to the keeper or those lovely cross defence passes from side to side, slowly advancing as if we were trying to color every blade of grass with an inked-up ball, then realizing as we approach the halfway line that we’d missed a bit and going back to the keeper to start again. It’s what we all go to football games to see, isn’t it? There’s nothing as exhilarating as the completion of a sideways pass! Thankfully, and somewhat bizarrely, Niigata didn’t press us much, which is the route that every other team has found to getting a goal against us. To be fair to them, they’d probably watched our previous games and realized that they needn’t waste their energy as we’d give them the ball just after we entered their half anyway. I’ll end this paragraph with a couple of slightly tenuous cooking comparisons that I thought of when pondering quite how shit we are right now. Our football right now is like my cooking. I can start with the best ingredients and still make something utterly bland, destroying the deliciousness of the component parts and ending up with something that just about passes for food. And then our endless pointless passing is like watching someone clean their kitchen who never cooks. You know something nice could be made there, but instead all you get is the least appetizing part of the process, endlessly.

Ok, finally lets look at the goals we’ve scored (that’ll be quite quick) and the ones we’ve conceded so far this year and see if there’s anything to be learnt. Against YFM we got one from a defensive mistake from them, when the game was already pretty much over and we were just throwing players forward to try to get some pride back. At Kashima we got a goal from a set piece and then one from the penalty spot, although we had to get a second chance to score that one. At home to Shonan we actually scored from open play! Although we did need a defensive cock up again for the ball to fall to Segawa. Shimizu, we got one lovely goal from a great Marcinho assist and a great Chanathip finish but the other one was a penalty again. And Niigata… oh…. So basically two goals from open play in five games. As for the conceded ones we’ve got the shocking error from Sung-Ryong and some terrible defending from a corner against YFM which even though their header was awful, still left them with plenty of time and space for them to pick up the ball and score unchallenged. Kashima, absolutely useless defending of a header again. Shonan, useless defending of a cross. Shimizu, three calamities including not winning a header, giving the ball away in our own half and just not having any defence at all. And Niigata, giving the ball away within shooting distance of the goal. It’s been pretty awful. And we always seem to go behind, normally pretty early on, and give the opposition something to hang on to and wait for us to over commit going forwards. At least in the Niigata game we waited for 22 minutes, so we could enjoy some more of that ‘we’re not losing!’ euphoria. Errors all over the pitch, the same problems regardless of the starting line up, a total absence of tactics when it comes to going forward (well, we had a new plan A but it was so much worse than the old plan A that it seems to have thankfully been abandoned, but sadly replaced by ever changing variations of shuffling the same magnets around on the same magnet board to similar (ie. no) effect). When Oniki jumped off the bench in this game bringing his magnet board to the touch line, his bench jacket (as I believe they are called) trailed out behind him as if he was some kind of magnet powered football version of Barman. Given how bad we’re doing right now, I wouldn’t be surprised if he borrows Taniguchi’s old facial injury protecting mask next game to compete the image, but at the same time give himself a bit of anonynmity. I would imagine pretty of Frontale fans at away games might be hoping to be similarly unrecognizable when out on public over the next few months. 

It was so sad to not feel like clapping the players at the end of the match. They looked gutted, (well some of them did anyway), and I’m sure the newer players must be wondering what they have done to their career by joining us. From the outside maybe it looks like we’re struggling to get the new guys to settle in. The truth is that they are only involved due to the massive (and massively predictable) injury crisis that we’re going through. Oniki has always been in the ‘if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it’ camp. To be honest last year he took it a stage further to ‘even if it is broke, still don’t bother to fix it’.  But he’s got some real fixing to do now. Whether Tanabe will actually be back and if he is whether he’ll be involved straight away, who knows? I think the more serious issue is to get some good feeling back in the camp and to try to take the pressure off a bit. That pressure isn’t coming from us fans, who are still happy-clappy to the point of insanity, (at least at the games anyway). On occasion last year, I wanted Oniki to quit. I didn’t think then and I still don’t think now that he would ever be fired. Right now for some reason, I’ve swung back the other way. I think we’re fucked this year, but I kind of feel slightly sorry for Oniki. He got all excited about his new idea over the break and it’s failed. He’s now desperately searching for something, anything that might work. I just hope he has noticed what doesn’t work. It will be a hugely unpopular suggestion to make, but I reckon we probably shouldn’t play Ienaga in the next match as he’s clearly not up to speed right now. I’d also change the midfield completely. Tachibanada has perhaps been trying to do too much and is consequently failing at what he can usually do naturally. I think perhaps we should switch to 4-4-2 as well. Our 4-3-3 has been pretty ineffective for a while now, with some very lucky results last year helping to cover up some very dismal play. At the back we have no choice about who to play, but I think that maybe in the midfield I’d go for Joao and maybe Tono in the middle with Marcinho on the left wing and maybe Segawa on the right wing. Or perhaps Seko in the middle and Tono on the right. And play Miyashiro and Yamada up front together for a change. I know nothing about football tactics and this would perhaps be a disaster (not normally a good idea to drop your best players some might say), but you know, maybe not worse that what we’ve already seen so far this year, and probably a bit more effective than playing Miyashiro up front by himself against a Shonan back three. Whatever happens, I’ll still be going to the games, but it would be nice if the matches actually became something other than the three hours of frustration that interrupts an otherwise fun experience. Phew…..

Team 

 

GK 1. JUNG Sung-Ryong

DF 13. YAMANE Miki

DF 31. YAMAMURA Kazuya

DF 3. OMINAMI Takuma

DF 5. SASAKI Asahi

MF 8. TACHIBANADA Kento (Yellow card 38')

MF 14. WAKIZAKA Yasuto

MF 10. OSHIMA Ryota

FW 41. IENAGA Akihiro

FW 33. MIYASHIRO Taisei

FW 23. MARCINHO

Subs

GK 99. KAMIFUKUMOTO Naoto
MF 6. JOAO SCHMIDT (Yellow card 70') (on for WAKIZAKA 62')

MF 16. SEKO Tatsuki

MF 17. TONO Daiya (on for OSHIMA 19')

FW 20. YAMADA Shin (on for MIYASHIRO 62')

DF 27. MATSUNAGANE Yuto (on for YAMAMURA 46')
FW 30. SEGAWA Yusuke (on for MARCINHO 77')

My Frontale Man Of The Match

 

Slightly bizarrely, given that I’ve hardly done this at all this year and this was said by me to be our worst performance in ages, I’m going to do it this time. Probably no surprise that it’s going to….

Sung-Ryong JUNG - didn’t have much chance for the goal and saved us with some great stops on a few occasions. Has more than made up for the cock up against YFM.

