It's a blog (in English mostly) all about football...in Japan with the J-League and Cerezo Osaka, in the English Premier League with Spurs and anywhere else the football takes us.
We did enough to win but couldn't quite get the winner. Pablo Felipe looked good, well good enough for J2 anyway, but managed to get himself sent off. No predictions for this season based on that performance although you'd hope we won't get relegated again and have only one manager this year. If our players enjoy playing under Paulo Autuori we have more than enough quality to put a run of games together and get back to J1. After the disaster of last season I'll only be truly happy if we return as champions...when the 2 stage format in J1 has been scrapped ideally. I can go back to enjoying football more this year in J2 anyway, Forlan should too if he keeps playing and scoring. Just over 12,000 came to Ajinomoto Stadium and I suspect we will manage to beat that figure this coming Sunday in Yanmar Stadium. I think they lookalike anyway (see the last two pictures).
Outside the stadium is surrounded by the colours of Verdy's ground sharing partners FC Tokyo
Very impressive numbers and as always loud and enthusiastic
This was sold out as I believe was last season's fixture at Ajinomoto Stadium. Last time we came away with three points, despite a goal from Hasegawa (now of Cerezo), Minamino and Kakitani scored in November last year. Sadly it was not to be today as our defence was easily breached. I feel Sakemoto will bear the brunt of Popovic's (who brought Hasegawa with him from FC Tokyo this year) wrath again after a poor defensive display. Both FC Tokyo goals came from his side of the defense as well another great chance to score sandwiched in between the two goals. We had chances but nothing is going consistently well for Kakitani or Forlan so far this season as they don't look like a strike partnership capable of rescuing us from our defensive frailties. Time will tell, there are glimpses of a footballing understanding between them interspersed with shrugs and complaints. If we can't defend we need to score more, pretty simple. We can't even use the excuse of being in the ACL as we have a pretty big squad compared to previous years with lots of opportunity for rotation of which we have seen very little. Two massive games coming up (with us in poor form) in China against Shandong Luneng to determine who will qualify from our ACL group followed by a trip to current league leaders Vissel Kobe for Kansai bragging rights.
