Vs Pathum United (away) 24/10/23 ACL Group stage match 3

Pathum United 2 - 4 Kawasaki Frontale

Our third group stage game and somewhat bizarrely considering recent seasons’ performances, our third win. And actually, even more bizarre when you think how crap we’ve been all year. This was a game that I didn’t attend and when I watch matches on DAZN, I always find these posts pretty pointless. I even struggle to pay complete attention. So if you’re looking for new levels of insight from me being able to watch replays and see close ups, you’re in for a disappointment. But I’m sure no one was expecting that, were they? In spite of the amount of goals in the game, this was for long stages, a pretty dull match. Or perhaps that’s just the way I saw it. Around 77 minutes it looked like everything was going just fine. Ominami had just scored his first goal for us and we were leading 4-1. Shortly afterwards, perhaps the ref and fate received notifications that significant amounts of money had been deposited into their bank accounts by an enemy of ours, as after that moment both seemed to decide they had a real grudge against us. The penalty and yellow card for Sung-Ryong were pretty dodgy. Then the yellow card for Terada for presumably complaining about the decision. Then Ominami picked up what looked like a bad injury. And to add to these, how about yellow cards for both Jesiel and Takai as they were subbed on? Presumably for entering the field of play without the ref’s consent but both seemed to be pretty petty, but I guess correct by the letter of the law. Good to see we have someone who enforces the rules strictly, eh? Well, apart from the ‘penalty’. But anyway, this is supposed to be a short and whinge free post. However, even in short and whinge free posts, it still feels necessary to point out when a ref is totally crap. He was. 

A few other comments and then let’s get this finished. Jesiel back in the squad was a surprise. Even more of a surprise, given his recent injury history, was that Oniki thought it would be a good idea to bring him on, presumably without a warm up, for the last few minutes of a game we were leading by two goals. Takai coming on shortly afterwards shows that he could have been used instead. Or maybe Tanabe. But no, Oniki went for Jesiel. Guess it makes sense to use him if you’re going to make someone who hasn't played a minute of football for ages to fly to an away ACL game. Probably would have made more sense to leave him at home, but I’m glad he’s back and hope he can avoid any more injuries. Also slightly bizarre was Oniki’s continued insistence on playing Tono in midfield. He’s a striker and the one thing he’s been doing recently is score goals. But instead he once again played him further back. He scored a goal though! And was then subbed at half time when perhaps Oniki remembered he isn’t a midfielder. He should write some notes down about these things as he seems to keep forgetting. I guess there’s no way for him to be able to use his magnet board to keep track of where players play. Finally, I need to mention a couple of things that the commentator informed us of and that maybe people don’t know., Firstly the Pathum player Stewart has probably recently attended a wedding or celebration with a lovely banquet as a ‘long feed’ was mentioned. Also Marcinho seems to have a large kitchen as his goal was met with a comment about his ‘long counter’. Plenty of work surface space available to prepare a long feed for Stewart perhaps!

Next up, Kashiwa Reysol away at the weekend and presumably Ominami will not get the chance to return to his old club. And then after that, it’s almost a whole week off before we have the home game against Pathum. Hopefully the ref will be a bit less useless on that occasion.

 

Team

GK 1. JUNG Sung-Ryong (Yellow card 79')

DF 13. YAMANE Miki

DF 3. OMINAMI Takuma

DF 31. YAMAMURA Kazuya

DF 2. NOBORIZATO Kyohei

MF 8. TACHIBANADA Kento

FW 17. TONO Daiya

MF 14. WAKIZAKA Yasuto (Yellow card 90+4')

FW 41. IENAGA Akihiro

FW 9. LEANDRO DAMIAO

FW 23. MARCINHO

 

Subs

GK 22. HAYASAKA Yuki
GK 99. KAMIFUKUMOTO Naoto

DF 4. JESIEL (Yellow card 89') (on for OMINAMI 89')

MF 6. JOAO SCHMIDT

FW 11. KOBAYASHI Yu
DF 15. TANABE Shuto

MF 16. SEKO Tatsuki (on for TONO 46')

FW 18. Bafetimbi GOMIS (on for LEANDRO DAMIAO 70')

FW 20. YAMADA Shin

MF 28. OZEKI Yuto

DF 29. TAKAI Kota (Yellow card 90+2') (on for  IENAGA 90+1')

FW 30. SEGAWA Yusuke
FW 33. MIYASHIRO Taisei (on for MARCINHO 70')

 

Goals

TONO (Frontale) 14' 0-1

SERGEEV (Pathum) 45+1' 1-1

TACHIBANADA (Frontale) 52' 1-2

MARCINHO (Frontale) 68' 1-3 

OMINAMI (Frontale) 77' 1-4  

VICTOR CARDOZO (Pathum) PEN 82' 2-1

 

Highlights

 

 