 

Goals

 

ITO (Albirex Niigata) 22' 1-0

 

Highlights

 

Vs Shimizu S Pulse (away) 8/3/23 Levain Cup group stage game 1

Shimizu S Pulse 3 - 2 Kawasaki Frontale

The fun continued midweek with another dodgy performance and another defeat, this time away to Shimizu in the Levain cup. As we have another game coming up in two days I’ve got to get this out the way quickly, so let’s not hang around and I’ll get to the point without any of the usual meandering for the sake of a joke or a dig at someone.

 

I thought Oniki did the right thing by rotating a bit. On paper this was our second easiest game this year (that we have scheduled so far), away to a J2 team. If we weren’t going to rotate for this, then well, half the squad might as well start looking for other employment. Saying that, there was of course hardly any possibility of rotation at the back as most of our defenders are injured. Yamane was rested though and along with him so were our new tactics. For some reason, the predominately left footed Matsunagane was played at right back. He did ok, I thought, especially considering it was his first start for us. It’s a bit depressing to see him saying after the game that he needs to practice his crossing. It probably would have been easier for him if he didn’t have to cut inside on to his other foot every time he wanted to do it. Myogan got his first start in the Marcinho role and struggled a bit, but wasn’t really helped but our general disorganisation. And Kamifukumoto played for us in goal for the first time. His first action was to pick the ball out of his own net when we conceded our usual 2023 ‘goal from the first attack we need to defend’. He then had to pick the ball out again a minute later as we really decided to go to town on the whole ‘bad start’ thing. The Shonan game was the only one where we haven’t conceded in the first six minutes. It’s a pretty shocking stat, partly to do with the mess that our defence has been left in due to our constant failure to sign any real cover there. Shonan should feel ashamed that they couldn’t manage to accept our usual first five minutes gift. Similarly, any Shimizu fans who are basking in their giant killing should probably realise that pretty much anyone can beat us this year. It was a bit of a shock that their reserves did it so easily though. It just seems so simple for anyone to get the better of us this year. We get pressed by every team so hard that we struggle to get the ball out of our own half and even when we do get the opportunity to do so, we go safety first and pass the ball backwards, racking up some of those lovely possession and competed pass numbers. 

 

Amongst many nonsensical takes on Twitter, people are commenting that there’s too much of a drop-off in quality between our first eleven and our reserves. I’d remind those people that our first eleven have also been shit this year. It’s no surprise that our defences look dodgy when you consider that they’re changing every week due to injuries and suspensions. It’s no surprise that our midfield looked out of sorts in this game as the three of them have played a total of 11 minutes of football so far this year between them (and that was all Seko, in one game). We have three options for the defensive midfield spot in our squad, Tachibanada, Joao and apparently Matsui, although whether he will ever play there is another matter. So we started with Kozuka there and then later played Seko there. Yamada continued the trend of our starting striker never scoring. Recently it’s been a proud Kawasaki tradition so it’s good to see the new guys getting used to it so quickly. Some might say this result will come as a real wake up call, but then I think we said that about the YFM game and we sucked for most of the Kashima game until it all went a bit wild at the end. We’re way too predictable, and our predictable tactics don’t work anymore. I don’t know how to solve this problem and I just feel sorry for Oniki at the moment. Our defensive problems are putting us in the hole in every match. We’ve only been in a position where we’ve not been behind in a game for about 80 minutes in our opening four games. 80 minutes of the lovely not losing feeling out of a possible 360 minutes. The one time we’ve been ahead was at the end of the Kashima game and that was probably for not more than a minute. I’m not going to try to pretend that watching the games has been much fun this year. A lot of recent Frontale fan recruits are probably experiencing something that they never have before. Whether anything will change soon, I’m not sure. It feels a bit like a perfect storm of disasters at the back, but it’s not as if we weren’t aware it could happen and we really should have been a bit more prepared for it. Takai away with the Japan U20 team adds an extra little touch of bitterness to it though. Pretty much everything that could have gone wrong, has gone wrong so far this year. But to inject a little bit of reality and slight positivity, we’re not in a disastrous position so far in the league and this was only the first of six Levain games. To undercut that reality and slight positivity, I can’t really see where a change is going to come from. The players seem low, lacking in confidence, non-preferred players seem to be terrified of making a mistake as it could signal the end of their Frontale career. It’s just a bit of a mess really.

Next up Niigata away on Saturday. Which is nice, because it’s another fun away trip and one which we haven’t been able to do for a few years. I saw some people’s preferred line ups for the next game and was a bit shocked with the absolute insanity that some people were suggesting. I think I saw Tono in the defensive midfield spot in one. Another suggested that Kamifukomoto should start. This is a bit trickier for me as I don’t want to be negative towards him, but if there was a case for dropping Sung-Ryong it was probably clearer after the YFM game, particularly given that now we’ve just conceded three to a J2 team’s reserves. Bit of luck they didn’t play their normal starters! Kamifukumoto did do quite a bit of sweeper keeper stuff towards the end of the game, but the context was that we were desperately trying to get back into a game where we were trailing and were committing players forward. Wouldn’t it be nice if we weren’t losing, or even were winning? Just for a little bit. Let us have some fun. As we’re approaching the end here, I must quickly get in the fact that the ref was pretty rubbish, but just looked out of his depth really. He did give us a penalty though which looked a little on the generous side, although maybe he gave it for the pull on Matsunagane, rather than the kick to the head. He still was not that good though, but probably shouldn’t be officiating professional football games so I’ll put it down to lack of experience. Oh, and Chanathip’s finish was a nice one. That goal was probably the one bright spark of the game and perhaps our one good move. Miyashiro getting off the mark was nice too, even if it was from the penalty spot. Hopefully it will spur him on to great things. Nothing really fell for us in this game, (aside from the penalty perhaps). Lots of misplaced passes, every bounce fell to them. But perhaps confidence and form make these things go in your favour. We have neither at the moment, and really need to pick up some of both soon… 

Team 

 

GK 99. KAMIFUKUMOTO Naoto

DF 27. MATSUNAGANE Yuto

DF 31. YAMAMURA Kazuya

DF 3. OMINAMI Takuma

DF 5. SASAKI Asahi

MF 49. KOZUKA Kazuki

MF 16. SEKO Tatsuki (Yellow card 65')

MF 18. CHANATHIP

FW 30. SEGAWA Yusuke

FW 20. YAMADA Shin

FW 24. MYOGAN Toya

Subs

 

GK 21. ANDO Shunsuke

MF 6. JOAO SCHMIDT

MF 8. TACHIBANADA Kento (on for SEKO 75')

DF 13. YAMANE Miki (on for CHANATHIP 80')

MF 17. TONO Daiya (on for SEGAWA 75')

FW 23. MARCINHO (on for MYOGAN 46')

FW 33. MIYASHIRO Taisei (on for YAMADA 75')

 

Goals

 

OH (Shimizu) 6' 1-0

SHIRASAKI (Shimizu) 7' 2-0
CHANATHIP (Frontale) 67' 2-1

NAKAYAMA (Shimizu) 70' 3-1

MIYASHIRO (Frontale) 82' PEN 3-2

 

