It's been a while since we could sing, and in fact we still can't, apart from at Cerezo Osaka away in the Levain Cup. But I guess with one eye on a possible upcoming return of singing on the horizon, we have a load of new player songs. It's sad that some players have come and gone without ever getting a song or hearing their song sung, but hell, there are a lot worse things happening in the world than not being able to sing. Anyway, here we go for the latest batch of player songs. Fingers crossed I get to butcher them soon!
6. Joao Schmidt
Joao Schmidt Joao Schmidt Ore no Joao Schmidt
8. Tachibanada Kento
Waku Waku sasete yo Tachibanada Kento Goal ni buchikome Iddamashii Kento
We won a game! Which might make you think I have a lot to write about in this blog post. Also, we did it with Oniki absent as he was a COVID close contact. You might think that I would jump on these two things and draw out a connection. That was the old Frontale Rabbit though. Now I’m calm, and I’m sure that every time I say that you become more certain that all this talk of calmness is purely self delusion and deep down I’m in turmoil. There could be some truth in that, but I think I actually have been able to emotionally take a step back and not worry too much about us having a bad season whilst one of our biggest rivals has a good season. Although typing that sentence has caused a little bit of ire to rise up in me, a Kevin Muscats inspired bit of acid reflux perhaps. This was a good weekend to win (saying that, when exactly is it not a good weekend to win…?), as both Kashima and YFM drew. Muscats’ charges came very close to losing but sadly Cerezo were so worn out from their ‘heroics’ in beating us that they couldn’t hold on. So were back to seven points off top spot with one game in hand. I still stand by the fact that the title is gone. Would be lovely though if both of those draws could bring on a shocking loss of form for both our Kanagawa neighbours and Japan’s most remote football team. We can dream, I guess. We’ve got nothing coming up this week… because we’re out of both the ACL and the Emperor’s Cup, falling at the first hurdle in the former and at the second in the latter. That will give us some time to get our one COVID afflicted player back, (perhaps Oshima judging by who was missing without explanation), and give Oniki a time to get some negative COVID tests in and come back to get working his magic again. I’m not going to draw too many conclusions from this result as there were way too many aspects of the game which would make any kind of analysis a bit pointless. I’d love to say that this was our first look at Terada Frontale as our assistant coach stepped up into the main position for the game. There was quite an amusing collective intake of breath and outpouring of ‘eh?’s around the stadium when his photo and name came up, possibly quite a few people thinking that they’d missed some news of a resignation. But I think anyone who imagines that Oniki didn’t pick the team and decide on the tactics and subs is probably deluding themselves. Oniki watching at home had the luxury of perhaps some different camera angles and probably a dining room table on which to spread out multiple magnet boards. Quite what he thought when we won comfortably in his absence, I’m not sure. But I think it must be akin to declining an invitation for a night out due to work commitments and then seeing loads of Instagram stories showing your friends seemingly having a much better time because you’re not there. If it was Oniki who picked the team, and I’m 99% sure it was, he’s learning some lessons from his recent mistakes. Admittedly a lot slower than some other people have. I think many people, myself included, thought it wasn’t a good idea to play Chanathip on the left and Tachibanada at left back and so it proved to be. He fixed the former self-created problem in the previous match and dealt with the latter in this match. If that was only due to Oshima being unavailable, well, I’m not sure it was the right reason, but the outcome was right. Sasaki was back at left back and had a good game, I think. Tachibanada was back where he belongs and unsurprisingly played a lot better than he did at left back. I feel like Oshima is wasted in the defensive midfield spot but Oniki does seem to pick the players first and then squeeze them into the same old formation. So with our glut of midfielders there’s always going to be some square pegs in round holes. The other big change was Marcinho coming back in to the starting line up on the left, which is also something plenty of people thought we should be doing. And it worked. And Damiao up front looked happier and better too. Perhaps Oniki’s presence has been weighing on the squad somehow and his absence relaxed people a bit. If this is true, I’m not sure it bodes very well for when he’s back in the stadium. But hopefully getting a good result in this game should have blown away some of the cobwebs that had formed in our recent horrible run.