Vs Avispa Fukuoka (home) 20/10/23 J League match 30

Kawasaki Frontale 4 - 2 Avispa Fukuoka

Another week, another 4-2 win against Avispa. Although this was far from as comfortable as the last one. And also much less significant, as even the most optimistic of fan would say that we now have absolutely nothing to play for in the league. With that in mind, some might have thought that we’d have a chance to play some players who haven’t had much of a go recently. Hehehe... Of course we went with pretty much the same players and the same formation again. From the announced line-up it looked like we might be trying three at the back again, but I think it was the usual four and naturally we played our striker Segawa at left back. The reason I think he was a left back rather than a left wing back was that we had no-one to do the same job on the other side. But I have realised that given that they are quite fluid, formations, much like beauty, are in the eye of the beholder. Perhaps it could be said that we were playing some kind of hybrid one-sided three at the back, but if that’s the case, I’d say that if when you made a pizza you changed the base for fried potatoes and the toppings to battered cod, it probably makes more sense to call it fish and chips rather than a very original type of pizza. Other than the one change at left back (perhaps Nobori is injured, he wasn’t on the bench), things were exactly the same as the previous Avispa game. And why not eh? Well perhaps because aside from the early goal in that game, we’d had a truly awful first half. But you know, if you’re excepting our line-ups to change as a reaction to previous performances, well, perhaps you’re being a bit optimistic. With Tuesday’s ACL game coming up soon, I’m going to get this post out of the way quickly, which is what I always say before waffling on for thousands of words. Wish me luck.

The game started in pretty dull fashion, perhaps because both teams clearly had nothing to play for in the league and were both thinking about upcoming cup games. I feel a bit sorry for the Avispa fans who not only had to travel half the length of the country to Kawasaki twice in two weeks, (and go to Nagoya in that middle week too), but also had to come for a Friday night game. I think they clearly were more up for the cups as there weren’t many of them in attendance. And who can blame them? It takes a lot of dedication to attend dead-rubber long away trips at this stage of the season. (But yes, I am looking forward to going to Sagan Tosu on the last day of the season, but that one’s a special one, isn’t it?). In the same way that you could understand some fans not being that bothered, it seems that the people who choose the refs for the games were also not that bothered. We had Mikuriya for the second time this year. He’s got a reputation for being pretty bad. I didn’t think he was awful, but he did seem like he made some confusing decisions. I think he usually likes to book someone extremely early, and then apparently regret the decision and spend the rest of the game avoiding booking anyone unless he really has to. The unlucky recipient on this occasion was Ominami, and in spite of the usual Avispa rough tactics and constant diving, it took him over fifty minutes to find anything else worthy of a yellow. I don’t think we had any VAR referrals in this game, which is really rare. Perhaps he was completely certain about every decision he made, or perhaps the VAR guy was equally flaky. I think I heard that VAR has to be instigated by the ref, but I’m not sure if that is true. It doesn’t really make sense if the ref has to think he has made a mistake before anything gets checked. I guess if it’s true, Mikuriya is just someone with a lot of self confidence so well done to him. But to be honest, he didn’t seem THAT bad. The opposite could be said about the linesman on our side of the pitch. He made some real clangers, the best, hmmm, worst… errrmm…. the biggest of which was deciding that Damiao sliding to win the ball and the Fukuoka player seeing his outstretched legs and just deciding to fall over him warranted a free kick for Avispa. In the next match he officiates in a striker should wait for the goalie to make a diving save and claim the ball, then ‘trip’ over him, winning a penalty and getting the keeper a red card for dangerous play. It’s very dangerous to just lie on the floor where anybody could trip over you. Imagine if the victim had been carrying scissors or a glass. it could have been a bloodbath. So yeah, ref was rubbish but predictably so. The linesman should never set foot inside a stadium again, even as a spectator.

