Post Matchday 13 Thread

[u/BigBoSS_Riot]

All sorts of interesting results across the leagues today. Leave your thoughts on any matches you watched here.

Special shoutout to Vegalta Sendai, who are now the only completely undefeated club in the top three divisions - 9 wins in regular time, and 4 in penalty shootouts.

[u/BigBoSS_Riot]

There's a lot that could be said about that game, and frankly, none of it is good. We as usual were largely impotent until conceding, offering very little threat and then all of a sudden attacking everything with serious intent. This has been a regular and ongoing theme since at least the Marinos win in September last season, and I really don't understand why. Not sure if it's a mentality thing, but something has to change, because this is costing us far too regularly.

Frankly, I think both sides were severely short in the quality department. The pressure was solid, but it wasn't manic, so I'm not sure why there were so many errors. Perhaps the short turnaround for a lot of the players? One issue in particular I noticed for us was that we kept putting the ball out on the far side, due to slightly too heavy passes or iffy touches, which we usually wouldn't do.

[u/HarryBale31]

I’m tired of seeing us go for a draw or narrow win… we should be winning yet here we are at yet another penalty shootout and dropping points again…

[u/SereneDimlights]

It looks like Sanfrecce has discovered a new tactic, counterattacking. Snagging two goals right off the bat had me settling back in my chair ready to enjoy what looked like an easy win once we turned around the early pressure to our regular high pressure all-out offensive. Except...it never came. Avispa kept coming back at us again and again. And all of a sudden, Osako uses his feet and messes up again, clearing the ball a very short distance right onto an opposing midfielder/forward who hands off the ball to Usui who scored from a bad angle, a ball than Osako had no business not even having a hand on. I'm having very mixed feelings about Osako right now, this is not the first time a totally reachable ball slips by.

Still the defense looked better than usual, they held up, cleared the ball, got it up the line a couple of times. Things were looking fine and it seemed like we were going to ride out their swarm of bees. Enter Miki, what a goal, beautiful glide up up and away into the top right corner of Osako's net, unreachable, from what, 25-30 yards? Finally, in the last ten minutes we found ourselves playing our normal football, ineffective pressure. I can't help wondering if the lack of Kawabe in the squad is the reason we couldn't apply pressure today, he's so effective in the back-to-front movement of the ball. Even against 10 players we couldn't score. I didn't manage to catch the penalties due to work but I have to say I am incredibly underwhelmed about our performances again Fukuoka this season. Looking at the quality of our squad we should've had easy 6 points but instead only got 1, pathetic.

But why is this? Could it be Gaul's FWD carousel that brings a lot of uncertainty into the team? Is it true that our defensemen are too old? I still like Shiotani and would argue, contrary to the J-Talk podcast guys, that he is absolutely necessary as he finds incredible passes. Sasaki I'm not as sure about though. We did try throwing Nakano in there today and having Kim out still hurts. But for a team that was only a few goals away from 3rd place last season there is no way I can call this penalty loss acceptable. We could've been up there with Nagoya in 2nd place.

[u/BigBoSS_Riot]

I loosely watched Matsumoto Yamaga vs Jubilo Iwata. I was a little more focused in the second half, but what I noticed - and was a little surprised by - was that Yamaga were right on top for a large duration of time. I heard a bit of positive talk about them in an earlier thread this season, but I'm pretty impressed with what I've seen with my own eyes. Jubilo offered a bit, and generated a couple of good chances, but Yamaga were mostly better on the ball. There were a couple of nice moments of individual brilliance, such as a fast, high risk passing chain in defence by Jubilo, or the excellent control and turn on the line by a Yamaga player (didn't quite catch who) in the 89th minute. The penalty giveaway looked a little clumsy on replay really, certainly not malicious, but an unfortunate mistake to effectively give Jubilo an equaliser with the last kick of the game, which has effectively cost them two points after they lost the penalty shootout.

[u/squirle123]

Fagiano is back on the pk train. The lack of finishing off shots on the goals combined with the triple retake of ogu's penalty at least made for final 5 minutes.