I say a good result, and of course a 4-0 win is a good result, but another aspect of this game which complicates any analysis is the fact that Gamba were down to ten men within seven minutes of the game starting. It was unlucky for the player who got sent off, as there didn’t seem to be any intention and it was clearly an accidental studs into nuts collision but I think intention is not supposed to be taken into account anymore in these kind of decisions. And a tackle to the tackle which could result in the recipient not being able to reproduce and therefore contribute to our youth system in the future has probably got to count as dangerous play. I thought it was a red at the time and was moaning about the fact that only a yellow had been given when Iida got called to the monitor at the side of the pitch to have a look at it. If it had been Nishimura in charge I think he probably would have kept to his initial decision and red-carded the VAR and AVAR guys instead. But Iida had a look and as the replays were shown on the screen the blue light sticks that lots of fans have for evening games switched to red ones. It was quite amusing to be honest. So Gamba were down to ten men very early on. Thankfully we’d scored before this happened so we have something to cling on to when we are inevitably accused of only being able to beat ten men. I have to say that the fact that we actually managed to go on and score some more goals was actually a surprise though, as we are usually notoriously shit when our opponent has a player sent off. It seems that things just aren’t going Gamba’s way this year (or perhaps for many other recent years too). Losing a player when you come up against a team who are in rotten form and who people are grabbing points off left, right and centre. Usami committing his future to the club and then getting seriously injured shortly afterwards. I’m sure there are plenty more examples too. But one team’s misfortune is another team’s bonus and this was probably exactly what we needed. Sorry Gamba fans. Our first two goals were set up and scored by the two Brazilians that Oniki has been so reluctant to play recently, each of them providing one and scoring one. Ienaga, perhaps due to Damiao being back in the team got a dose of overhead fever and out Damiao-ed Damiao, who actually later tried to set himself up for one, but couldn’t find enough space. And Wakizaka got one too which he probably deserved after almost being the victim of a very public and unwanted on-pitch sterilisation. Some might think that us scoring five against Consadole and then four in this game could signal that we’re finding some form again. This analogy works best if you ignore the three awful games between those two results and also ignore the facts that we played pretty much 90 minutes of football with an extra player in this game and that we scored three goals in the last five minutes of the Consadole game. (Although it would probably be more accurate to say that Consadole gave us three goals in the last five minutes of the game). But who cares about performances when we’re getting results? Actually I do a bit, and I’m sure some others do too. Oh, and yeah, we aside from these two games we haven’t been getting results either. So way too early to start proclaiming a return to form probably. But nice to have a bit of fun for a change. And nice to see us continuing to attack for the whole 90 minutes instead of sitting on a slim lead. But as I’ve said already, it’s impossible to know how much of these differences are due to Terada or the absence of Oniki, or maybe Oniki just changing things up a bit. I’ve criticised Oniki a bit in the past and have come to feel a bit guilty about doing so in spite of my belief that the criticism is legitimate. It would be pretty immature if I put all of the good things in this match down to him not being present. I’m pretty sure he was still very much in control. So credit to him, credit to Terada for doing a great job and credit to the players for playing a bit better and making the experience a lot more enjoyable than it has been recently. Oh! And Nobori and Chinen back on the bench and recovered from their injuries. If Jesiel comes back too soon we could have an embarrassment of riches to choose from. Fingers crossed we don’t try to just squeeze the eleven best players in the squad into that same old formation we always use, totally ignoring where people actually play.
Next up, Nagoya away at the weekend. I haven’t been to this fixture for a few seasons. I think the last time it was possible for away fans to attend I was in the UK so I’m looking forward to getting reacquainted with the bars in Nagoya. Sadly the game is in Toyota though, so my reacquaintance with Nagoya’s bars will be after a lengthy train ride back into Nagoya after the match. Hopefully some places will still be open. Nagoya aren’t doing much this year. Their previous defensive solidity seems to have been smashed to bits with the arrival of Hasegawa. We’ve had some enjoyable away game Tamagawa Classicos with him in charge of FC Tokyo so it could be a fun match. But then again, 2022 is a season that does its best to surprise and disappoint, so it’s probably more likely that we’ll follow up a confidence boosting victory with a confidence obliterating defeat. Fingers crossed we don’t. And how lovely it would be if Sagan Tosu and Vissel Kobe could also both have nice victories on the same weekend. As much as I’d love seeing Vissel change their slogan to ‘The biggest club in J2’ for 2023, I’d quite like them to do us a favour too. Fingers, toes, arms and legs crossed.
Team
GK 1. Sung-Ryong JUNG DF 13. YAMANE Miki
DF 5. TANIGUCHI Shogo
DF 7. KURUMAYA Shintaro DF 15. SASAKI Asahi
MF 8. TACHIBANADA Kento
MF 14. WAKIZAKA Yasuto
MF 18. CHANATHIP
FW 41. IENAGA Akihiro (Yellow card 70')
FW 9. LEANDRO DAMIAO
FW 23. MARCINHO
Subs
GK 27. TANNO Kenta
DF 2. NOBORIZATO Kyohei (on for YAMANE 78')
MF 3. TSUKAGAWA Koki (on for WAKIZAKA 83')
FW 11. KOBAYASHI Yu (on for LEANDRO DAMIAO 78')
MF 19. TONO Daiya (on for CHANATHIP 66')
FW 20. CHINEN Kei (on for MARCINHO 66')
DF 31. YAMAMURA Kazuya
My Frontale Man Of The Match
I’m a bit out of practice with these. My first thoughts were Damiao and Marcinho, but then Ienaga’s overhead kick… and lots of other people did well. And Tsukagawa came on! But all of this was against ten men, so let’s leave it for another week. I promise I’ll concentrate harder next time.