Avispa probably had the better of the first half. Actually they probably had the better of most of the game. Definitely until we made our first subs. Once again we conceded a goal whilst we were waiting to bring subs on. This is always very noticeable for me. Does this happen to other teams? Or is it something unique to us? The starting line up had been plodding around but it still took Oniki till the 67th minute and us going behind after opening the scoring to change anything. We hadn’t been awful though, we’d just been really dull and blunt. And as usual our first subs were just like-for-like changes, with no change in approach. It was a surprise to see Miyashiro back though, as in spite of him being our top scorer for most of the season, he’s disappeared recently. Not a great deal changed with these subs as you’d expect with us ploughing the same furrow, just with a different bit of equipment attached to the tractor. The next set of changes did seem to do something though. I was a bit worried at the time about us making our final sub in the 78th minute, but fair play to Oniki for noticing that we were still not very good and trying to do something about it. The first tactical change was moving a midfielder to left back to replace the striker who'd been playing there. Swiss army knife Tachibanada had a go there and I can’t remember noticing him that much. Well actually, I didn’t realise we’d made a change there until I spotted him making a run up the left and was quite surprised. I guess the big change was Kobayashi coming on, as he looked like he really had a point to prove. When he scored I remember thinking that we hadn’t scored a goal like that for ages, where a striker has the ball and runs into the box, beats a player and puts the ball in the net. Presumably I’m wrong with the details on this, but it really felt like something different. After scoring he then went on to cross the ball for Gomis to lay it off for Tono to spank it home, a goal made by a sub crossing to a sub who gave the ball to a sub. And then Gomis, perhaps still new to the team and not realising that our default position when leading, no matter how the game is going, is the resolutely refuse to try to score any more goals and instead try to keep the ball by the corner flag, played a lovely ball across goal for another sub to slide the ball home. So, unbelievably, we scored four goals again and it looked like a comfortable win! The be honest though, the two winning goals came in the 92nd and 96th minutes of a game with five minutes added. And we were losing until the 84th minute, so don’t get too excited about us turning things round. It was a lovely morale boost though to come back from trailing to win. Just don’t mention that pretty much everything good that happened in the game came from people Oniki didn’t start. Not saying the starters were bad, just that it seems that he still thinks the solution to our starting line-up not being able to create chances or score is to keep things the same and give them another chance. In this game, I don’t think any starters had a particularly bad game, but I don’t think our aim should be to ‘avoid having a particularly bad game’. However, as long as we’re winning, I don’t think anyone is going to complain too much. Not even me! The best thing about this game was the redemptive themes at play. Kobayashi, who’s struggled this season, but probably at the same time hasn’t really been given any kind of run, scored a lovely goal, threatened on numerous occasions and got the assist-assist for the goal that took us back ahead. Gomis, who when he came on seemed to still be having trouble settling in, assisted twice. It would have been great to have seen him score, but the assists will hopefully do him a world of good. And Tono, who spent a season on loan at Avispa, has been linked with a transfer back to them and always seems to score against them, (and actually quite often seems to score whenever he is given a chance), came on and did the business again. I’ve often said we should abandon our recenently kind of useless tactics. I’ve said that they don’t work, particularly with Ienaga on the right up front. The last game proved me wrong about the latter and perhaps this game proved me wrong about the former too. So perhaps the problem is more the approach. If we could start every game with the mindset that we are already losing, maybe we could do a bit better. In other words, I suppose I’m saying that if we weren’t quite so patient and conservative, we might do a lot better. After saying that I’ve been wrong twice in a row, I’m pleased that I could end on a note saying something else that I’ve been saying for years is correct. Well, at least as far as I’m concerned anyway.
 

Next up Pathum away in the ACL. On paper they are the weakest team in the group and we’ve won our first two games so… hmmm, could be a banana skin. Particularly considering that Chanathip is now playing there and probably feels like he has something to prove. If it’s ok with him, could he save proving that point till the game at Todoroki and just let us have the three points on this occasion please? Given that we’ve played Oniki’s first choice team in this game and have another game on Tuesday, perhaps this will mean that we’ll see some changes on Tuesday. HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA! Anyway, we’ve had a few good results recently so I’m in a good mood and hope you are too, and that my minor whinging hasn’t brought you down too much. Hopefully we can get a good result on Tuesday, and if Johor and Ulsan could draw too, that would be lovely! After that, the following Sunday we’re away at Kashiwa, the team who treat the opposition fans the worst in the whole of the league. Our last two games there have been draws, so it would be nice to get an ultimately-pointless-for-us win. The fact that they might have something to play for means that it might be a decent game. 

 

Team

GK 1. JUNG Sung-Ryong

DF 13. YAMANE Miki

DF 31. YAMAMURA Kazuya

DF 3. OMINAMI Takuma (Yellow card 11')

DF 30. SEGAWA Yusuke

MF 8. TACHIBANADA Kento

MF 16. SEKO Tatsuki

MF 14. WAKIZAKA Yasuto

FW 41. IENAGA Akihiro

FW 9. LEANDRO DAMIAO

FW 23. MARCINHO

 

Subs

GK 99. KAMIFUKUMOTO Naoto

MF 6. JOAO SCHMIDT (on for SEGAWA 78')

FW 11. KOBAYASHI Yu (on for IENAGA 78')
FW 17. TONO Daiya (on for SEKO 67')

FW 18. Bafetimbi GOMIS (on for LEANDRO DAMIAO 67')

DF 29. TAKAI Kota

FW 33. MIYASHIRO Taisei (on for MARCINHO 67')

 

 

My Frontale Man Of The Match

 

I mean, it is ridiculous to give this to someone who only played from the 78th minute, but the rest of the game wasn't that great so...

KOBAYASHI Yu - Scored a goal that gave everyone in the stadium a real boost. And put in a lovely cross for Gomis to set up Tono. Feel good factor gets the win this time perhaps.

