Mid-Term Report: Part 2

In Part 1 of this FC Tokyo mid-season report I gave you all the stats on our first half records at home, away and against teams who finished in the top and bottom halves of the table at the end of Matchday 17 (remembering that Kawasaki and Shimizu were replaced in the top half by Tosu and Yokohama in MD 18). Hopefully that didn't bore you too much.

So here in Part 2 we'll look at: our debut A.C.L. campaign and the effect it had on our league results (and you'll be surprised); crowd numbers in our first season back in the top flight; our outrageous injury list; the arrival of loan signing Edmilson; losing players to the Olympics; Mr. Popovic's impact in his first six months at the club; and expectations for the second half of the season. Some in more detail than others. Lets get going then...

• The A.C.L.

All things considered, our first foray in Asia's premier club competition should be considered a success. A rip-roaring start in the win over Brisbane and professional performances throughout saw us reach the last group stage game unbeaten and safely through to the knockout round, but a failure to take chances in that final group game away to Ulsan, and then again away to Guangzhou in the one-off Round of 16 clash saw our Asian adventure end.

We were never going to win the competition, but we acquitted ourselves extremely well, impressed most observers and formed a bond with Brisbane that will hopefully endure regardless of if we meet them again in the coming years or not.

One thing I was worried about before the season started was how our league performances would suffer from A.C.L. play, but surprisingly, and Mr. Popovic deserves credit here, we were excellent in J1 games right after midweek Asian encounters. And this despite the J.League doing us no favours at all when it came to the fixture list.

FC Tokyo in J1 after A.C.L. games - W: 5 D: 0 L: 2 / Home W: 1 / Away W: 4 L: 2
Five wins from the seven weekend-after-A.C.L. games is a superb return, and its made to look even more impressive by the fact SIX of them were played away from home! Thanks for nothing, J.League. Omiya, Kobe, Kawasaki and Niigata were all beaten away, and the epic win over Tosu followed the disappointing loss to Ulsan.

Of course most of the squad are used to playing midweek in the Nabisco Cup, but the away trips in the A.C.L. are always taxing, even short-haul jaunts to South Korea and China, the latter of which we did twice this year of course. I would've taken a split of these games, but to come away with 15 points from 21 available was excellent, and was accomplished without mass rotation, a testament to how well prepared Mr. Popovic has the team each time out.

• Crowds

Don't need to spend too much time here. After Matchday 17 we had the second-highest average home attendance in J1, 23,604, but though that sounds nice its well down from our 2010 average of 25,112 (we were over 25,000 our last four J1 seasons). There were some extenuating circumstances, mainly the weather for the first three home games, and we still have Kanto based Yokohama and Kawasaki to come at Aji Sta, but when you consider we've already hosted Urawa and Shimizu (always great travellers), that average is unlikely to rise much in the second half of the season.

• Massive Injury List

This has been a massive strain on the squad, and again Mr. Popovic has done well to maximise results considering both established performers (Ishikawa, Kajiyama, Hanyu, Yonemoto and Hirayama) and important offseason arrivals (Kaga, Ota and Kawano) have all spent extended periods in the treatment room. Add in role players like Otake and Nakamura and you can see how tough it has been for the manager.

Of course all of these absentees have given opportunities to some we thought might merely be squad players at the start of the year, as happened last season - Yonemoto's knee injury gave Hideto Takahashi a chance and he's been ever-present since. Here I'm referring to Aria and Mukuhara to name two, and all the injuries have kept Yazawa in the team (I remain to be convinced he's consistently good enough for J1), and as the big names gradually return - Ishikawa, Kaga and Yonemoto are currently fit - over the next month to six weeks the squad will naturally strengthen as we get set for the run-in.

• Edmilson

We've made a big splash in the summer transfer window with the arrival of Edmilson, the scorer of 109 J1 goals in spells with Niigata and Urawa, and after the preseason departure of The Salad we still have a foreign player spot open if the manager feels he needs to strengthen further. I think thats unlikely, but going after and getting Edmilson is a great statement of intent, and if we can get him fit he could easily reach his target of 10 goals in the final 16 games. Kazuma Watanabe will suffer the most in terms of playing time, as you'd expect Lucas will play in the hole behind Edmilson, at least until Casual returns.

A successful four months could see our new number nine sign permanently, and he would be a natural replacement for Lucas, who might be in his final season with us. Emphasis on the 'might' there because the old fella has certainly still got it, though not with the consistency he once had.