I’m fine! I’m totally fine! After last week’s disaster, we had a whole week off until the latest disaster that was this game. In that time I decided to stop worrying and getting upset so much about the state of our season and instead just get on with having as much fun as I could at the games we go to. And it’s a bit of luck really! If I were still getting angry I think I might have picked up quite a few new grey hairs and a rise in my blood pressure from us losing again, throwing away a lead again, conceding late again and starting the game with some players playing well out of position again. As the ever entertaining Kawasaki Frontale FR said on Twitter when the team announcement was made, ‘Why change an un-winning team?’. (My translation, other possibly more accurate ones available). It was a very amusing point that I quite enjoyed, but the surprising thing was that Oniki did actually change something in spite of the starting members being the same. Oniki has finally worked out, (although, I should add that it’s the second time he has worked it out, having previously worked it out but then apparently having forgotten it), that Chanathip on the left doesn’t work. He swapped him and Tono around, so that although we had too left sided attackers on the bench, we instead started with Tono in that position. No such luck with Oniki attempting some kind of sneaky starting line up announcement mind games with the left back position though, as we once again decided against playing a left back there and instead went for a central midfielder. To be fair to Tachibanada, I thought he did alright in this game. He was targeted again, as it seems he will be by any team who come up against us when we’re playing someone so out of position. But I think we definitely lack something going forward with him there though. Especially if we have someone who is also out of position playing ahead of him. Therefore, It was no surprise that we didn’t have much luck going down that wing. To be honest though, we didn’t have much luck attacking in any way really. We scored from a set piece, which makes a nice change from relentlessly conceding from them, but as has been the case throughout the numerous shuffling of players whilst at the same time stubbornly refusing to change the approach or tactics, whoever plays up front doesn’t really have many opportunities to do anything. With most teams their players would probably be eager to start the game. But I would imagine that any attacker starting for us would instead beg to be put on the bench as they’d have more chance of scoring when coming on for the last five minutes when the usual tactics have been abandoned and it’s just a free for all. People say Oniki is experimenting but I feel that he’s just rearranging the deckchairs on the Titanic, pushing the same 15-20 players around in the same formation, with a few players locked into position, unmoveable and undroppable, meaning the rest of the selections have to be made with proverbially one hand tied behind our back. I guess all of Oniki’s dreams must have come true when we went a goal up as he probably thought it vindicated his slow, dull conservative approach. He probably didn’t feel the same way after the same slow, dull, conservative approach caused us to implode at the end of the game and turn a win into a loss. When Cerezo equalised about 15 minutes into the second half I think the best we could have hoped for would have been a draw as the constant lack of a plan B will never allow us to do anything unexpected. The constant failure of our plan A is probably something we need to address a bit sooner though. Don’t get me wrong, we did ok in the first half, having a few chances, (albeit off-target ones), which undeniably, (in my opinion), was due to not playing so many players quite so far out of position. Equally though, don’t get me wrong if you think I’m saying we didn’t deserve to lose. Four shots in the second half with only one on target… And two more goals conceded from set pieces. So add that to the ones against Jubilo and there’s five points dropped in the last two games, due to our inability to defend. I thought that maybe we were experimenting with zonal marking in recent games. Not sure exactly though. But I’d say that if we are, we might want to do a bit more practice of it or perhaps revert to what we used to do as unlike us, other teams use free kicks and corner to put the ball in the box instead of as an opportunity to add a few short passes to the pass count and get the pass completion rate up. And it does seem that trying to score is a better way of getting points and keeping up with the leaders than competing short passes. But hell, what do I know, eh?
Let’s have a bit of a moan about Cerezo though. They are a very unlikeable bunch spending most of the game either rolling on the pitch or surrounding the ref. The ref was Araki, which recently has meant we are due for a disaster, but perhaps due to my new relaxed demeanour, I didn’t have too much to moan about with him. He even resisted the temptation to give Cerezo a penalty on a VAR review which I could really have seen being awarded, but was delighted it wasn’t, particularly given that the Cerezo fans thought it was a certainty when they showed the VAR replay on the screen. (Nothing like a bit of Schadenfreude when you don’t have anything positive to get excited about when it comes to your own team, eh?). Cerezo though… but anyway, I’ll remain calm. I thought both of their goals could have been given offside as there certainly seemed to be players in offside positions in areas I’d say looked like they were interfering with play, but honestly, whatever. Good luck to them. We are finally getting the results our awful play deserves, so I’m not going to moan too much. I don’t like Cerezo as a team as they historically seemed to be able to outwit us (this year that’s a given, whoever we are playing) and they seem quite a negative bunch. But they did have that beer truck outside the stadium and that made up for quite a lot. Even us not being able to get into the pub we had lined up before the game due to the guy not turning up to open it on time was turned into a positive when it turned out I could drink cheap pints of Passific Brewing’s Sooy outside the stadium.
Maybe this is why I’ve come away from the game in such a reasonable mood. Obviously, I don’t want us to lose, but somehow when you’re just about squeaking results after terrible performances and everyone in the world is telling you you’re doing great, it does start to feel a little bit confusing and a lot undeserved. Now I approach every game thinking we’ll probably lose, barring any major overhaul of our utterly out of date and not working for over a year now tactics. So when we lose, it’s just like life is progressing in the way you’d expect and there is nothing to get angry about or over excited about. Of course, if we play a rival who I particularly don’t like and get a totally undeserved win, then that’s all the better and definitely worth getting excited about! So don’t expect to see me self-flagellating if we scrape a sneaky win in an important game. But to be honest, we don’t have any important games left now. I said a while ago that the league title is gone and I think this result has emphasised that. We have a Levain Cup double header against Cerezo coming up in about a month which is our only realistic chance of winning anything this year. In 2019 we just about squeaked to the title in that game and it put a tiny bit of undeserved shine on what was otherwise an awful season. I don’t want us to lose, but I don’t particularly think it would be helpful for any kind of success in what is everyone’s least favourite competition to take any attention away from our utterly awful 2022 season so far. We’ve lost five games out of 19 so far this year. In our terrible 2019 season we only lost six all year. I saw a Frontale fan on Twitter say that you’re not a real fan if you say we need to sign a new goalkeeper or striker, or if you say Oniki should be sacked, or if you say we’re going to J2, or if you say we should cancel the fan event and do extra practice. I think this is utterly wrong, but at the same time I kind of agree with some of the sentiments. I don’t think we need to sign any players we just need some new ideas. I don’t think we should sack Oniki, but I wouldn’t mind if he resigned. I do think he’s out of ideas and really struggling, as you can see in this DAZN screen grab, just after they scored their winner.