 

Goals

 

SEGAWA (Frontale) 20' 1-0

GROLLI (Avispa) 24' 1-1

YAMAGISHI (Avispa) 66' 1-2

KOBAYASHI (Frontale) 84' 2-2

TONO (Frontale) 90+2' 3-2

MIYASHIRO (Frontale) 90+6' 4-2

Highlights

Vs Avispa Fukuoka (home) 8/10/23 Emperor's Cup Semi Final

Kawasaki Frontale 4 - 2 Avispa Fukuoka

Well, that turned out to be a decent week didn’t it? I’m currently desperately trying to work out what things I did differently before these games to unlock the mystery of how we managed to win two games in a row. The only connection I can find at the moment is that we seem to always win the game after I go to see a very loud gig. If you would like me to continue this streak, please send me donations asap. So now we have a 100% record in the ACL group so far without having conceded a goal and we’ve made it to the final of the Emperor’s Cup. In a recent post I pondered whether the 4-3-3 formation wasn’t actually the problem and it was instead the 4-3-3 with Ienaga playing on the right. He came back in this game and we scored four times so that shows how much I know, doesn’t it? Perhaps the real difference is that we’ve got a bit of confidence back. It’s not surprising that our morale has taken a bit of a battering this year as disappointing result after disappointing result came our way. And if a late goal in the ACL is enough to boost us, that certainly works for me. Of course, all of this positivity could come crashing down after a couple of terrible performances, but let’s enjoy it while we can. The scoreline suggests this was a hugely entertaining game with swashbuckling attack. The truth is slightly different I feel. Normally when reflecting on a game to write a blog post, I check and see if the stats reflect how I felt. For some reason stats for this game are very difficult to find and my normal site suggests that there were only eight shots in the entire match, six of which were goals. However the official Frontale site disagrees with this. The point I was looking to check was whether the first half was quite as bad as I remember it being and perhaps it was. We scored from a corner though! And I have to say that Wakizaka’s corners were a lot better in this game. There was some variation which helps, as normally there is only one variety of corner which is the one where he places it perfectly on the head of the first defender. But in this match, we looked dangerous! Which is a bit of luck, as in the first half as aside from the goal I don’t remember us doing much. The official site says we had two shots so that suggests that I was about right. We started quite well, (as obviously evidenced by the goal), but soon retreated back into our usual ineffective ways. The game got quite fiery and Avispa seemed to up for a scrap. From my obviously biased point of view, they seemed an extremely dirty team, and if their tactics were to attempt to kick us out of our comfort zone, it certainly worked. However, I'm not sure this can explain why we missed another penalty, (another shocker from Damiao, and this time they didn’t give us a second chance!), and conceded a totally horrible goal, basically giving them the ball from our throw in, just before half time.

 

Immediately after half time, it was a really different game. It seemed that their manager had put a rocket up their arses, whilst ours had put a sedative in our sports drinks. We were really bad right at the start of the second half. But we managed to shake out of it after about five horrible minutes where it looked like we were going to be in a lot of trouble. When we retook the lead through a significantly deflected Tachibanada shot into the same goal he’d scored against Ulsan four days before, things became a bit more comfortable. Marcinho’s goal was a lot of fun and Song-Ryung was delighted with his assist. And Damiao getting a goal from open play seemed to please him greatly. Much better than scoring another penalty. (Presumably he had been thinking the same as he took his run up). I have to say, I can’t really remember their second goal, only being aware of the fact that it was scored after the allotted injury time had expired, but at the same time acknowledging that during that time and before the ninety minutes were up, we’d been doing some magnificent time-wasting. A particular highlight was Ienaga telling Yamane to slow down when he went to jog to take a throw in. And of course, it’s always great to see Ienaga get subbed and have him leave the pitch so slowly that you start to think that perhaps time has stopped and gone into reverse. I say always, but I do remember moaning about him doing this when we were losing once so maybe always isn’t quite the right word. This wasn’t the greatest performance, but in 2023 I think we can really enjoy winning emphatically when we haven’t played particularly amazingly. The mood in the pub post game was quite different than it had been after the Niigata game and I don’t think this was all connected to the fact that this win had taken us to a final. I guess the big difference between this and other recent games is that we somehow took our chances in this game. Maybe that should be the tactical direction for all matches in the future. Such a simple game plan that I’m confused why we didn’t try it before. I’m not sure we did anything particularly differently in this game and there certainly weren’t any surprising selections. So I guess it’s mainly down to luck. And hopefully that will continue for the foreseeable future. I wonder if Gomis will ever score for us. He didn’t even make it on to the pitch in this game, even for the last five minutes, Right now, he looks like being a (presumably) expensive bench warmer. Although perhaps his arrival has reinvigorated Damiao, so maybe it was worth the money after all.
 