Highlights

 

 

Vs Shonan Bellmare (home) 4/3/23 J League match 3

Kawasaki Frontale 1 - 1 Shonan Bellmare

After last weekend’s last minute elation, this round of games saw us back at home and up against our recent local nemesis Shonan Bellmare. The two horrific defeats against them last year, in a season where they spent a lot of time struggling to keep out of the relegation zone, looked costly at the time, and in the end proved to be so. If we’d won even one of those games we would have won the league. But we lost both. Which brings me on to some early positivity in this post. WE DIDN’T LOSE TO SHONAN! That’s probably the end of the positivity though. With another game coming up on Wednesday and given that I’m on a train right now, I think I’ll keep this quite brief and dispense with the bullet points. After another disappointing game I find myself at the ‘resigned to another difficult season’ stage. Some might say this is way too early but I don’t think there has been much in the first three games, where we've always conceded before scoring, to suggest that this will be a positive year for us. So let’s get on with the grumbling.

Three games, one loss, one late win and one draw. The first half of all of these games has been a waste of time. We start each game with our much heralded new and exciting tactics for 2023 and almost without fail do absolutely nothing other than pass the ball around our own half and look wobbly. It’s almost as if we have some kind of community service sentence that we need to serve. I don’t know what we all did wrong, but it seems that we have to endure at least 45 minutes of nothing every week with no hope of scoring a goal. Perhaps our sentence will have been served soon, as the good news was that on this occasion we managed to not concede a goal in the first five minutes. Guess that’s some progress. The fact is though that us fans might as well not bother turning up to watch the first half of any of our games. We only really get going, (and I wouldn’t say we totally get going), when the new tactics are abandoned and everything just becomes totally random and frantic. Our ‘good’ periods in the first two games came after we were down to ten men and the best made plans were in tatters on the floor. In this game we only started threatening once we were playing 4-4-2 with a schoolboy making his debut at left back. As darkly amusing as it might be to see Oniki clutching his magnet board in the 95th minute after the allocated additional time has elapsed and with all of our subs having been made, you can’t help wonder what might happen if we didn’t write off 45 minutes of every match with our best hope being going in 0-0 at half time. If we are going to persevere with this new system, I can’t help but feel that Tachibanada might be a better option at right back as unlike Yamane, he doesn’t seem to give the ball away immediately once he moves into the middle of the pitch. I guess I spent all of last season moaning about us not having any ideas other than the usual one and now I’m moaning about the new idea. But I’m not sure how long we have to keep giving it a go with the 100% unsuccessful so far new plan. Hopefully not long.

I saw a Japanese sports website on Twitter mentioning our latest ‘defensive emergency'. I feel like when we’ve failed to sign any cover we can’t really call our eternal lack of numbers at the back an emergency. I guess if you set fire to your own house you might be able to call it an emergency, but I don’t think it would quite have the necessary element of surprise a real emergency has. A dictionary definition of emergency says ‘a serious, unexpected, and often dangerous situation requiring immediate action’. I’d say we can claim the first and third parts, but I’d say it would be more unexpected if we didn’t have a shortage in defence, and when it comes to immediate action, well we don’t even get action when we know well in advance that players will be injured for half of the upcoming season as Jesiel was last year, so anything immediate happening is something of a pipe dream. Whilst we’ve recently become accustomed to going down to ten men due to a DOGSO red card, on this occasion it was our other old foe the centre back injury that did us. Now both of our first choice centre backs, (perhaps...  who really knows, but given that they started the first game, I’m going to presume it’s the case) are injured. Yamamura will be back again for the next match though. It’s kind of unfortunate that we have a midweek game just when injuries are hitting us the most. I guess we don’t know how serious Jesiel’s injury is yet. We can take some solace in the fact that he did manage to walk off in the end. But then forget that solace and sink back into misery as he didn’t reappear at the end of the game. You can’t help feel that our new tactics might also be contributing to the red cards and the injuries. I’ve lost count of the absolute desperation situations we’ve been in after giving the ball away cheaply with defenders playing in midfield. So, not only do these tactics not work from an attacking point of view, they are also destroying us at the back. What a joy! We’re not making any more chances than previously, we’re absolutely not taking the few chances we are getting, we’re conceding more goals and we’re picking up red cards and injuries everywhere. Surely time to dump the new tactics, isn’t it?

It was nice to see Segawa score. Miyashiro must be gutted though. It seems that the few chances he’s getting are ridiculously tough ones and that we only start to make better ones once he’s been taken off. I don’t know if Oniki doesn’t think Miyashiro and Yamada can play together. We haven’t seen them have the chance yet. Our midfield looks a bit of a mess. The players are good but I don’t think Oshima and Wakizaka work together for some reason. I’m not having a go at the players though as I think they’re doing their best in a bad situation. I’m not even having a go at Oniki particularly. I do hope he sees the light soon though as clearly how we’re starting isn’t working. We’ve played three games so far and have had a total of 10 shots on target in 270 minutes. In every game we’ve failed to get more than a third of our shots on target. In this game we only managed 2 out of 10. We didn’t even have a shot in this game till the 23rd minute! Our ‘best’ chances came from long balls. Not exactly encouraging stuff, is it?

 

Normally the ref and the opposition get a paragraph each but not on this occasion. I was horrified to see my Araki prediction coming true for this game, but I have to admit, that aside from a vague and probably biased ‘he didn’t book any of their players but should have’, I think he had a reasonable game. Shonan look a lot more organised and solid than last year. They don’t look at all exciting and I was slightly shocked to see a Shonan fan saying they deserved to win, as I thought both teams were pretty dull and a draw was probably the right result, but 0-0 probably should have been the right score. The game was very open towards the end, but there was a general lack of quality up front on show, so the fact that it wasn’t a goal fest didn’t surprise. I feel like they’ll definitely be fine this year. I’m slightly disappointed that we won’t be going to their ground as the Shonan away fixture this year is in the equally bad for football National Stadium. So, similarly poor views, but much more expensive beer and I won’t be able to go to Yggdrasil. At least we have a Levain game there I guess.

Perhaps this blog post has the most stinging criticism from me ever as instead of the usual moaning it’s instead like that thing with parents when they say ‘I’m not angry, I’m just disappointed’. Next up and coming soon, Shimizu away in the Levain on Wednesday. Normal clubs might expect some rotation for that fixture, but I don't expect to see much from us apart from the bare minimum we have to do to incorporate young players. Not sure what the rule is to be honest. And the fact that Matsunagane is probably going to have to play might mean that Oniki changes nothing. We can just pray that we don’t get another totally pointless first half. After that, it’s Niigata away in the league on Saturday. Two lovely trips! Which is a nice and positive way to finish this otherwise quite negative post!