(By the way, his reaction to their goal was to bring on Yamamura. I’d like to tell you where he played, but I’m not sure we really did anything after he came on. Way too late basically). I don’t think we’re going to J2. I stand by my prediction that our final game of the season against FC Tokyo will be a battle for 7th position in the league. And I don’t think we should cancel the fan event. What’s the point of extra practice when there aren’t any new ideas? And a fan event in such an awful season could have quite an intriguingly awkward atmosphere that would make it a very interesting experience. I’ll finish by saying, as I’ve said many times before, and with the usual caveat that I know nothing technical about football, that the players aren’t the problem, the lack of ideas is. We started with a central midfielder at left back with a left back on the bench (Sasaki’s morale presumably has taken another massive knock in this game though as he gave away the free kick that they scored from. I think Oniki could definitely be doing a better job of protecting the younger players. I’m sure Sasaki didn’t feel great after he got dropped after his own goal against Kyoto then got replaced by a central midfielder. This game won’t have helped, but we’ve been relying on him too much this year anyway. Admittedly Nobori has been injured for a long time after picking up something early on in the season. The big problem though is that our other main left back is playing in central defence… because our number one central defender has been injured for almost a year now… and we all knew he’d take a long time to come back… but no-one thought to sign any cover. We do have other central defenders but it seems that there’s more chance of Oniki changing our approach than there is of him playing one of them ahead of a central midfielder or a left back in there instead. Very long bracketed section there. Sorry). We started with a right midfielder playing on the left with two left midfielders on the bench. Not sure in what situation both of them could be used. Oh! Actually I am, because of course Oniki did it, giving Marcinho a brief go on the left before bringing on Miyagi and moving Marcinho out of position to the right. Well I suppose if plenty of others are going to be playing out of position, why not move our recent best attacking threat (who incidentally hasn’t started any of our last four games…) and play him out of position too. Our starting line ups seem to be a mess, with our initial subs being used to correct the mistakes made in the starting line up. And then the other subs are just used to not much effect, just replacing like for like, or more likely replacing like for ‘kind-of-like-but-not-really-someone-who-plays-there-but-who-knows-maybe-something-will-work-out’. All good fun!
Next up Frontale 0-0 Sagan Tosu on Wednesday. This is a joke I have done on Twitter already so apologies for the repetition, but as I said there, I’m not sure we have it in us to bring home even our most predictable of all annual results this year. (This part is now out of date as the game has been postponed due to a COVID cluster at Sagan Tosu… WHICH MEANS WE WON’T LOSE!!! REJOICE!!!). No matter how bad things go this year, I can’t see Oniki being under any pressure from the club. I do hope he’s putting himself under some pressure though. As far as I can tell, he needs a clean sweep of his tactics. Just bin all of them and start again. Play players in the right position. Try to attack a bit more and a lot more quickly instead of trying to slowly pass the ball all the way to the goal line. Maybe occasionally try a cross instead of always dribbling the ball into the box and attempting to transmute and pass through a wall of defenders. We’ve definitely got good enough players. I don’t think we’ve had good enough leadership though. But I’m not getting upset and overexcited anymore. I do however totally defend other people’s right to do so. I don’t think it’s a particularly good look for anyone to lay down what ‘real fans’ do though. Everybody has different circumstances and wants different things from their fandom. For some it is just to see their favourite player running around on the pitch and take lots of photos of them and wave at them after the final whistle. I think blindly accepting the way things are done is dangerous though. If we don’t question authority, authority can do what it wants. I know that Oniki has nothing to gain from us absolutely shitting the bed this year. In fact he probably has a lot to lose when it comes to his reputation and future job prospects. Frontale fans are generally a nice and tolerant bunch I think. But it’s wrong that just because Oniki has done well in the past we shouldn’t be able to suggest he’s not doing at all well right now. So, yeah, everyone’s entitled to their own opinion. I’ll probably disagree with lots of them, but now I’m so calm that it’s all just like waves on a beach, washing over me as we concede another goal from a set piece. Least I get to the pub early as it means we can bolt out of the stadium immediately after the final whistle! Go Fron... actually GO DRINKING! (if you want).