A few words about Avispa and the ref and VAR. As I mentioned above Avispa were pretty physical. Which makes it all the more surprising that Grolli goes down so easily. I know we were all expecting him to drop to the floor clutching some part of his body, urging the ref to call the police so they could arrest his assailant. But I don’t think anyone expected him to do this within the first 15 seconds of the game. Truly impressive rapidity in living up to his reputation! I haven’t seen a replay of Ideguchi’s tackle on Seko but it looked a bit dodgy at the time and I’ve been told that it was very surprising that it wasn’t changed to a red by VAR. Oh, VAR, how many times did we meet in this game? The ref Nakamurra, (had him once before, didn't moan much, but said he didn't like giving cards), seemed to want to check everything he possibly could. Perhaps recent events in the English Premier League might have encouraged refs to make sure that they don’t make any errors but Nakamura’s desire to check everything got quite tedious, quite quickly. Particularly when it didn’t change Ideguchi’s yellow to a red (wink). This ref loved referring to VAR so much that he probably asked it whether or not he needed to have a piss at half time. I know I’ve already made this ‘joke’ twice, but the third time’s a charm, isn’t it? At times it also seemed like he’d forgotten (again) that he could book players as plenty of bad tackles weren’t considered bad enough for a yellow. He did think Wakizaka’s foul was worthy of one though. If you showed someone that tackle and Ideguchi’s one and were told that both got the same punishment, I suspect they might be a bit surprised. I dunno, he was a bit rubbish, but I don’t think he was anywhere near as bad as some of the higher profile refs are. And I think that even though he used VAR to check everything, I don’t think it overturned any of his decisions for right or wrong, so maybe he did a decent job. Well either that or the VAR guy was useless too. Actually, it’s probably the latter, isn’t it?

Next up, a week and a half off, before we face… Avispa Fukuoka at home again on Friday 20th, this time in the league. Then, just four days later. we’re away in the ACL in Thailand. Not sure any of the currently injured players will be back by then. Hopefully we can give Avispa another pasting and then continue our positive start in the ACL. As I think I keep saying, we’re not playing particularly better than we were before, but somehow now, things have gone our way slightly, and long may that continue!

Team

GK 1. JUNG Sung-Ryong

DF 13. YAMANE Miki

DF 31. YAMAMURA Kazuya

DF 3. OMINAMI Takuma

DF 2. NOBORIZATO Kyohei

MF 8. TACHIBANADA Kento

MF 16. SEKO Tatsuki (Yellow card 28')

MF 14. WAKIZAKA Yasuto (Yellow card 66')

FW 41. IENAGA Akihiro

FW 9. LEANDRO DAMIAO (Yellow card 82')

FW 23. MARCINHO

 

Subs

GK 99. KAMIFUKUMOTO Naoto

MF 6. JOAO SCHMIDT (on for SEKO 75')

FW 17. TONO Daiya

FW 18. Bafetimbi GOMIS

FW 20. YAMADA Shin (on for LEANDRO DAMIAO 90+5')

DF 29. TAKAI Kota (on for IENAGA 90+2')

FW 30. SEGAWA Yusuke (on for MARCINHO 75')

 

My Frontale Man Of The Match

 

Damiao worked really hard in this game and looks like he’s getting back to where he was a few years ago. But it would be a bit of a shock if he got this as he missed his penalty. I don't know if people see the same things I do so maybe they won’t agree with me, but given that he spent most of the game skillfully avoiding being booted by the Avispa midfield, and the rest of the game being booted by them, I’m going to give this to …

SEKO Tatsuki - looks very comfortable on the ball and even though some of his passes go astray, that’s probably because he’s passing forwards instead of sideways or backwards.

 

Goals

 

YAMAMURA (Frontale) 5' 1-0

KANAMORI (Avispa) 42' 1-1

TACHIBANADA (Frontale) 53' 2-1

MARCINHO (Frontale) 70' 3-1

LEANDRO DAMIAO (Frontale) 81' 4-1

TSURUNO (Avispa) 90+6' 4-2

Highlights

Vs Ulsan Hyundai (home) 3/10/23 ACL Group stage match 2

Kawasaki Frontale 1 - 0 Ulsan Hyundai 

It’s fair to say that 2023 hasn’t been the greatest year for Frontale. Considering how badly we’ve played it’s something of a miracle that we still find ourselves involved in two competitions at this stage of the year. However this has been slightly skewed in 2023 by the late start of the ACL as they switch the schedule for the more standard late-summer-start-and-spring-finish season. So even in this year when we've been awful, it really would have been something for us to put ourselves out of contention after just the one group game. After such a terrible performance against Niigata, surely we were going to lose against the team that destroys our ACL campaign every year, right? Actually wrong, which was a delightful and very welcome surprise. Recently, writing these blog posts has become a real chore as there are only so many ways you can say ‘we’re terrible’. Given the result, this one should be a bit easier, but to be honest, we still weren’t that great. But for once we did the job. I’m going to keep this brief as I’m busy with work this week and this blog, whilst occasionally being a bit of a pressure relief valve, takes ages to write and offers no reward apart from getting a few Twitter likes and the thrill of occasionally irritating pompous opposition fans. I’m going to experiment with a shorter style as I probably can’t really afford to spend three hours doing these when I should be doing housework or actual work. Let’s see how that goes.
 