Team 

 

GK 1. JUNG Sung-Ryong

DF 13. YAMANE Miki

DF 4. JESIEL

DF 3. OMINAMI Takuma

DF 5. SASAKI Asahi

MF 8. TACHIBANADA Kento

MF 14. WAKIZAKA Yasuto

MF 10. OSHIMA Ryota (Yellow card 67')

FW 41. IENAGA Akihiro

FW 33. MIYASHIRO Taisei

FW 23. MARCINHO

Subs

GK 99. KAMIFUKUMOTO Naoto
MF 6. JOAO SCHMIDT (on for OSHIMA 86')

MF 16. SEKO Tatsuki

MF 17. TONO Daiya (on for MARCINHO 72')

FW 20. YAMADA Shin (on for MIYASHIRO 72')

DF 27. MATSUNAGANE Yuto (on for JESIEL 56')
FW 30. SEGAWA Yusuke (Yellow card 85')(on for WAKIZAKA 46')

My Frontale Man Of The Match

 

Once again, not a great deal to get excited about but in the increasingly sentimental way I’m giving these out this year it has to go to….

MATSUNAGANE Yuto - considering he’s still at school and nobody ever could have predicted us being short at the back, he was probably surprised to play and whilst he had a few wobbly moments, he also had some great ones. Good luck to him!

 

Goals

 

HIRAOKA (Shonan Bellmare) 64' 0-1

SEGAWA (Frontale) 81' 1-1

 

Highlights

Vs Kashima Antlers (away) 25/2/23 J League match 2

Kashima Antlers 1 - 2 Kawasaki Frontale

Some might have thought that such a joyous occasion as a last minute win against Kashima with 10 men might mean that an extremely excited blog post would appear almost immediately. But it’s been a busy weekend for me that I’m only now getting down to writing this. Some of the details might have blurred a little since the game, but at the same time, the slight delay has given me the chance to cogitate over what we can take from the performance. 48 hours after the game I can say that my voice has still not got back to normal after a somewhat overexcited scream when the winner went in. In the intervening two days, plenty has been said on Twitter about most of the decisions in the game. I think it’s always amusing that regardless of knowledge of the rules or experience of watching football, two people can have exactly opposite opinions and will both be completely unswayable in the strength of their beliefs. For that reason, it seems like it’s a bit of a waste of time to write anything much about the contentious points. You probably know exactly what I think about those decisions anyway! I’ll talk a little about them in the ref section, but don’t worry, I’ll find a way to complain about the ref even when he gave something our way. Aside from the ref section, I’ll write some stuff about us, our new tactics and what I think might happen going forward. I’ll also have a bit of a moan about Kashima, a horrible team with some rubbish fans, who due to their intense mediocrity have somewhat gone under the radar recently when it comes to being a most hated opponent. So basically this is all a long winded way of saying that I’ll do the usual sections. But yeah, what a joy! A win that even made the bus journey home tolerable. If only we could have moved from the spot where the bus was parked in less than 50 minutes, it really wouldn’t have been a bad journey at all, and not much longer than the bus on the way. Ah, the Kashima bus talk is over for another year! Unless we draw them in a cup. But perhaps if that happens the attendance won’t be so high. Although they will probably give away a load of free tickets again to boost the numbers. Maybe they might even have to start offering free tickets and a cash incentive if they continue to decline. As ever, Kashima away makes me pity the fate of Kashima fans who don’t live in Kashima as I can’t imagine having to make that journey for every home game. Anyway, enough of the even handed stuff and on to some bitching. Let’s do the bullet points in reverse order this week.

Ref and VAR -

Oh Nishimura. Clearly you have read my recent words proclaiming Yamamoto to be the most attention seeking and useless (yet at the same time for some reason favoured by the J League) ref around. You read those words and it stung you a bit, as you know you have a claim on at least the first two parts of that description. In the past he’s been determined to never let a VAR decision overrule him, but perhaps now has realised that he gets a lot more time on the screen if he lets VAR have a good think about it, telling them to take their time, so that he can do his finger on the earpiece, patting the air down with his other hand whilst mouthing ‘ちょっと待って’ to the players. Of course I couldn’t see this at the stadium but watching the contentious bits back on DAZN, I was impressed with how much of the camera’s attention he commanded. And fair play to him, he’s put in the work to get the attention. He’s gone for a new haircut this season, somewhere between Moe from the Three Stooges and a mid-nineties Madchester / baggie front man. There is something slightly reminiscent of Ken Dodd to him too. All of these references are naturally bang up to date and not at all obscure. (Perhaps topping that later with the Pituca = CJ from Eggheads thing that I am bound to say). It’s a little unfair though to single out Nishimura as the beefs I have with him are pretty common ones, no matter who the ref is, and some are just down to VAR as a concept. I still hate VAR. I hate it when it gives and I hate it when it takes away, (although obviously I hate it less when it gives…). The delays are worse than ever this year. There are no replays in the stadium regarding what is being considered. The technology seems to be used at random and often applies a kind of logic that bears no relation to what the actual rules are. How VAR didn’t give Hiroshima’s goal where the ball was way over the line is unbelievable. I think there were other recent blunders too, but to be honest, I find VAR so irritating in the stadium that the last thing my stress levels need is for me to watch replays showing it fucking things up in matches that I’m not directly invested in. I think a common complaint is that it is supposed to be used to correct clear and obvious errors (like encroachment when taking a penalty, fair play to them for that one, I hadn’t noticed it, but it was pretty obvious on the replay), but instead focuses on issues that take so long to resolve that any concept of them being clear or obvious errors is insane. Also, I wonder if the VAR officials are on some kind of red card DOGSO bonus. From my crystal clear viewpoint at the other end of the stadium, I said that Yamamura’s red wasn’t even a foul as far as I was concerned, as quite how you can foul someone who is behind you runs into you is a bit of mystery to me. I’m of course biased though. Their red card looked equally clear to me, but this time, clear that it was a red. (I mean, what’s the point of me even writing this, you’ll either absolutely agree or absolutely disagree with me and are unlikely to be swayed by anything a clearly biased fan would say). The things I’m annoyed with Nishimura about are pretty much the same as with Yamamoto last week. I thought he gave us almost nothing. Joao Schmidt was elbowed by who else but Yuma Suzuki, who then also tried to provoke him by sticking his tongue out, which I feel suggests that he thought he’d got away with something, but perhaps it’s just his natural facial expression when he’s having a bit of a confusing moment. Nishimura had given the foul against us, and then looked pretty baffled when Joao told him about the elbow. Yuma Suzuki is unbookable it seems, with all refs worried that he might have a strop if he gets a yellow, so he’s allowed to shit-house his way across the pitch and through the game without even a word of warning. Also, Pituca booted the ball away when we were supposed to be taking a throw and Nishimura charged over to him to tell him he’d been a naughty boy but once again neglected to actually book him. The same thing happened against YFM too. Clearly the refs know that players aren’t supposed to do this, but don’t want to actually book anyone for it. Likewise a player standing right in front of the ball to delay a free kick. As far as I know, both are yellow card offences but seem to not be important this season. Pituca also spent a lot of time screaming into Nishimura’s face and didn’t get booked for that either. Of course, with crushing inevitability, the first player to get booked was one of ours, and oh, it was a Brazilian too! I’m kind of surprised it wasn’t Joao Schmidt as he was having a real battle with Suzuki. I’m aware that as I am biased if I think a ref has had a good game that probably means he’s favoured us slightly. I guess the real dream is that you don’t really notice the ref. The truth is that almost every week, for as long as I can remember, we’ve had useless ref after useless ref doing stupid things that occasionally get reviewed on J League Judge Replay as if that makes up for error after error, but this never seems to have any effect on the standard of officiating. VAR I guess is supposed to provide a back up, but there’s no guarantee they’ll get it right either. In fact, you could say that it’s likely they will fuck it up too. Given that we’ve had shockers from golden boy Yamamoto, and attention seeker Nishimura in our first two games, what’s the betting that we get last season’s worst ref for us Araki in the next game. Well, him or Frontale red card lover Kasahara.