Team
GK 1. Sung-Ryong JUNG DF 13. YAMANE Miki
DF 5. TANIGUCHI Shogo
DF 7. KURUMAYA Shintaro
DF 8. TACHIBANADA Kento
MF 10. OSHIMA Ryota
MF 14. WAKIZAKA Yasuto
MF 18. CHANATHIP
FW 41. IENAGA Akihiro
FW 11. KOBAYASHI Yu
FW 19. TONO Daiya
Subs
GK 27. TANNO Kenta
MF 3. TSUKAGAWA Koki
FW 9. LEANDRO DAMIAO (on for KOBAYASHI 79')
DF 15. SASAKI Asahi (Yellow card 90+1') (on for TONO 67')
FW 23. MARCINHO (on for WAKIZAKA 67')
FW 24. MIYAGI Ten (on for CHANATHIP 79')
DF 31. YAMAMURA Kazuya (on for TACHIBANADA 90+5')
My Frontale Man Of The Match
I’m not going to do these till we’re not so rotten
Oh jeez I don’t know anymore. I’m getting a bit sick of being so negative but I am also quite sick of watching us recently. After a semi-meltdown on Twitter after this game, I woke up the following morning with a Twitter hangover, feeling quite sick when I thought of either our game or having tweet battles with strangers who probably became J League experts from watching YouTube highlights videos and reading the official J League EN Twitter account. Opinions are like arseholes it is said. Either we all have one, or the internet is full of them. Actually both are true and I’m a bit fed up with contributing to the online arsehole count. Not saying I don’t want to hear anyone’s opinion. I have been in contact with some people whose opinion I respect and found those interactions a lot more rewarding that the usual ‘he’s shit’ vs ‘no, you’re shit’ level of debate that I regrettably fell into last night. With that in mind, I think I’ll stop ranting so much on these blog posts. Either you already agree with me and therefore my moaning is pointless, or you probably disagree with me and my perspective won’t change your mind, so… my moaning is pointless. I am also aware that Oniki is actually a human being too. I don’t think I’ve ever got so rude that I have ignored this fact, but clearly there are a lot of people who know what is going on a lot more than I do who think that he’s doing a reasonable job. So, I’ll tone it down a bit, and in what will be a big break from tradition on this blog, I might stick more to the facts. I preferred it when I could avoid facts and just make jokes but there’s not much to laugh about recently. And with news coming out today that there was someone who is apparently not Japanese behind the goal who was drunk and shouting and singing whilst maskless, I think there’s not much off the field to have a laugh about either. So basically you might want to skip the next few blog posts or the next however many posts it takes till we get out of this slump. In my opinion it might be quite a while, but there are other opinions available, and those opinions are held by a lot more people than mine is. So, coming up, a few comments on the game, a Frontale Rabbit first table and then we’ll be done.
So some comments. Oniki again went with Tachibanada at left back and Chanathip on the left. I don’t think that has worked in the past and I don’t think it worked again. But others disagree. Bringing on Tsukagawa at left back seemed another way for Oniki to indirectly give him a boot in the nuts and of course people are blaming him for us conceding, given that he gave away the corner they scored from. It definitely wasn’t his fault from the corner kick though and it looked like we might have got undone by what I think looks like our zonal marking but I’m not an expert. Seems to have happened a few times recently though. I should also say that I don’t think we can be upset when a midfielder doesn’t play well at left back. Oniki’s subs meant a reorganisation, with us changing to what I thought was a more likely to succeed shape with Chanathip in the middle. I’m not sure why we couldn’t have gone with him there and Tono on the left from the start. Not sure I would have played Oshima in the anchor role either, but then Tachibanada was being used elsewhere so maybe our left back selection caused lots of other players to be moved around all over the pitch. Ho hum. We are still employing the usual recent slowly slowly slowly build ups with thousands of passes before we even leave our half and then attacks petering out before they get to the opposition’s box. It’s noticeable that our goal came from a more direct pass. Given that we didn’t do that much I guess it was not a tactic but maybe came from someone veering off the script. After we scored, we looked like we were happy enough to sit on the 1-0 lead. Of course that makes some sense, but it hasn’t worked that well in recent times has it? By the end of the match Jubilo looked far more like they wanted to win the game. We were still persevering with the slow build up. Maybe we’ll finally manage to score a second when we manage to put the perfect selection of passes together some time early next week. It was a far from engaging game. In the first half I found my eyes being drawn much more to the Rubik’s cube that the little girl in the row in front of me was doing rather than anything that was happening on the pitch. And here a wonderful comparison sails into view, as she would complete one colour, proudly show her dad and then try to complete a different colour messing up the first complete side in the process. Likewise on the pitch, we had some nice triangles passing around the back, but when it came to combining those triangles with anything else meaningful it all fell apart. Anyway, here’s a table for you:
I dunno, we don’t do very well against teams near the bottom, do we?
Obviously the fact that it’s the bottom seven teams should show you that
I chose that cut off to best prove my somewhat random point. We always
struggle against teams who sit back and who were are ‘supposed’ to beat
easily. But this year this seems to be happening more than ever. And
don’t forget that the Gamba and Jubilo draws and the Vissel win were
really last minute jobs without which we would be in a lot more trouble.
Next
up Cerezo Osaka away on Saturday. Non-reserved visitor seating
returning means that we’ll be back to the old horrific lengthy two-stage
queueing process. We never do that well against Cerezo so maybe they
are the kind of opponent we need to shake us up a bit. But most likely
it will be another dull draw or a defeat. At least we have a nice day
out planned on Sunday so I have something to look forward to!
