Slightly tarnished Cerezo 5-0 home win against the league leaders Kashiwa

I would have been happier if we got a result against 11 men over the whole game but we were 2-0 up before Kashiwa's No.10 Leandro Domingues got his marching orders after 28 minutes. Before that Inui cooly finished a fine through ball from Kiyotake. A mix-up between the keeper and defender then allowed Pimpao to grab our second. Inui was in good form today taking on players and even beating them! At this point the game was was well poised and looked like serving up some good entertainment. Until Leandro's sending off. He picked up his first booking for a deliberate handball, wasn't in a dangerous position and it's debatable whether it was deliberate. Anyway Martinez waved the annoying imaginary card at the ref who booked Leandro. A couple of minutes later during a Cerezo counter Leandro appeared to take Martinez (who rolled around a lot before getting up) out after he had released the ball. The ref made a good decision and allowed an advantage which Pimpao wanted to take by playing the ball to Inui. Inui instead of continuing a promising attack let the ball go out preferring to wave an imaginary card at the ref who turned around and showed Leandro his second yellow. Cue protests from the Kashiwa players. This signalled the end of the game as a contest. It was a bit hard to enjoy the rest of the game, we did our best to get the guy sent off basically, even though we were doing well enough anyway. This ref was actually really good with playing advantages but a couple of times players refused to take them. Play to the whistle! Also waving an imaginary card should be a yellow card offence, it's not really in the spirit of the game. So we knocked in another three in the second half. Martinez, Kurata and the ever excitable Bando with a great turn and finish were the goalscorers but it all left a slightly sour taste in my mouth after the sending off. The victory would've meant so much more 11 vs 11 for 90 minutes. Perhaps I should be happier, it was after all our long-awaited first home victory in front of 13741 fans in Nagai Stadium most if not all of whom left in better spirits than I did! 

Inui looking on ominously below the Kashiwa support. Felt sorry for them in the end, there was a lone trumpeter in there somewhere who kept their spirits up.

Is Maruhashi holding his head in shame here? Martinez about to get up after Leandro got sent off.

Officials, players, coaches and subs all try to stop Bando going nuts after scoring so the game could actually finish!

Final score with a sad looking blank space where Leandro's name would still have been on another day.