She`s Got Dickie Davis Eyes......Gainare 0 - 1 Verdy

Scrappy win, Maranhao with the goal on Abe`s spadework. Gainare had more chances and if they had anyone who was decent in front of the back four they would have won. I`ve watched 90 minutes on tape with no fast forward and that really does sum up the game.

2 Goals Forward, 4 Goals Back...Sapporo 4 - 2 Verdy

Oooof!!! Livin` My Life Quarter Mile At A Time....

Defensive blunders were the name of the game tonight in a match Verdy had a good chance to win and claim three points to close in on 3rd place. Consadole will be relieved to take the points and keep the heat on FC Tokyo after spending much of the 90 minutes on the back foot.
The game was only 2 minutes old when Tomisawa and Tsuchiya let Hiroyuki Furuta burst through them to finish. Hiroki Kawano hit back just two minutes later with a devastating run through the middle holding off two defenders to fire home. The rest of the first half saw a lot of probing by Verdy with a few shots peppering the Sapporo goal but nothing really of note.
The second half started where the first finished with Verdy in the ascendancy going forward and looking to take the lead. Sapporo had a total of THREE chances in the second half and scored every single one. The second goal came on 61 minutes with Yusuke Kondo sending a perfect lob over Shibasaki after Tsuchiya and Tomisawa again hesitated and left Shibasaki trapped in no mans land.  Iio hit the post with a shot and turn in the box before Yuki Kobayashi let fly with a rocket into the roof of the net following good work by Yusuke Mori. Mori left his marker on his backside before slipping the ball to Kobayashi to fire an unstoppable effort home from just outside the box. At this point Verdy looked likely to go on and win it but were to be undone by some awful defending. Okamoto took the first of his goals in the 88th minute when Tsuchiya sent a looping header back towards his own goal, the ball came back off the base of the post and left an easy tap in. 13th Century Dung was rubbed in the wound just a minute later in order to bring out a puss when Okamoto again took advantage of Verdy`s generosity to fire home even after getting the ball caught under his feet and Verdy having plenty of chances to make a challenge and deciding to leave him be.....
So where does that leave us? In need of some solidity at the back. The forwards can score till the cows come home on occasion but while last year the defence was a rock, this year the defence has been the achilles heel. Finally, Maki and Hiramoto were on for the last ten minutes and looked ponderous, old, rusty and utterly done for the season. Hiramoto has struggled for fitness this year but when he has been on he has looked pedestrian and Maki hasn`t done a single thing in either of his cameo appearances. Ok, maybe he isn`t 100 per cent fit but I`ve seen nothing so far that indicates he is worth a seat on the bus. Verdy are fast running out of games to get up to that 3rd place, it`s not impossible but tonight`s game was the kind they had to win, had the chances to but ultimately didn`t.

Coach Kawakatsu on his way to the 2011Uncle Albert Lookalike Contest

Oh well, I`m now the proud owner of probably the fastest Skyline GTR on the planet so who cares? It cost millions but I`ve saved up in the last two weeks. Call it a midlife crisis but what`s wrong with racing round the streets of Tokyo at 320KMH?  Vroom!!!!!

Cheats Never Prosper and a New Penis On The Block..... Verdy 7 - 2 Yokohama / Omiya 0 - 0 Cerezo Osaka

Gutted!!

Sometimes you try to do the right thing and you get it thrown back in your face like a nailbomb packed to the brim with battery acid. Tokyo Nerdy pulled off a cracking decision yesterday opting to go to watch the 0-0 draw between Omiya Ardiija v Cerezo Osaka INSTEAD of going to the Olympic Stadium to watch the ritual slaughter of Yokohama FC. What an absolute tool!!

Should have known really, the first time I ever wagged school I got caught. 13 or so years old my friends would often bunk off and forge notes later to hand in to the teachers who probably knew all along what was going on. This one day all my pals were going round to one of their houses to watch TV all afternoon and I thought, sod it why not? I didn`t have much confidence in my forgery skills so I went back to school after dinnertime and got my "mark" in the register and then jumped over the fence and ran over the cricket pitch adjacent to the school and off to my mates  house. A foolproof plan I thought and would have been if the annual fire drill wasn`t scheduled for that day......100 per cent busted and up to the headmasters for a rollicking and letter home for my mother who was not at all happy. 

I also began a shortlived shoplifting career at this time which lasted approximately 3 weeks. It started off nicking sweets from the newsagents and the odd "adult art pamphlet" and soon developed into a profitable enterprise with vinyl LPs and clothes finding their way into the stash. One weekend, my friends and I thought we were the business off to Birmingham to take HMV to the cleaners. I had a waxed jacket at the time with a giant poachers pocket on the inside big enough to fit in a vinyl LP. One weekend of stealing and the goods were racked up in my wardrobe. That was easy we thought and off we went again the next weekend. Me and a friend got caught stealing Guns and Roses records (it was 1987) and were unceremoniously chucked into the back of the police  meat wagon in full view of the Saturday afternoon shoppers and off to Steelhouse Lane police station to await the Grim Reaper.  The Grim Reaper in this case being my mum who I knew was going to hit the roof and go into orbit on this one. I was 100 per cent correct in my prediction and to this day I feel sorry for the shite I used to put my mother through. The message here is don`t cheat folks, toe the line and things will turn out fine.......you`d think.