• Olympics

On the day the 18-man Olympic squad was announced we knew we were going to lose Shuichi Gonda and Yuhei Tokunaga for a few J1 games, and when Takuji Yonemoto was named as an alternate we assumed we'd be without him, too, especially after he travelled to the UK for warmup friendlies against Belarus and Mexico (and did well in substitute appearances). But Yone flew back right after the Mexico game and came off the bench for us at Sendai on Wednesday night, lessening the Olympic impact for the squad.

Gonda and Tokunaga are massive losses, having been ever-present in the league this season, and mean that us and Cerezo Osaka (who have lost their starting central midfield and returning-from-loan striker Kenyu Sugimoto) are the hardest hit clubs in J1. Hitoshi Shiota is a competent goalkeeper, and Kenta Mukuhara will cover for Tokunaga, but when you consider the top three and five of the top seven clubs after Matchday 17 have lost no players at all you see we are at a major disadvantage.

• Mr. Popovic's impact

I admit it: I was pessimistic. I didn't think he was the right man. I thought we should've gone after a 'bigger name.' But what have we gotten? An absolutely perfect fit for FC Tokyo. While I haven't agreed with all his team selections or in-game substitutions, Ranko Popovic has been a charismatic, intense, totally committed breath of fresh air and he deserves a massive amount of praise for where we sat at halfway.

He has embraced the club and its supporters, and from the one chat I've had with him at Kodaira I know he appreciates the warm reception the fans have given him from day one. His man-management is outstanding, as evidenced by the trust he's placed in Aria Hasegawa, and while we're not winning the league this season you can see he's laying the foundations for what will hopefully be a brighter Tokyo in the years ahead. More of the same, please, Popo-san.

• Expectations

Finally, and massive respect if you've read down all this way, to what to expect from FC Tokyo for the second half of the season. I've written in the paragraph above that we won't win the league, and I think all rational-thinking Gasmen supporters would agree. The first goal at the start of the year was simply to maintain our J1 status, but the manager and players have made that a near-certainty at halfway. So what are our targets for the final four months of the year?

A return to the A.C.L. would be brilliant, but that would mean finishing top three (or winning the Emperor's Cup again), and I don't think that is a realistic target when you consider how resilient both Sendai and Hiroshima have been, the quality of players Urawa have in important positions and the recoveries up the table by Nagoya and Kashiwa. Could we finish above one or two of those teams? Perhaps, if Edmilson hits the ground running and we get Casual, Ota and Kawano back by September, but three? No, I don't see it. If we can hold our midseason position and finish fifth, then that would be an outstanding result, and a realistic target as we re-establish ourselves in the top flight.

Up the Gas!

Mid-Term Report: Part 1

#We are now 18 games into the 2012 J1 Season, but this two post series is intended as a measuring stick for how FC Tokyo got on in the first half of the season only - up to and including the 3-2 home win over Gamba Osaka in Matchday 17.#

After 17 games we stood in 5th spot, so let me begin with a question: Is there anyone who wouldn't have taken that back in the first week of March? No. The answer is no. So manager Ranko Popovic and the playing group deserve enormous credit for spending all but three days of the first half of the season in the top half (we fell to 10th after not playing in Golden Week due to the A.C.L. but beat Niigata the next weekend to go back to 8th).

Part 1: Stat Attack

Factoring in the distractions we've had to deal with, most notably the Asian Champions League and our huge injury list, our league position is excellent in our return to J1, but we have perhaps been flattered by the inconsistency of the teams around and below us. Here are the stats that matter in four areas (again, to the end of Matchday 17, when Kawasaki and Shimizu were in the top half - they were replaced by Tosu and Yokohama in Matchday 18):

• Home: W: 4 D: 1 L: 4 GF: 13 GA: 12

Four wins is of course three more than we managed at Aji Sta in the whole of 2010 (we beat Shonan at Kokuritsu), and we started off with a bang in the pulsating 3-2 triumph over Nagoya, but expectations were tempered after three straight odd-goal home reverses, all of the deciding goals coming when we were caught out on the counter-attack. Since the last of those, the shocker against 9-man Shimizu, we've righted the ship winning three of four, the only loss coming to Kashiwa at Kokuritsu.

We've still had problems breaking down teams content to sit back and soak up pressure, and have been stung on the counter far too many times, but we don't have the home phobia we did right through 2010.

