Taxi for Popovic

I had planned to write about our ultimately convincing 2-0 home win over Niigata on Saturday evening, secured through second half goals from Kosuke Ota (a superb free kick up and over the wall from inside the D), and Lucas (the big fella's 10th of the year). And I guess I just did. But I'd planned to write about it in more detail until the club made the announcement on Wednesday morning that Ranko Popovic would not be retained as manager for 2014.

I'll go on the record here and say I'd heard strong rumours on more than one occasion (three, to be exact) that Popo's job was in jeopardy. The first time was before the final game of last season, incidentally, just two days after I had visited Kodaira to interview him, with whispers that the club were lining up Kenta Hasegawa to take over. Of course we destroyed Sendai 6-2 at home on the first Saturday in December last year, making it impossible for the front office to not bring him back.

And there have been two seperate times this season when the word on the street was that his number would be up. Despite all those rumours, I felt that there was a strong chance he would stay on for a third season in charge, but that hope was quashed with yesterday's press release from the club, coming five games before the end of the J1 season - they clearly wanted to get in early and avoid the possibility of another job-saving 6-2 when we again play Sendai at home in the final game of this year!

I called for his head of course after the loss to Tosu at Kokuritsu in late August, and have written several times before on here that I've disagreed with some of the decisions he's made from time to time, so I can't claim I've always been fully behind him, but I'm still finding the decision, especially the timing (my joke above aside), difficult to understand.

Apples & Oranges

It's impossible to compare the Popo era to those of our two most recent managers Hiroshi Jofuku and Kiyoshi Okuma: the former took us to our highest-ever league finish in a single-stage season (5th in 2009), but then was unable to arrest our alarming decline the following year and had to go; and the latter couldn't keep us up and then brought us back to J1 in a 2011 season in which we did the job but never dominated the second tier to the extent we probably should have.

Popovic came in at the start of 2012 (again, I didn't think he was a 'big enough name' at first) with an ACL campaign to worry about on top of settling us back into the top division, and he got us comfortably out of the group and up to fifth in J1 by the half way mark. We were unlucky in the ACL Round of 16 loss to Guangzhou (and look at them now, in this year's final), and were screwed over by the AFC's experiment with one-legged R.o.16 ties last year, and though our league season petered out and we ultimately finished 10th I don't think anyone was too despondent as we reestablished ourselves in J1.

Why Now?

Whether the 6-2 win on the final day of last season did save his job or not, Popovic returned for this season with a player he wanted to build around (Keigo Higashi) and an aim to take us back into the top half, and though there have been some horror shows throughout the year, we sit 7th in the league six points behind third with five games to go, through to the fourth round of The Emperor's Cup and yet the decision has already been made.

I have to ask: What were the front office's expectations for this season? Everyone says they want to win the league, to qualify for the ACL etc., but did they really think that was a realistic expectation in our second year back in J1? There's nothing wrong with aiming high of course, but I don't think they've given the manager the chance to let his project bear fruit before pruning back any progress and consigning it to the compost heap (ie. starting again, sorry that was a pretty horrible analogy). And everything the club says about wanting to become a 'big club' on the pitch is completely contradicted by the way we are run off it.

The point is there has been significant progress, we've played some excellent stuff at times, and Popo has clearly made his mark on the squad. I would've taken sixth at the start of the season, and there's still a decent chance we will finish higher than that, yet we'll begin next season with a new manager and uncertainty as to which direction he'll take us in. For me its almost always better the devil you know, and now we'll never know how far Ranko Popovic would've taken us.

Ups & Downs - The Big Catch-Up

Hey! Remember me? Been a long time between drinks as far as blog updates go, almost five months to be exact, but you can blame that on how much time I've been putting in to The J-Talk Podcast, which is still going strong. I encourage you to check it out if you haven't yet.

So why this update, now? Good question, and I have two reasons for you: 1) I have a very slow day at work today; and 2) Bloody Kashima.