The starting line up looked like it could be a weird 3-5-2 but after the Niigata game it seemed destined to be back to 4-3-3. And so it was, despite Yamamura being listed as a midfielder, (very sneaky from us, presumably hoping that Ulsan would not have done any scouting at all). So it was with some trepidation that I awaited kick off. As I’ve said constantly 4-3-3 has been useless when it comes to scoring recently. It kind of was in this game too, with us having loads of shots which mostly went miles over the bar and not managing to test the Ulsan keeper until the 66th minute. I guess the crucial difference was that we were making plenty of good chances though. So now I wonder, and I don’t really like to say this, that perhaps 4-3-3 with Ienaga on the right is useless, and there could be a future for a more structurally disciplined 4-3-3. Ienaga seems to have disappeared recently which I guess must be an injury as I can’t see Oniki dropping him from the squad in a game where we could have so many subs. I think there’s still a role for him in midfield, but I don’t think we can justify making our attack so lopsided by accommodating his free role up front any more. Damiao seems to have a new lease of life and he got the nod in this game with Gomis on the bench. Miyashiro was back too and it seems like bad news for Kobayashi, who didn’t make it into the pitch at all again, so perhaps could now be considered bottom of the striker pecking order. This does seem to change with every toothless attacking week though. And when we did finally manage to score, the goal came from Tachibanada who thankfully was able to get a shot on target, unlike many of his contemporaries. We left it quite late though. Like I said, we made chances, (15 of them), and some were really good ones, but only four shots on target is pretty dismal. But who cares when we won? It’s a slightly weird but horribly predictable to say that we could have been four goals up within the first 15 minutes of the game, but failed to hit the target on any of these occasions. But at least we got to do a bit of attacking. Ulsan were quite happy to let us fart around at the back with the ball, doing absolutely nothing with it, (see, they had scouted us!), whereas we were hassling their back four and keeper constantly. Both approaches were equally unsuccessful till the 89th minute. At one point we had a two on one and made it into the box but somehow contrived to not even be able to have a shot from the situation. All of this would have been hugely frustrating if we hadn’t finally managed to score.
 

Probably the frustration would have been amplified by the fact that Ulsan didn’t do much in the game. They had a few very good chances, but like us seemed to be in pretty bad shape. They only had the one shot on target, so in retrospect, we totally dominated the game. Totally dominated it yet only managed to score the winner and only goal in the 89th minute. Ulsan were a big surprise actually. They always beat or frustrate us. They definitely are a bogey team, and currently sit top of their league, but really looked a shadow of the teams who’ve successfully messed with us and our delicate style in the past. After a first minute VAR check for a possible red card after an early potentially-aggro coming together they seemed to really fade. Maybe they’re focusing on the league this year (just like we are, right? 😉) or maybe they’re lulling us into a false sense of security so that they can totally destroy us at a later stage of the competition and smash our hearts into tiny pieces. They scored three times against Pathum in their first game but only once ever looked like threatening in this game. (It probably should be said that Johor scored four against Pathum in their second game. All set up perfectly for us to self destruct in our next game against them). Whether we were lucky to come up against Ulsan on an off day or whether they’re not as good as before, well, only time will tell. But we now don’t play them till the last group game, and you’d hope with the start we’ve made, that we won’t need anything from that game to secure our progress. But don’t forget we are 2023 Frontale, and can easily turn a silk purse into a sow’s ear. But let’s be tentatively… optimistic. Oh, and I almost forgot to say, one of the most entertaining parts of the game, was the fact that the linesman on our side couldn't stop himself from going on the pitch. Perhaps not as amusing when written down as it was at the time, but as I'm adding the photo below, I thought I'd better explain why.

What a surprise of a blog post, eh? Not much moaning, no jokes, not that long, ending on a positive note! Don’t worry, normal service will probably be resumed soon, as next up we have Avispa Fukuoka at home in the Emperor’s Cup semi final on Sunday. Can Oniki build on this win? Can we perhaps shoot a little bit more accurately? Can I write another slightly shorter and less interesting blog post? All of these questions will be answered in due course.

Team

GK 1. JUNG Sung-Ryong

DF 13. YAMANE Miki

DF 3. OMINAMI Takuma

DF 31. YAMAMURA Kazuya

DF 2. NOBORIZATO Kyohei

MF 8. TACHIBANADA Kento

MF 16. SEKO Tatsuki

MF 14. WAKIZAKA Yasuto

FW 30. SEGAWA Yusuke (Yellow card 48')

FW 9. LEANDRO DAMIAO

FW 23. MARCINHO

 

Subs

GK 22. HAYASAKA Yuki
GK 99. KAMIFUKUMOTO Naoto

MF 6. JOAO SCHMIDT

FW 11. KOBAYASHI Yu
DF 15. TANABE Shuto

FW 17. TONO Daiya (on for SEKO 77')

FW 18. Bafetimbi GOMIS (on for SEGAWA 83')

FW 20. YAMADA Shin (on for LEANDRO DAMIAO 77')
FW 24. MYOGAN Toya

MF 28. OZEKI Yuto

DF 29. TAKAI Kota

FW 33. MIYASHIRO Taisei (on for MARCINHO 70')

 

Goals

TACHIBANADA (Frontale) 89' 1-0

My Frontale Man Of The Match

Don’t really know what to do with this. We seemed to be better than the opposition, but no one really stood out as we didn’t have to do much and mostly couldn't actually do much in front of their goal. However, given that they were restricted to just five shots in the game, I’m going to perhaps slightly randomly give it to….