• Away: W: 5 D: 0 L: 3 GF: 8 GA: 8

There have been two diabolical results on the road - 4-0 at Sendai and 3-1 at Iwata - and our worst performance of the season - when we were dreadful in losing 1-0 to Yokohama - but otherwise we've been very professional away, and we kept clean sheets in all of our five away wins. This stat line looks great, but its skewed a little as four of these wins were against teams who finished the first half of the season in the bottom half. Against the top half... well, we haven't been so hot...

• Against other top-half teams: W: 2 D: 1 L: 5 (Home W: 1 D: 1 L: 3)

(Again, teams in the top half at the end of Matchday 17) We lost to four of the top seven, and five of the top half, taking points only in the wins over Nagoya and Kawasaki and the draw with Urawa, and the losses have been a mixed bag, from games we could feel hard done by after at least matching the opposition (Hiroshima, Shimizu and Kashiwa), to absolute stinkers (Sendai and Iwata), but the fact remains our results against other top half teams have scuppered any chance we had of making a realistic impact in the title race.

This is a hangover from the Jofuku era, and in particular our last successful J1 season, 2009, when we finished fifth but had a horrendous record against top six teams, earning just two points from a possible 30 (W: 0 D: 2 L: 8) against Kashima, Kawasaki, Gamba, Hiroshima and Urawa. Call it an inferiority complex, a lack of mettle, whatever, but this is the big challenge Mr. Popovic faces in the second half of 2012 - turning around further the culture of the club by improving our results against top half teams.

• Against bottom-half teams: W: 7 D: 0 L: 2 (Home W: 3 D: 0 L: 1)

(Teams in the bottom half at the end of Matchday 17) Importantly, we've beaten all of the teams in the bottom five spots at halfway, taking care of business in games we should win, something we didn't do and that contributed a massive amount to our 16th-placed finish and relegation in 2010, when we took only four points from six games (W: 0 D: 4 L: 2) against the teams that finished 14th through 17th (though we did beat 18th-and-bottom Shonan twice).

It hasn't always been convincing, especially against Omiya in the season-opener and at cellar dwellers Sapporo, but we've been mostly efficient when it matters, and have five home games left against bottom-half-at-halfway teams, so hopefully (touch wood) our good record against those clubs will continue.

In Summary (again at the end of Matchday 17!)

Going forward, our three 3-2 home wins aside, we've had trouble scoring, and have the second-lowest Goals For column in the top half, while our defence, usually such a strength but undoubtedly impacted by the departure of Yasuyuki Konno (and the injury to Kenichi Kaga), has been a mild disappointment, despite a couple of worldies from Shuichi Gonda. As a consequence we sat right in the middle of the top-half pack defensively, with the fifth best Goals Against record.

We need to do better against fellow top-half teams in the final four months of the season, and there is some cause for optimism there with Edmilson coming in on loan to bolster our front line (more on him in Part 2) and the return of several important members of our injured contingent in the next month-to-six-weeks. If results pick up in those games and we take care of business in the games we should win then a finish in our midway-point-position or better is achievable.

Up the Gas!

#Part 2 will be with you soon and will include musings on: the A.C.L. and its effects on league results; crowd numbers; our raft of injuries and personnel moves; the Olympics; 2nd half of season expectations and Mr. Popovic's overall impact on the club.#

Good & Bad... Again

With FC Tokyo unable to build any momentum in the league, this update from the last two games features good and bad...again.

FC Tokyo 3-2 Gamba Osaka

J1 Matchday 17

Doink!

Photo from Tokyo Chunichi Sports website

We reached the halfway mark of the season with a home game against Gamba Osaka, and the game saw Yasuyuki Konno return to Aji Sta for the first time since he lifted the Emperor's Cup and then bolted for Kansai. Konno was roundly booed by the home end when the Gamba players came out to warm up, when the lineups were announced, and every time he touched the ball, so the Tokyo Kop made their feelings well and truly known, but they really should've laughed, at both the situation Konno has found himself in, and also the Gamba defending throughout this game.

The first instance of comedy defending came in just the third minute, when Hokuto Nakamura, making his first start of the season at left back, made a determined run into the box on the left, got to the byline, saw his attempted cross deflected back into his path and then slotted through the 'keeper's legs for 1-0.