Them -

Certain things which would normally have gone in this section have already been mentioned in the ref part. In case you skipped that and want it summed up briefly, Yuma Suzuki and Pituca are a pair of idiots as far as I’m concerned. Not exactly a highly original viewpoint I guess. On this occasion, the idiocy was also present in the stands too. Actually, that’s probably not a very original observation as normally that’s the case at Kashima, but that was just highlighted a bit more this time. Credit to them for the insane amount or highly coordinated massive flags/tifos that they rotated through just before the start of the game. Not sure for whose benefit they were though. Presumably the players don’t see most of them as they are in the tunnel. Perhaps they are supposed to cow the opposition fans into silence and submission. After all, that’s most people’s usual reaction to seeing some big bits of fabric. It would be remiss of me to not mention the numerous mentions of INFIGHT, which I’m led to believe is the name of a supporter group but might be a good description of the relationships between club and fans soon, or perhaps between the players and the management, if they continue to be so rubbish and results keep on going the way they were at the end of last season. I think that a 2-0 win against Kyoto, which excited Yuma Suzuki so much that he felt he had to communicate the scoreline to the Kyoto fans, is probably not the opening day statement that some people might have thought it was. Likewise, losing to us might hint at some more problems, considering how wobbly we’ve looked in both of our opening games. 29% possession at the season home game opener, with only six shots in 90 minutes, and then managing to lose the lead against a team down to ten men are not exactly encouraging for them. There was a definite feeling that they were still living on the fumes of past success with not a great deal to get excited about in recent times. The highlights of their pre-game glories of the club video looked so dated that it was something of a surprise that they weren’t in black and white and narrated in that Pathé news plummy English accent. Add this to what they presumably think is music that gives an exotic hint of the samba football influence of gob-on-the-ball-on-the-penalty-spot-after-your-team-gives-away-a-penalty-and-get-yourself-a-red-card-in-the-process-Kashima-legend Zico but in reality just feels like the warmed up light funk prize line up music of a seventies UK game show (a tumble dryer! a dinner service! a carriage clock! a crystal decanter!). The annual joke about the spirit of Zico that I make will this year take the form of a suggestion that the Kashima fans are adopting the real spirit of Zico by booing our bus’s arrival, booing the arrival of our players for warming up and singing through our team line up announcement apart from stopping to boo Oniki. I guess that Kashima residents don’t often see outsiders so were probably feeling threatened. The numerous home fans who attend their game via the bus from Tokyo presumably are protected from this anti outsider hostility as the locals know not to go for anyone wearing an item of clothing with a little yellow cowboy hat on the back. One of us! One of us! Guess I should stop this nastiness and say that I feel a bit sorry for their keeper who thought he’d become the hero by saving a penalty and therefore also a point for them but then let in the retake. I don’t reserve as much sympathy for Chinen though. When he was with us I always defended him as he had the knack of scoring goals when we needed them that deserted quite a lot of our strikers who were on higher salaries. I totally understood him leaving, but was obviously disappointed to see him go to Kashima, as I wouldn’t wish having to spend that much time with Yuma Suzuki on even my worst enemy. Seems like his influence has rubbed off on Chinen though, who inevitably scored against us in what is becoming our usual 2023 ‘concede from the first meaningful opposition attack’ style. He then celebrated like a demon and sprinted to his manager, I suspect making sure he went past Oniki on the way. Apparently he didn’t come to say hello at the end of the match like former players usually do. I suspect he’s burnt a few bridges now. I know some people hate the ‘don’t celebrate when scoring against your old team’ thing, but he really went to the opposite extreme. The fact that they eventually lost the game suggests perhaps that karma does exist though. Perhaps more evidence for karma’s existence was the fact they we won after numerous Kashima players used one of the massive delays before Ienaga totally messed up his first penalty to try to dig up the penalty spot. Perhaps that worked when you consider how bad the first penalty was and maybe Ienaga had noticed, as for the retake he didn’t leave either the ball or the spot. One final comment to show that it is not only supporter groups who make strange and amusing language choices. I was a little shocked to see what a match sponsor was offering up. ‘Nippon steel presents escort kids’ could have been something really concerning, but thankfully just turned out to be a way to monetise the players entrance. Phew!