OMINAMI Takuma & YAMAMURA Kazuya - for once Sung-Ryong didn’t have much to do, which this year is something I’ve only been able to say when he has been on the bench.

Highlights

 

Vs Albirex Niigata (home) 29/9/23 J League match 29

Kawasaki Frontale 2 - 3 Albirex Niigata 

Ugh. I don’t know how many times this year I’ve said ‘this was our worst game in ages’, but this one has got to be up there for that title. Actually I think I’ve also said ‘I don’t know how many times this year I’ve said ‘this was our worst game in ages’, quite a few times too. But this one can’t have been too bad, can it? We scored twice! Dismiss that thought immediately as this game was utter crap. So bad that although I will, I really shouldn’t waste time writing about it, and I suggest you don’t waste your time reading about it either. Crap crap crap. The league is now OFFICIALLY gone, but has realistically been gone since the first few weeks of the season. In previous games this has lead to Oniki trying some things out in dead rubber games and I even went as far as to praise him for it, perhaps shockingly so when we lost 3-0 away at Cerezo. In that game I could see us working on something and even though it didn’t come off, it was a welcome break from the usual Oniki reaction to an awful defeat: do the same thing in the next game and expect things to turn out differently. Experimenter Oniki now seems to be dead and we’re back to the worst of all Oniki’s, the no-idea-how-to-rotate-and-stick-with-the-same-system Oniki. In this game he made big changes to the starting line up, presumably with Ulsan at home in the ACL on Tuesday in mind. Which is all fine and I like to see different players playing, particularly if the result is absolutely meaningless. What I don’t like to see is a return to Oniki’s beloved but absolutely useless 4-3-3. We’ve won our last two league games playing 3-5-2 and unbelievably, we looked like we might actually score some goals! Now we’re back to 4-3-3 and no chance of ever getting anything from an attack. Yeah, we scored twice in this game, but the first was from a set piece, (well more accurately from a set piece that they only partially managed to clear and after that their keeper dollied up the ball for one of our players to put into an open goal), and the second was our recent friend, the penalty. Honestly, I don’t know why the opposition bothers fouling us when we get into the box. Just step back and let the attacker do what they’ve been told to do, (play the ball back down the length of the pitch to their own keeper) and they’ll be safe. In between these two goals we’d conceded twice. The first was slightly unfortunate as a long shot bounced off the post to a Niigata player who none of our defenders seemed to have noticed. The second was much like our first in that it was a recycled ball from a corner. In spite of us having most of our team inside the box there still was acres of space for the Niigata player to hang around in waiting for the ball. He was so untroubled by our defenders that he probably could have built the world’s biggest playing cards tower without fear of it being knocked over by one of our players. Whilst we’re dwelling on defensive shitness we might as well mention their third, which came mainly from Yamane sliding in for a tackle in the centre circle, totally missing the ball and leaving loads of space for them to run into and admittedly finish beautifully, after marooning Tachibanada who was trying to cover for Yamane. It was at least a good finish though, so I can’t get too upset about half of that goal.