Another game, another truly awful performance. Some are saying this was a shock, but if that’s the case I’d say it was one of the most predictable shocks you could imagine. I certainly thought we were going to lose and Oniki still being in charge of the team increased that likelihood massively. There were a few giant killings in this round of the cup but I don’t think you can all this a giant killing. It’s more like something that would take place in a Swiss clinic, and we’re hardly giants this year. So perhaps more like a slightly taller than average man self-euthanisation. To be honest, whoever Oniki started with I think we would have struggled given his apparent complete lack of tactical inventiveness and dearth of inspirational qualities. He’s running us into the ground. At least we know that whoever takes over when he leaves at the end of the season won’t have an ACL campaign to trouble them and instead will be able to use the Levain group games to work on some things. Maybe that’s why Oniki has been struggling recently. He’s a victim of his own success! Constantly qualifying for the ACL has meant that he only has Emperor’s Cup games available to tinker with things. Oh… but he pretty much usually plays a full strength team in those games too… On this occasion he rotated slightly but I don’t think that was necessarily completely to do with giving people a chance. More to do with his sincere belief that the best rotation involves the same limited group of players with at least two out of position and no changes in tactics. We’re on a horrible run. The only teams we seem to be able to beat are ones who are students or have a pathological desire to self harm. I really feel for Seko and Matsui who messed up for the goal, but Matsui was playing out of position in one of his first games for us. Seko has shown some kind of sensitivity over his position in the squad and his performances but I hope he’s not being too hard on himself. Idiots online going for them certainly isn’t going to help matters. Especially when it seems that Oniki is not going to be held to the same standards. A tweet by a well followed Japanese language Frontale blog stated that the defeat was making them keener than ever to get back to the stadium on Saturday and get back to winning ways. Personally, it has had the absolute opposite effect on me. I don’t particularly want to go, (but I will), and I think we’ll almost certainly lose. We had a change in personnel for this game but no change in approach. It was still horribly ponderous and utterly predictable. I think it took us 32 minutes to have our first shot. Players seem scared to shoot or take chances and this can only come from pressure from above. Sasaki looked like a shell of his former self, perhaps noticing that he was dropped in favour of a midfielder playing way out of position for what was probably the preferred first choice line up against Consadole last week (don’t forget how useless we were in that game!). With that in mind, you’ve got to think that Damiao is now also not a first choice. So we had players starting who really had nothing much to gain and everything to lose. But the players haven’t all turned into bad players in the course of a month or two. It has to be the tactics. It’s all safe, safe, safe… oh we’ve conceded, better carry on doing the same thing… oh we’ve lost. Loads of possession playing triangles of passes around the back. A midfielder at right back, a midfielder in central defence, a left back in central defence, a left winger playing on the right. All wonderful stuff isn’t it? I guess Oniki thinks he eventually come up with the dream combination of players out of position to make his dull tactics work. I don’t have the same confidence. And if he does finally solve the problem, it will no doubt be too late by then. I think it probably already is too late actually. Verdy defended solidly in numbers and then hit us on the counter attack. The same thing that every team Oniki has struggled against has done. Every team for the last three or four years. But still he hasn’t even hinted that he’s noticed it happening, let alone found a solution. Instead, it’s those triangles and lots of lovely possession and none of those horrible goals scored.
I appreciate that I’m in the minority when it comes to these kind of things. Plenty of people have confidence in him and think he can turn things round. I don’t particularly want him to be fired. Ideally, I’d like him to come to his senses and come up with some kind of route to us regaining some kind of form. If he doesn’t do that, and I don’t think he can, I think he should have a look at what might be the real reason for our slump, recognise that it’s pretty much down to him and that he has no solution and then do the honorable thing and resign. I don’t think the fact that we have no-one ready to take over is a problem. I think that he has come up with nothing original to get us out of the slump is a far bigger problem than getting someone in urgently to shake things up a bit. Terada could probably do a better job right now. I base this on nothing other than there’s not much chance of anyone doing a worse job than Oniki at the moment. Our squad is monstrously unbalanced and as he’s been in charge for years during which time that unbalance has worsened he has to be blamed for that. Perhaps it’s unbalanced because Oniki has a belief that midfielders can play anywhere. Recent performances suggest that this might not be true. I don’t know why our once pin point destructive strike attack has been turned into a foam hammer. Yes, I know we have lost some good players, but we still have about three quarters of the same starting members that we had last year. Definitely lots of people are out of form and as I always say, this does happen sometimes, but when it happens to so many players at the same time, you’ve got to think that there might be some other reason for it to be happening.
Next up Jubilo at home on Saturday. Remember that away game, where we were utterly shite and struggled to make any decent chances till we had conceded and then just about managed to fluke a goal and a draw? They knew how to play against us on that occasion and you’ve got to imagine that they will know how to do it again. Oniki is being tactually outthought by pretty much everyone he comes up against at the moment. And then occasionally gets a result to slightly ease the pressure on him, even if that result when examined looks very, very lucky and highly undeserved. He’s always been a lucky manager but now it seems that the luck when it comes to the team has run out and it’s only working when it comes to saving his own skin. We looked awful at the start of the season but compared to how we’re playing now, we can look back on those games with some kind of beautiful nostalgic joy. Sure we were shite then, but now we’re really shite. On Saturday we’ll probably go with the same system and tactics, Tachibanada at left back again, will not do much, then concede from a fast break from a Jubilo attack who will have been sitting back in numbers. Then Oniki will make lots of subs, nothing will change and we’ll concede again late on in the game for another utterly frustrating defeat. Oniki will say he takes responsibility for the defeat, but stop short of actually taking any responsibility, another midfielder will start getting trained up to play in goal or at centre back and we’ll move on to our next defeat in Osaka next weekend. At the end of the season, we’ll call it a transition season and use that to explain why we’ve finished seventh. Oniki will have tarnished his reputation so much that he won’t have any job offers so will sign a new contract for a fresh period of demolition of our team, reputation and my sanity. Blimey, this has all turned a bit bleak. But I suppose that’s not a great surprise, is it? At least by the time I arrive at the game on Saturday, I should be have consumed quite a lot of drinks on the way as I have an event to go to first. Therefore, the crushing disappointment will be dulled slightly. Cheers!