You see, I was so disgusted at our second half capitulation in the 3-2 loss at their place at the end of May, that I just couldn't be arsed. And even though we were dreadful again against them at Kokuritsu on the 5th (On my birthday! How could we have been so shite on my birthday!!!), refer to 1), and the symmetry that the two losses against them provides. With those two losses as brackets, we'll get up to date and then I'll try and keep this going weekly# for the season's last six matchdays and however far we go in the Emperor's Cup.

# - no promises, though

We went into the Matchday 13 clash at Kashima seventh in the table, took a totally deserved 2-0 half time lead through Tadanari Lee (remember him?!) and a belter from Kazuma Watanabe, but then shat the bed after the break as they scored three times in 20 minutes and we showed a stunning lack of backbone.

That was followed by a heart-breaking 1-0 loss at home to Hiroshima, who we more than matched for the entire game before they were awarded a dubious free kick just outside our box in the 94th minute and sub Park Hyung Jin curled in the set piece.

Things picked up from there though, and we went six unbeaten, starting with yet another league draw against Urawa (2-2, even though we threw away a 2-0 lead in the last 10 minutes). A fast start at Niigata saw us cruise by them 3-0, and then we recovered from Kofu's goal in the first minute and tore them apart late on at home in a 4-1 romp. Two of the next three were drawn: away at Shimizu was a bit of a snooze-fest but the away Classico against Kawasucki was a belter - we twice came from behind and Kosuke Ota's brilliant free kick earnt us a point; those two were sandwiched around a regulation 2-0 home win over Oita, Watanabe bagging both to take himself top in the J1 golden boot race.

Despite that unbeaten run we ended it in the same position we began this update in - seventh - and failing to win in the next three, with the table so tight in the middle, saw us slide down to 12th. We were very poor in the final third and Yokohama made us pay with two well taken goals in a 2-0 home loss (we're up to Matchday 21 here, by the way), we stymied Iwata in a 0-0 that meant a lot more to them than it did to us, and then I called for Ranko Popovic's head after a horrendous first hour at home (Kokuritsu) against Tosu saw us 2-0 down, two late goals from Sota 'Lazarus' Hirayama and Watanabe saw us pull level but then a minute later we dozed off and Yohei Toyoda won it for them.

For the record my tweet was more in frustration, but I'd begun to think Popo had taken us as far (and it wasn't very far) as he could, but showing how much I know we then proceeded to win four on the spin, the first two against teams in the top three, which saw us shoot up seven spots to fifth. We won away at Hiroshima for the second straight year, 2-1 thanks to Takuji Yonemoto's winner, his first league goal in four years, beat Urawa 3-2 in a thriller at Kokuritsu for our first league win over them in nine years with Lazarus nodding in the winner in the 90th minute, then eased past Nagoya 2-0 away and rode a Lucas hat-trick, his first in J1, to a 5-2 triumph at Omiya.

So fifth with seven games to go, with five of them at home, had us buzzing and dreaming of the possibility of a return to the ACL, but standing in our way were ... Kashima. I was sat in the press seats for the first time ever at a J.League game, on my birthday, with Sean Carroll and Dan Orlowitz for company ahead of another first for me, an appearance on FOOT! Wednesday, and ... they destroyed us. Two goals in the first ten minutes, another two for good measure in the second half before Lazarus got the dictionary definition of a consolation goal with seven minutes to go (I used the same line on FOOT! too, if that sounds familiar).

So, not for the first time, Antlers put us back in our place, meaning we finished this catch-up where we began it: seventh in J1.

Somewhere in between that ruck of games we gained sweet, sweet revenge for getting knocked out of the Emperor's Cup last year by smashing JFL Yokogawa err... 1-0 in extra time, and then last Sunday we beat J2 Chiba on pens after a 1-1 draw to progress to the fourth round.

On to Niigata at home this Saturday evening, then.

Up the Gas!