The real problem isn’t the players or any individual mistakes though. It’s the manager. Slight progress with something new and then he’s back to bad old 4-3-3. He put Kobayashi out on the right, which always feels like it should work, but never does. Gomis had another anonymous game, as does everyone who plays that middle striker position in this awful system. The first fifteen minutes or so, we looked quite good. Quite good with the massive caveat that we didn’t really look like scoring. So basically the same as in most 4-3-3 games this year. After the first 15 minutes, we did pretty much nothing. I can’t even believe we managed to win a corner to score our first goal, so blunt were our attacks. 15 minutes of possession and pointless passing and then 30 minutes of no possession and nothing much at all. The players in our starting line up looked like they could have been used in a 4-4-2 so I had a slight bit of excitement and optimism before the game, but no, of course we were going 4-3-3 again. Half time saw Oniki shake things up… only joking, of course he didn’t! He changed Kobayashi and Gomis who’d done nothing, but at the same time had had no chance to do anything and kept on plugging away with the same awful tactics. Oniki the mechanic is trying to get his car going again after it seems to have broken down a few years ago. He’s decided to put the engine on the backseats and the steering wheel in the boot, and can’t quite work out why it’s not starting. At half time, he changes the covers on the car seat headrests and is astonished that it doesn’t have any effect. It took until the 65th minute for him to realise what had been apparent from the kick off and he finally switched to 3-5-2. But even then he couldn’t stop messing with things. At one stage near the end of the game we had Tanabe playing on the left wing and Noborizato as a centre back. I don’t know if the magnets slipped. I think it’s probably more the desperate scrabblings of a manager who thinks that eventually he’ll find the magic arrangement of players in the way that he somehow stumbled upon a few years ago. People have praised Oniki for his management, but I think 2023 shows that there was a lot more luck than judgement involved in his success. And we were lucky in this game. We could have conceded a lot more goals if it hadn’t been for Sung-Ryong. When we did concede the third it looked like we’d given up. And who can blame the players? They must realise that what they’re being told to do isn’t working. Perhaps they, like me, are just waiting for the end of the season to come. Presumably Oniki will go. Oh my god, if he doesn’t go… I’m not sure I can put myself through another year of his incompetence. I think this awful season is going to have a big effect on our squad. I imagine a lot of players will leave at the end of the year give that as a club we don’t seem to know what we’re doing. The number of staff that are leaving suggests that some of them have their doubts too. Perhaps this is all inevitable after a period of success. It’s a bit worrying that no-one at the club seems to have noticed we’ve been crap since Mitoma left. And I’m not saying that’s just because he’s gone, but it’s the unwillingness to play in any way other than how we played when he was with us hoping that finally this ‘unfortunate’ streak will end. It is still unbelievable that we went into the final game of last season with a chance of taking the title. We were terrible last year, so how bad must the rest of the league have been? This year’s results are what we deserved last year and are totally what we deserve this year. Seven shots in 96 minutes in this game. 31% possession and only three shots in the first half. And don’t forget we had the ball for the majority of the first 15 minutes, so that shows just how bad we were for the rest of the half. And still he didn’t notice anything! I don’t think we had a shot in the second half until the 72nd minute. (No coincidence that was after he’d changed to 3-5-2). The attendance was pretty low for this game and some might say that was because of Friday Night J League being pretty inconvenient, but surely it must be some reflection on the terrible, terrible stuff we’re having to watch. Oh, a quick mention for the ref. Okabe is truly one of the worst in the J League, but he had a decent game. I thought he was a bit card shy to be honest, and there definitely should have been some more yellows earlier on in the game. The majority to our players, actually. Two games in a row with decent refereeing. That’s something I never thought I’d say. So expect a total disaster of a ref on Tuesday.

Next up a total disaster of a ref, oh sorry… next up Ulsan at home in the ACL on Tuesday. Anyone who is going into this game with any kind of positivity surely needs to have their head examined. They always beat us, even when we’re good. Now we’re awful… I don’t really want to think about it. Presumably we’ll be back to 4-3-3 and the usual players. There are definitely some injury worries in defence though. I’d be surprised if we see Kurumaya again this season. Unless his injury wasn’t as bad as it looked. And that thought probably sums up the mismanagement this team has gone through recently. We’re hoping that an injury to a left back isn’t serious because he’s now one of our preferred centre backs. It’s no wonder we’ve conceded so many goals this year. But it doesn’t help that we can’t score either. When you faff about with the ball with the mindset that making progress up the pitch should be avoided at all costs it’s no surprise that the defence comes under extra pressure when you lose it. After Ulsan, it’s Avispa at home in the Emperor’s cup semi final next Sunday. So if you’re feeling bad now, it could be nothing compared with how bad you’ll be feeling at the end of next week. But hang on, let’s not be so pessimistic (realistic), and instead say, I can’t wait for us to have a big party next Sunday evening after we’ve reached the Emperor’s Cup Final on the back of a massive smashing of Ulsan in the ACL. There you go. Don’t say I’m never positive. (Although feel free to say that I am often insincere). 

Team

GK 1. JUNG Sung-Ryong

DF 13. YAMANE Miki

DF 31. YAMAMURA Kazuya

DF 15. TANABE Shuto (Yellow card 90+6')

DF 2. NOBORIZATO Kyohei

MF 6. JOAO SCHMIDT

MF 17. TONO Daiya

MF 14. WAKIZAKA Yasuto

FW 11. KOBAYASHI Yu

FW 18. Bafetimbi GOMIS

FW 23. MARCINHO

 

Subs

GK 99. KAMIFUKUMOTO Naoto

MF 8. TACHIBANADA Kento (Yellow card 87') (on for WAKIZAKA 66')

FW 9. LEANDRO DAMIAO (on for MARCINHO 66')

FW 20. YAMADA Shin (on for GOMIS 46')

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

DF 29. TAKAI Kota

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

 

Goals

JOAO SCHMIDT (Frontale) 23' 1-0
SUZUKI (Albirex) 30' 1-1
ARAI (Albirex) 59' 1-2

YAMADA (Frontale) 76' PEN 2-2
OTA (Albirex) 80' 2-3

Highlights