Kawasaki Frontale 5 - 2 Hokkaido Consadole Sapporo
Football is back! J League is back! Busy work schedule is back!! With three games in eight days and a lot more classes than usual, something has to give, and that something is the length of these blog posts. Some might welcome the brevity though I guess. Not sure how I would approach this post if I was going the usual flabby way though, as this game was a real mess of contradictions. So I’ll keep it brief and be done with it. We scored five for the second time in a row! But once again it was mainly due to the opposition’s shortcomings rather than anything from us. We won in spite of Oniki not thanks to him. The long international break gave him plenty of time to think about our last two awful league defeats. And what did he come up with? Playing a midfielder way out of position at left back and put Chanathip back in the position in which he was totally ineffective in at the start of the season. The line up looked like we might be going with three at the back, but of course, super conservative Oniki wouldn’t actually try something new, would he? It’s telling that every dangerous Consadole attack and both of their goals came from moves down our left. It’s almost as if we were trying to give ourselves a handicap. And who knows what the tactics were supposed to be? But whatever they were, they resulted in some possession for us in our own penalty box and lots of lovely passing around the defence. Don’t be under any illusions. If we hadn’t been playing a team who are also a bit of a shambles at the moment, we would have lost. All three of the goals that won us the game came gift wrapped from Hokkaido defenders with a card expressing their desire for Oniki not to resign or get fired. Of course, some credit should go to the players who nicked the ball after some sloppiness at the back from Consadole. It should also be noted that most of those players didn’t start the game. Marcinho, the only player who has looked even slightly threatening for us recently got dropped to the bench. If Chinen hadn’t got injured we probably wouldn’t have seen Kobayashi till the 85th minute. At the start of the second half, Tono played better than Chanathip on the left, which is something anyone who had seen any of our games this year would have known but is something that has eluded Oniki’s attention. Perhaps he felt he needed to try something new to get us out of our dodgy run, but the fact is that all he did was play some different players out of position which caused us problems and created nothing for us. Nice work Oniki! At half time with us just about hanging on against a team who most managers love playing because their tactics are so wild and often insane, we were facing the reality that once again Oniki had been tactically outwitted. We shouldn’t have been surprised though as Oniki has only one set of tactics and all he does is try random combinations of players in the same shape with the same instructions to pass it backwards at every opportunity. Oniki is like a chef who tries to include all of his favourite ingredients into his dinner regardless of the outcome and serves up a steak with ice cream and natto, with a refreshing orange juice and mint drink on the side. Although I suppose at least those combinations might be unpredictable and slightly interesting in their originality whereas we’re just left with the same results from every apparently random option. If we’d lost, I don’t think we would have sacked Oniki and I don’t think he would have resigned. But with every passing week he further tarnishes his reputation and him getting another job offer becomes increasingly unlikely. I guess though that the JFL in its support for Moriyasu has form for doing absolutely stupid things so maybe he’ll still be able to get the national team job. Fingers crossed. If they could give it to him sooner rather than later that would be lovely thanks. The title is gone. We’re only one point behind but there’s no way this mess will consistently get results and there’s no way both YFM and Kashima will mess up enough to let us get past them.
This all seems a bit contrary considering we won 5-2, but if you’d watched the whole game I think you’d understand what I’m saying. Yeah, the goals were nice, but don’t kid yourself to say that we made them and weren’t gifted them. And don’t forget the fact that three weeks of contemplation and some important players finally coming back from injury and available brought Oniki to this starting line up and tactics. With Kazama in charge we were exciting. With Oniki in charge we become duller with every passing week. I’m not a tactician so I can’t tell you why we’re so boring but I am in the stadium watching the tedium so I can vouch for its intensity. We were so bad in this match that it even took the spotlight off Kasahara, a ref who is consistently awful, but who looked like a paragon of officiating in comparison with our tactical competence. I can’t remember a single time this year where we’ve played well and been unlucky. Actually some might say I could have stopped that previous sentence at ‘well’. I can remember countless times when we’ve played awfully and got very lucky. And a few times where we played terribly and got what we deserved. I can’t see it changing either, if even on the back of our worst run for years this is all he can come up with. And given that we fluked another win, (ignoring the fact that Oniki’s original plan for the game was so disastrously wrong but somehow a win was presented to him), he’ll probably take it as some kind of ringing endorsement of his master plan. People will probably find this post intensely annoying. Our biggest win of the season and perhaps my biggest moan. I know. But this performance was utterly shite for the most part. Some nice goals though, eh? That should help kick the can down the road for another week or so until the next time we fail to get extremely lucky. Maybe Wednesday? If not, next Saturday.