Us -

Perhaps the weirdest part of this post will be the hint of negativity that permeates this section. However, not a surprise for regular readers I’m sure. But it does feel a but out of place given how joyous this result was. I say this result and not this game for a reason. Once again, we were pretty good at starting attacks but pretty awful at turning possession in the middle of the pitch into actual shots or goals. After reading Ryo Nakagawara’s excellent analysis of our new playing style I was looking forward to keeping an eye on Yamane to see what exciting new things he could bring to our play in our new style. The first thing I noticed was him absolutely screaming at Yamamura for misplacing an early pass. I think I’ve previously said that I don’t dislike any of our players (apart from certain periods of Okubo who made a habit of bawling at his younger teammates), but Yamane is getting pretty close to that level for me. He seems to be obscenely certain of his superiority over his teammates. Some might say this is justified as he’s now our only national team player, but to be honest, I think I wouldn’t mind if he got a whiff of Taniguchi style desire to play at the highest Qatar league level and went and did one. Our new tactics seem to revolve around him moving out of what might be considered his normal position and trying to score without worrying about defending. I wonder if the tactics were made and he was selected for that role or that the tactics were chosen to accommodate the fact that he always seems to be miles away trying to get into a scoring position whilst we desperately try to cover the massive hole he leaves in the defence. Seems like we’re not doing anything that different from last year really as far as I can see. Well, maybe it’s a different concept, but the outcome seems to be the same. I’d really like to be proved wrong, and perhaps we’re still adjusting to things and it will all come good soon. But I don’t really feel like we’re any more attacking than previously, and it comes with the worry that any time we give the ball away, (which was an unbelievable amount of times in this match, mainly from Yamane as far as I could see, but of course I would notice those times, wouldn’t I?), it is absolute panic stations last ditch stuff for us at the back. Perhaps I’m utterly blind to these things, but for me to hear that someone in a pub not connected at all to Frontale was last night praising the exciting new tactics we’re using and how great Yamane is in them is just mind boggling. I wonder if they watched either of the matches or just read about the tactics and know Yamane’s reputation, because we’ve lost one game and just about grabbed a victory from the jaws of defeat, barely managing to trouble the scorers on both occasions. In this game, both of our goals came from dead ball situations, but we’re still supposed to be excited about how attacking we are now. I just don’t see it. At least not yet anyway. There’s also the anomaly that we’ve failed to score with these new tactics when we’ve had eleven players on the pitch and in the first half of both of the opening games have had lots of possession and very little threat. I don’t think that part of our new tactical genius masterplan involves us having to concede and get someone sent off before we start to look dangerous but that seems to be the way things are. Perhaps in the same way that our starting striker always seems to struggle, perhaps our starting line up has the tough job of wearing down the opposition allowing the subs to come on and do better when we’re employing the ‘I dunno, just try something… anything’ tactics that we’ve adopted in the late stages of both games so far. Does this mean Oniki is a tactical genius, knowing when to change things up to get us playing better? Or is it just confusing as to why we can’t play a bit better from the start. It felt like we’d been sussed out by the opposition for a second consecutive game in exactly the same way early on in this match. Make a fast start to the match and press us hard and you’ll get an early goal to hang on to. We gave them a goal and allowed them to just sit back with everyone behind the ball. Kind of frustrating. And do these new tactics account for us giving the ball away so much or are we just out of practice in that area? I’m not sure, but it’s pretty edgy, seat of the pants stuff at the moment. The greatest threat to our goal is a misplaced pass from one of our own players right now. Hopefully we’re just rusty. When Yamamura got his red card and it started to rain again at exactly the same time it seemed that there was some kind of pathetic fallacy at play. I’m delighted to say that it was the red card that really seemed to get us going though. I wonder if this kind of backs against the wall, comeback from almost dead victory will give us a massive jolt of confidence and a much needed boost. The team spirit in the final stages seemed amazing and perhaps this kind of experience will really help bond the players. There was elation like we’d won the league rather than just about managed to pick up three points from our opening two league games. It’s the kind of thing that reminds me why I love watching this team sometimes. It used to be often, but recently the love has been a lot more of a rarity. We always keep fighting right to the end. If we could just manage to stop making these kind of shocking starts to games we might be able to start doing a bit better. Which is an appropriately optimistic way to finish this section, somewhat at odds with how I started it. Nice!

Next up, Shonan Bellmare at home on Saturday. We owe them a pasting after losing twice to them last year. But their fans do seem to think they’re going to give us a beating again. Whether we can give them that pasting is another matter. I would say that maybe Oniki should make a few changes as we haven’t looked good till everything gets a bit ragged in either of the first two games. But I guess it’s still a bit of a work in progress. The joy of this victory is something that will stay in the mind and the heart for quite some time. It would be lovely if we could build on it with some more fun on Saturday afternoon!

 

Team 

 

GK 1. JUNG Sung-Ryong

DF 13. YAMANE Miki

DF 31. YAMAMURA Kazuya (Red card 87')

DF 3. OMINAMI Takuma

DF 8. TACHIBANADA Kento

MF 6. JOAO SCHMIDT

MF 14. WAKIZAKA Yasuto

MF 10. OSHIMA Ryota

FW 41. IENAGA Akihiro

FW 33. MIYASHIRO Taisei

FW 23. MARCINHO (Yellow card 38')

Subs

GK 99. KAMIFUKUMOTO Naoto
DF 5. SASAKI Asahi (on for JOAO SCHMIDT 56')

MF 16. SEKO Tatsuki (on for WAKIZAKA 79')

MF 17. TONO Daiya (on for OSHIMA 72')

FW 20. YAMADA Shin (on for MIYASHIRO 79')

DF 27. MATSUNAGANE Yuto

FW 30. SEGAWA Yusuke (on for MARCINHO 79')

My Frontale Man Of The Match

 

Feels a bit unfair on Miyashiro doing this, but purely on the basis on the gusto with which he led the Vai De La Frontale at the end of the game and that it was his first goal for the club, I'm going to give it to...

YAMADA Shin - for the reasons I just said.

 

Goals

 

CHINEN (Kashima) 5' 1-0

YAMADA (Frontale) 89' 1-1

IENAGA (Frontale) 90+11' PEN 1-2

 

Highlights

Vs Yokohama F Marinos (home) 17/2/23 J League match 1

Kawasaki Frontale 1 - 2 Yokohama F Marinos

The J League is back, and personally I wouldn’t have minded it getting lost on the way. A new season means a new start and our pre-season new found interest in scoring goals actually gave me some cautious optimism. Not optimism that we would win the league, but just that we might not be quite so grindingly dull as we were for most of last season. Sagan Tosu conceding five today to Shonan might perhaps help explain how we managed to put eleven past them in a pre-season friendly. It’s kind of stupid to jump to any conclusions after one game. However, when you consider we started this game like we played most of last year, but crucially without one of our best defenders, (who is currently trying to use a big pile of cash and the prestige of playing in the elite Qatari league to cushion the blow of having to go without pork based meals), it will come as no surprise that we lost and looked a mess at the back. This was a challenging game to watch. As challenging as the slight change to Tono's song this year, where instead of keeping to the same comfortable melody we are now encouraged to instead to finish with a strangled vocal stretch to the octave above for the finale. I get the impression that this will be quite a difficult season and that it might be quite difficult for me to keep churning out such high quality blog posts. (And yes, I really did say high quality. If you want to ignore the fact that it was a joke, just go for it and have some fun). Also, it seemed on this occasion, as probably will be the case in the future too, that I really couldn't be bothered to even take many poor quality photos. You'll have to make do with just the one poor quality one. Let’s get this out of the way quickly with some ill thought out bullet points.