In the 17th minute Lucas made it 2-0 after a 30 yard shot swerved slightly in the air and went straight through the keeper, a sweet goal for the big man against his former club. Gamba got a lifeline after Shuichi Gonda charged off his line and upended Hiroyuki Abe, allowing Yasuhito Endo to score from the spot for 2-1, but Lucas had the last laugh of the first half and made it 3-1 at the break after he took down an excellent ball over the top from Sotan Tanabe and poked home despite the attentions of two defenders and the keeper trying to close him down.

We knew that probably wasn't going to be the last of the goals though, and in the 62nd minute Gamba got it back to 3-2 after a miscommunication between Masato Morishige and Gonda allowed Akihiro Sato to nip in between and poke home a cross from the Gamba left.

That meant we had half an hour to hang on, or try and kick on and extend our lead again, but it was pretty much all the former, as Gamba dominated possession for the last third of the game, and we went home relieved after a Sato airswing in the final seconds of second half stoppage time let us off the hook after Gonda had come to punch at a free kick. If Sato had made any contact and got the ball on target he almost certainly would've scored, but luckily for us he hit air rather than ball and the ref blew up after we had scrambled the ball away.

The result left us fifth at the halfway mark, a highly satisfactory result in our first season back in the top flight considering our many distractions (A.C.L., huge injury list etc.).

Tosu 1-0 FC Tokyo

J1 Matchday 18

Note: I did not see this game live.
Mr. Popovic was able to welcome back Naohiro Ishikawa to the matchday squad, and Nao took a spot on the bench, his first involvement since the home draw with Urawa at the end of May. He took Kentaro Shigematsu's spot in the squad after the young striker was loaned to J2 Kofu for the rest of the year.

The starting XI was the same as the Gamba game, which meant, pleasingly, that Tanabe continued in the hole behind Lucas, where hopefully he will establish himself before Casual returns from injury in a month or so. Tosu were of course looking for revenge from our 3-2 win at Aji Sta on the 20th of May, and they had lost just once at home in the first half of the year, a brilliant return in their first-ever J1 season.

The hosts looked well up for it in the first ten minutes, but then we were able to pen them back for most of the rest of the first half, with Tanabe prominent. He had a couple of near misses and wasn't shy to shoot, a really promising sign of his increasing confidence.

The closest we came to a goal all game was a delicate free kick from the edge of the Tosu box by Morishige in the 52nd minute, the ball floating over the wall and coming back off the post, then just bouncing above the head of the on-rushing Takuji Yonemoto, who was alert to the rebound.

The game was decided with just three minutes left, when Tosu won a free kick out on their right, the captain Fujita swung the ball in and Tozin, under great pressure from Morishige, made just enough contact on the ball from around the penalty spot and the ball crept in at Gonda's right-hand post.

There were a couple of late chances: Ishikawa, on for the last 20 minutes, drew a save from a fierce drive and then right at the death Morishige headed Nao's free kick high over the bar and that was it, another frustrating 1-0 loss as we slipped back to 7th.

Double Trouble...

Its finally time to get the last two games out of the way before Double Agent Konno and his Gamba Osaka comrades visit on Saturday night...

FC Tokyo 0-1 Kashiwa

J1 Matchday 9

Sums up both games, really

Photo from Tokyo Chunichi Sports Website

Last Wednesday night we finally made up our game in hand, when defending champions Kashiwa visited Kokuritsu. An outstanding midweek crowd of almost 26,000 turned up, but unfortunately the players weren't able to put on much of a show, as Reysol returned home with all three points.

Captain Yohei Kajiyama had joined our mounting injury list in the home win over Cerezo Osaka, so Takuji Yonemoto came into the team and Aria Hasegawa started in the hole behind Lucas, but otherwise the XI was the same, with young midfielder Shuto Kono replacing Casual in the squad.

The first twenty minutes were basically a complete reversal of the Super Cup played at the same venue in early March, as Kashiwa controlled proceedings and their strong pressing meant we couldn't get anything going. Steadily we came into the game though, and the next fifteen minutes saw us fashion some good chances for Tatsuya Yazawa, Kenta Mukuhara and then Aria (following some excellent work by Lucas).

It wasn't all us though, and a sublime ball over the top from Leandro Domingues sent Jorge Wagner clean through on Shuichi Gonda in the 37th minute, but luckily for us Wagner volleyed miles over when he had time to take the ball down and steady himself. In first half stoppage time Kashiwa struck a body blow when Wagner's free kick from the left was volleyed back across goal by Naoya Kondo, drawing a fine save from Gonda, but unfortunately straight into the path of Kondo's fellow defender Tatsuya Masushima, who fired the loose ball into the roof of the net.