Team
GK 1. Sung-Ryong JUNG DF 13. YAMANE Miki
DF 5. TANIGUCHI Shogo
DF 7. KURUMAYA Shintaro
DF 8. TACHIBANADA Kento
MF 10. OSHIMA Ryota
MF 14. WAKIZAKA Yasuto
MF 19. TONO Daiya
FW 41. IENAGA Akihiro
FW 20. CHINEN Kei
FW 18. CHANATHIP
Subs
GK 27. TANNO Kenta
MF 6. JOAO SCHMIDT (on for WAKIZAKA 82')
FW 9. LEANDRO DAMIAO (on for TONO 82')
FW 11. KOBAYASHI Yu (on for CHINEN 58')
DF 15. SASAKI Asahi
FW 23. MARCINHO (on for CHANATHIP 74')
DF 31. YAMAMURA Kazuya
My Frontale Man Of The Match
I feel like this probably should go to one person, but given that another proved his point well I’m going to predictably split it two ways…
IENAGA Akihiro and KOBAYASHI Yu - Ienaga was really enjoyable in this game doing his usual swat the opposition away thing. He'd obviously really benefited from a bit of a rest. And Kobayashi, who has tried his best to take advantage of his limited opportunities, mainly on the wing, showed that if he’s given a bit of time in the middle he’ll score. Which we probably all knew, but Oniki apparently didn’t.
I’m sure avid readers of this blog if there are any will have been excitedly waiting to see quite how I could get all moany about this game. Given our form leading into the game, it had potential banana skin written all over it. We’ve been awful recently and we have a habit of toiling against lower league opposition in the Emperor’s Cup. What a surprise it was then when we took the lead early on and didn’t look back. The fact that it was so comfortable probably says something about quite how out of the ordinary this season is compared to recent years. The first couple of minutes of the match made it look like we might be in for a tough evening as Sapporo came racing out of the traps and it was a bit end to end. But that turned out to be the extent of their powers and after we’d taken the lead they faded and it became a real mismatch. It’s quite difficult to write anything meaningful about this game as it was so one-sided. Because of this, I’ll just go with some comments on a few players and that’ll do. I thought I’d have to describe the goals as the JFA are notoriously slow to put up the Emperor’s Cup highlights, but I’m shocked to see they’ve done it already. So that’s saved me some work.
Matsui started at right back and did really well I thought. He looked very comfortable on the ball and I noticed him a lot more than I did when he was playing on the left (I think) in the ACL. Whether Oniki thinks he’s a good stand in for Yamane who as I’ve said plenty of times needs a rest, I’m not sure, but I think he could definitely do a job. Seko and Kozuka did well in the midfield. I’m happy to see them both in a bit more of an attacking role as previously both of them have had to play the anchor role. Seko’s goal was lovely and shows what we miss if he plays further back. Kozuka’s finish was nice too, but the best thing about the goal was that it indirectly came from a great cross from Yamamura who was charging down the right wing, even though he was playing at centre back. I’m slightly surprised that Oniki didn’t give Chinen 45 minutes in the middle and then give Kobayashi 45 minutes in the middle in the second half. In fact, Kobayashi didn’t even make it onto the pitch. Also surprising was that Oniki has finally trusted Tanno to play a game. Think he had one save to make so it wasn’t that different from standing around on the touchline but I’m pleased he could get a start. Tono in the Ienaga position was good to see too. He’s done well in midfield but again I can’t really understand why he hasn’t played more in a position that he is more suited for. Einaga was probably the story of the evening, coming on for Marcinho at half time and looking very bright on both the left and the right. It was great to see him get a goal. But it was even greater to see him so at ease on the ball and willing to take people on. He was on my list of potential towel purchases but I think that this performance has made that potential selection a lot less left field than I normally like to make so maybe it won’t be him that I go for. He looks very exciting though. And a quick word for Tanabe, who has been quite forgotten it seems. He came on to replace Sasaki for about a third of the match. I thought he did pretty well but I’m not sure if Oniki will bring him in to give Sasaki a rest, given that everyone is getting a rest at the moment. We’ll see though.
So that will do really. Apart from a quick mention that as usual the JFA’s desire to take over every aspect of the matchday experience in the Emperor’s Cup as usual makes the whole thing feel weird and significantly less slick. And of course you want me to say the music is awful. It was but the transition from acoustic guitar flamenco picking to a Top Gear approved cock-rock guitar solo in a matter of seconds in the same signature Emperor’s Cup theme song was this year’s lowlight. At least it gave me something to write about, I suppose. Next up, a two week break! And then we’ll play another Sapporo team at home but this time it will be Consadole in the league. Hopefully the break will do us some good and this win will give us some kind of probably not wholly deserved morale boost. Fingers crossed. Now, a chance for me to catch up with all of the stuff that I’ve ben neglecting in order to write these blog posts and travel to all these away games. Phew!
Team
GK 27. TANNO Kenta DF 25. MATSUI Renji
DF 7. KURUMAYA Shintaro
DF 31. YAMAMURA Kazuya
DF 15. SASAKI Asahi
MF 6. JOAO SCHMIDT
MF 17. KOZUKA Kazuki
MF 16. SEKO Tatsuki
FW 19. TONO Daiya
FW 20. CHINEN Kei
FW 23. MARCINHO
Subs
GK 21. ANDO Shunsuke
MF 8. TACHIBANADA Kento
FW 11. KOBAYASHI Yu
MF 14. WAKIZAKA Yasuto
FW 26. EINAGA Takatora (on for MARCINHO 46')
DF 30. TANABE Shuto (on for SASAKI 75')
FW 41. IENAGA Akihiro (on for TONO 85')
My Frontale Man Of The Match
I probably could on this occasion but it was such a mismatch that it doesn't feel right.