New season, (apparently no) new ideas -

Lots was said in the run up to this game about us playing exciting new attacking tactics with a formation that would entertain and do the business. Our off season transfer business suggested that the club didn’t think there was much wrong with our squad. I’m inclined to slightly agree, but as usual the decision to not bother thinking much about the defence was as frustrating as it was predictable. Sure we have some more defenders this year with Takai and Matsunagane joining from the youth team, but we don’t exactly have a reputation for playing the kids unless we have to. Actually even when we have to, we tend to not do so. This year the club have said that they consulted with Oniki with regards to transfers, rather than just doing the business without asking him. Perhaps the previous policy was not surprising for people who know lots about the way Japanese football clubs are run but it was a big shock for me. And regardless of the change in who makes transfer decisions, we once again seem to have made the same mistakes. And those mistakes have come home to roost immediately with Kurumaya going off injured, (according to Oniki, probably a ‘muscle’ injury), and Jesiel getting sent off. So after losing our first game to our locals rivals we now start the next game against Kashima with probably Yamamura and Ominami, a stand in centre back and someone who has just been signed. With Takai away with Japan U20's, we’ve got three times as many mascots as available centre backs at the moment! But in this game the defence looked a bit of a mess anyway, so I guess it can’t be much worse. Clearly the opposition were part of the problem but I’m not going to be too complimentary about them as they have consistently been voted as Frontale fans’ most disliked club (source - Frontale Rabbit Survey, every year since 2019!). They pressed us hard and we couldn’t deal with it. We barely got the ball out of our own half. When we did though, we did ok down the left, mainly thanks to Marcinho being good and YFM not having a fit right back. But we didn’t score. It doesn’t really matter that we had 63% possession and almost double the amount of shots as them. It’s telling that when it came to shots on target both teams were almost equal. If we had a new game plan for 2023, I couldn’t see it. At least not in the first half, where it was the same old sideways and backwards passes but this time with an added element of jeopardy down to the fact that no-one seemed to be able to pass. Both of the goals we conceded were very soft. The first was a horrible error from Sung-Ryong with a shanked attempted clearance straight to the opposition not far from goal. The second was basic incompetence from a set piece. Miyashiro hit the bar. We were denied what looked like a clear penalty to me at the end of the first half. But don’t get me wrong. We were so crap that we didn’t deserve to even be equal anyway.

New season, (maybe a) new idea (but an ineffective one) -

We looked a bit better in the second half. I think this was mainly due to Ienaga being replaced by Segawa. Ienaga was an injury worry before the game but as Oniki likes to pick his favourites regardless of form or condition, he started. Segawa looked quite lively and seems to like to cross. Sadly our other attackers apparently weren’t expecting that kind of play. Already some idiots online are saying Segawa is useless. Presumably the same people who are saying Sung-Ryong should immediately be dropped too. None of these people ever seem to notice Yamane being an absolute liability every week and Oniki making the same errors endlessly though. There was a hint of the new tactics in the second half. Well maybe. Or maybe it was just Yamane deciding that he wanted to try to play in every position on the pitch apart from any that involved defending. So more often than not, Sasaki had to hang back a bit to make up the numbers. I’m not sure if this is how our shifting formation is supposed to work. Perhaps it makes sense if the two full backs take it in turns, but Yamane didn’t seem up for that and even when Sasaki did get forward, Yamane inevitably was somewhere ahead of him. Ienaga’s free role seems to work really well sometimes, but it was quite nice to see Segawa sticking a bit more to his side and giving us some more options. Yamane’s apparent free role didn’t seem to work at all. Its only purpose seemed to be to allow Yamane to give the ball away in every sector of the pitch. It wasn’t all Yamane’s fault though. There were plenty of distinctly average performances, including the previously mentioned Sung-Ryong and the centre backs, Tachibananda, who the ball just seemed to be bouncing off and Wakizaka who looked a bit out of sorts too. Tono gets moved around from position to position so much that he probably gets confused about what he’s supposed to be doing. Well, I guess that’s assuming that there is actually a plan and instructions. It didn’t really look like it. And the best period we had in the game seemed to be right towards the end where we were down to ten men and it was just give anything a go. Perhaps at this stage Oniki was still shuffling his magnets around, trying to work out what to do and it was maybe the players just deciding themselves how to play. The one positive I have to say about Oniki is that he didn’t start this game with both Tachibanada and Joao Schmidt playing as this really made us a pretty dull defensive team. He did eventually make this happen though, bringing on Schmidt and pushing Tachibanada forward as things got desperate and Tachibanada did score, so what do I know, eh? Somehow I’ve managed to criticise Oniki even in the part where I said he did something right. That takes some dedication, doesn’t it? Whether we do actually have new and interesting ideas and tactics I don’t know. It didn’t look like it. Perhaps Oniki wanted to be a bit cautious given the opposition. If that is the case, we should probably take note that we still managed to lose, so maybe we should have tried something a bit different and a bit positive. And if we have these new tactics that are great but we’re too scared to use them against rivals, I’d suggest that maybe these aren’t the new tactics we need. On last night’s showing, I’m not sure we can consider ourselves rivals even. Unless this game, (very reminiscent of how we played last year), was a freak it’s going to be a long long year…

Bit more moaning -

But this time it’s not about ourselves. A few final words on YFM, whose fans came in numbers and sang a lot more than we did. Kind of understandable given how they were playing and how we were. I thought out support was pretty bad, with hardly any singing aside from the usual ‘ole’ thing when we start attacks. (It’s noticeable that recently this begins a lot earlier than it used to. Previously it was started as an attack went out of our own half. Now we sing it as we desperately try to retain possession in our own penalty box). I’m also guilty in the poor support respect though. I was excited to see singing back and belted out a few songs before kick off, but was understandably quite deflated when all enthusiasm and hope was extinguished four minutes into the season. YFM’s fans were so excited about singing that they couldn’t help themselves and decided to sing right up and slightly into the start of the minute’s silence. Got to love that passion, eh? Their players certainly seemed to be up for it, both goal scorers sliding on their knees towards our fans. Nishimura did it towards the family picnic area. That’ll show those damn toddlers. Elber decided to do it directly towards our main support. Mita did that a few years ago for Vissel and I’ve hated him intensely since then. Sadly on this occasion we couldn’t exact revenge. To his credit Mizunuma apologised to our supporters for Elber’s arseholery. Probably this also had something to do with the fact that he’d already tried to break one of our players’ ankles and got away with a yellow card. Who needs to refer that to VAR, eh? No blog post would be complete without a moan about the ref. Before he was announced I said to my wife, I really hope it’s not that (insert expletive here) Yamamoto, and almost immediately had my hopes dashed and my worst fears confirmed. Plenty of J League refs are useless. We’re all used to that. It’s the ones with an agenda that really annoy. Clearly Yamamoto is the top dog now. Perhaps it’s for the way he keeps the game flowing, by always dishing out one level less of punishment than is deserved. Should be a yellow card? Well let’s make it just a free kick. Should be a red? Well a yellow and a bit of a wink and joke should do. Someone boots the ball away to waste time? Well that should definitely be a yellow but let’s not waste time with that eh, and just ignore it. Oh, and keep the game flowing by not bothering to enforce the whole ‘ball shouldn’t be moving when a free kick is taken’, especially if it means that you can draw some attention to yourself by incorrectly awarding a penalty, and then increase that attention by changing your decision and giving a free kick and a red. Plenty more time on the TV screen! I guess you could argue that it might have been VAR’s job to spot the ball moving for the free kick. But they probably aren’t aware of that rule anyway. I think the only qualifications a VAR official needs are the ability to rewind and replay video footage, to be able to wear one of those singing drummer/call centre worker headsets and a inbuilt reluctance to question authority. Oh and yeah, Yamamoto, nice work bringing the play back for a late flagged offside decision against YFM as we were breaking with the ball. Hate those late flags. But please don't be confused, I also hate Yamamoto whose every action managed to irritate me in this game. Anyway, this is all just catharsis for me. We were crap, we didn’t deserve anything and that’s what we got.

Fucking hell that was a shit performance. And a shit blog post too probably. I think I’ve moaned too much about us for Frontale fans to be able to enjoy this, have been too disheartened to think of any zingers, and even YFM fans coming on here looking for things to get annoyed about will probably also be disappointed. Wonderful stuff! Pleasing absolutely no one and probably giving myself an ulcer in the process. Not sure how many awful games it will take for me to reach the ‘I don’t give a shit, let it all wash over me and just enjoy the away trips’ stage of zen acceptance this year, but if we have to keep watching this stuff, I hope it comes soon. I know moaning serves no purpose and just makes me look like an idiot really so I’d probably be better off not getting worked up. My pre-season fresh start and new optimism for Oniki and his new ideas point of view hasn’t yet reverted to angrily calling for his resignation. It’s only one game and it’s early stages. It doesn’t look good, but maybe this will give us a kick up the backside. Let’s hope that kick doesn’t take out any more of our defenders. (As an aside, I checked the make up of our squad and we have eight defenders to cover the four spots in every starting line up, six forwards to cover the front three spots and fourteen midfielders to cover those three midfield spots. Didn’t anybody notice this? At any stage over the last five years?). Next up, Kashima away, a game which we haven’t lost for a while, but which if I recall correctly has involved some pretty poor performances resulting in lucky score lines which have brightened up the horrific return bus journeys. I’d love a mind-blowingly lucky result on Saturday! It’s a fresh new season and we have Damiao and Kobayashi out injured! Oh, and Ienaga not completely fit. Oh, and Noborizato and probably Kurumaya also injured. Ah, and Jesiel banned. Probably can cover all of those spots with some midfielders though, right? Kashima beat Kyoto 2-0 today. Kyoto were tipped to go down this year by quite a few people. So who knows how good a result that is for Kashima, who were tipped to be not very good in 2023. It seems almost inevitable that Chinen will score against us for his new club. One thing in our favour though is that they’ll have no idea how we’ll line up at the back! And perhaps they will have prepared for our NEW TACTICS and will be unnerved by our OLD AND INEFFECTIVE/NO TACTICS. Will we find our shooting boots and put them on instead of wearing our lightly-roll-the-ball-to-the-opposition-keeper slippers? Will we make it the 2km to Kashima station on the bus in under an hour on the way home? Will I be excited about sneaking in a spare pet bottle lid in my bag so I can put it on when my lid is confiscated on the way in? Actually, the answer to that last point is absolutely yes. Sticking it to the man! The others I honestly haven’t got a clue about. Normally, I’d say that it will be a change as little as possible Oniki approach but we don’t really have that luxury from the point of view of starting members, I really feel that someone should super-impose Oniki’s face onto one of those memes where the cartoon dog is sitting in a burning room saying it’s all fine. After that we’ve got a week’s wait till we play Shonan at home, who beat us twice a year when they’re awful and have started the season by scoring five today. Blimey…

Team 

 

GK 1. JUNG Sung-Ryong

DF 13. YAMANE Miki

DF 4. JESIEL (Red card 87')

DF 7. KURUMAYA Shintaro

DF 5. SASAKI Asahi

MF 8. TACHIBANADA Kento

MF 14. WAKIZAKA Yasuto

MF 17. TONO Daiya

FW 41. IENAGA Akihiro

FW 33. MIYASHIRO Taisei

FW 23. MARCINHO

Subs

GK 99. KAMIFUKUMOTO Naoto

DF 3. OMINAMI Takuma (on for KURUMAYA 60')
MF 6. JOAO SCHMIDT (Yellow card 90+5') (on for WAKIZAKA 79')

MF 10. OSHIMA Ryota (on for TONO 71')

MF 16. SEKO Tatsuki
FW 20. YAMADA Shin (on for MIYASHIRO 71')

FW 30. SEGAWA Yusuke (on for IENAGA 46')

My Frontale Man Of The Match

 

I'm thinking about getting rid of this section

 

Goals

 

NISHIMURA (Yokohama F Marinos) 4' 0-1

ELBER (Yokohama F Marinos) 38' 0-2

TACHIBANADA (Frontale) 90+1' 1-2

 

Highlights

New player songs 2023

Here are the new player songs for 2023, with maybe a few in there that have either slightly changed, massively changed or have been forgotten after lengthy loan spells. And this post might actually be of some use this year as singing is back. So plenty of homework to do for me. If you can't find a player song in here that you think should be, perhaps it was in the last song post and you didn't realise because some of those songs have never actually been sung. All previous song posts are here for your reference. Get your vocal chords warmed up!


3. OMINAMI Takuma



Takuma Ominami
Takuma saa hashiridase
Takuma Ominami
Lalala Lalala Ominami


5. SASAKI Asahi



Sasaki Asahi Lalalalala
Sasaki Asahi Lalala Lalalala
Atsui Heart Moyaseyo Asahi
Sasaki Asahi Sa


17. TONO Daiya



Tono Daiya
Tono Daiya
Miseroyo Daiya
Tono Daiya
Tono Daiya
Kagayake Daiya!


20. YAMADA Shin



O Yamada
Misero yo Shin goal
Hashire Kaze No You Ni
(Shin Shin Shinshinshinshin)


24. MYOGAN Toya



Myogan Toya Lalala La La La
Myogan Kakeagare
Myogan Toya Lalala La La La
Myogan Toya Ole


26. EINAGA Takatora



Einaga Takatora
Kirisake Takatora
Einaga Takatora
Takatora Get Goal


27. MATSUNAGANE Yuto



Lalala Nagane Matsunagane
Lalala Nagane Matsunagane
Lalala Nagane Matsunagane
Lalala Nagane Matsunagane


28. OZEKI Yuto



It’s Alright Ozeki Yuto
Misero Ozeki Yuto
It’s Alright Ozeki Yuto
Misero Ozeki Yuto


29. TAKAI Kota



Takai Kota
Takai Kota
Kota Kota


30. SEGAWA Yusuke



Go Segawa
Segawa Goal
Segawa Yusuke Goal


33. MIYASHIRO Taisei



Miyashiro Taisei
Misete Yarouze
Goal e Buchikome
Miyashiro Taisei


99. KAMIFUKUMOTO Naoto



Kamifukumoto Tachiagare
Kamifukumoto Tsukisusume
Kamifukumoto Mamorinuke
Kamifuku! Moto! Naoto Ole!