I went to the Omiya game on the back of telling a friend I`d go to an Omiya game this year and being a man true to my word, I went to Kumagaya Stadium to watch an Omiya side struggle in the first half with  a toothless 4-5-1 formation and struggle to score in the second half when they were easily on top and had the chances to take the win. Omiya have problems this season and the biggest of all seems to be their line up choices. They should have enough to stay up though this will seemingly be despite their coach rather than because of him. Anyway, a dull game though nevertheless an enjoyable night out until I was on the way out and heard the Verdy score. I was kicking myself all the way home and thanks to the vagaries of the Takasaki line I also missed my last connection to my place and had to take a taxi. Piece of shit!!!! I was too tired to watch the game I had taped and went to bed. And what a treat I missed.
Seven Verdy goals and a thorough THRASHING of a team who didn`t know what hit them. The Greens lined up with what is surely their strongest front four with Abe and Maranhao playing as a top two supported by Kawano and Kikuoka on the wings. Verdy were on the attack from the first whistle and Kikuoka was to open the scoring following a devastating Kawano run and cross into the box for Kikuoka to curl home into the top corner. Then out came the the "rockin` the baby" goal celebration...it was a decent goal but come on boys this isn`t the World Cup Final.
Verdy cranked up the pressure and Maranhao went close before Yusuke Mori opened his Verdy account firing in from the edge of the box when the ball broke free from another Verdy attack. The ball took a slight deflection which probably wrong footed Seki in the Yokohama  goal but you make your own luck is in this game. At this point at rout was definately such was the dominance of the Greens.
Two goals quickly became three with Kikuoka sweeping home a free kick up and over the wall into the top corner leaving Seki rooted to his spot. 3-0 and at halftime Verdy were fully deserving of their lead.
The teams came out for the second half and another Verdy newboy Nakatani was also to open his account last night. The ball came across from Kawano and Nakatani completely miscued his effort with the ball shin rolling off his standing leg. Seki got a hand to it but Nakatani was able to toe poke it through his hands and in. Seki will claim he had control of the ball but Nakatani had every right to go for it in my book.

Yeap...

Takuma Abe had slipped to third place in the J2 scoring charts but was able to bag two to climb back into a joint share of the lead with 12 for the year. The first came on a long punt from Shibasaki and Abe was able to hold off his marker and fire home with Seki getting a bit of hand to it but not enough the keep it out. He followed up with his second and Verdy`s sixth of the night again holding  off a marker to finish in off the post from the edge of the six yard box on Maranhao`s cross.
Hiroki Kawano wrapped things up with a understandably deflated Yokohama defence at sixes and sevens with an easy finish on a 3 one touch pass move from Kikuoka`s inch perfect cross. 7-0 and that was that in terms of the Verdy scoring. Yokohama pulled two back with goals from Takachi and Franca but what were they ever going to when seven down?
A superb performance, a ton of goals a decent crowd just a short of 10,000 and the only shitter of the whole evening was that I wasn`t bloody there to see it. I am a cockhead of giant proportions and thus must take my place as the new Penis Of The Season. Goodbye Jonathon Segar,  we have a new Penis on the Block. 

Blank Expression... Thespa 0 - 0 Verdy

Blankboard

Season is fast disappearing up it`s own backside. Nothing doing here. Verdy had more goalscoring chances, didn`t take them and so stay stuck in midtable mediocrity.

Absence Makes The Bush Grow Greener JEF United 1 - 1 Verdy

Love a nice big bush me.

Having missed the last two games with a family trip I was well looking forward to this one. Verdy had been up and down while we were away but came up trumps last time out with a whipping of the ever sinking Roasso Kumamoto.
Captain Tomisawa was back in the line up for the first time in 20 games, we also got a chance to have a look at new full back Nakatani from Sanga and see the cameo debut of ex-Jef striker Seichiro Maki for two minutes at the end. The scoreline says only 1-1 but anyone who saw it will know that the final scoreline is not all indicative of the all the goal mouth action that took place. The woodwork was rattled on no less than FIVE different occasions with JEF taking the honours 3-2 in the woodwork count. JEF started brightly and opened the scoring after just five minutes with Oshima leaping above Takahashi to head home a free kick from wide on the left. However, it wasn`t long before Verdy started to pressure the JEF goal with Takuma Abe forst to hit the post for Verdy with a diving header and the keeper beaten following a smart one touch move featuring Mori and the returning Taira Inoue at right midfield.
Yuki Kobayashi was dangerous all night peppering the JEF goal from distance and he too found the joint with a thunderbolt from way out. Young Kobayashi is a player going places and he will be on the radar for teams further up the league for sure. He is steady on the ball and mops up tidily and quietly much like Kohei Shibasaki who left for Kawasaki in the close season.
As the first half wore on it was Verdy who looked more likely controlling possesion and restricting JEF to the odd counter attack. Half time came and it seemed like only a matter of time before Verdy would equalise. The equaliser came in the 68th minute with Maranhao freer than a discounted Summer Sale Lynyrd Skynyrd Freebird. The cross came in and Maranhao was in acres of space to head the ball home.
So, 1-1 and then the game really heated up with both teams going for the win. End to end and Fukai for JEF a particular thorn in Verdy`s side. For a short guy he can`t half motor. It was Fukai who struck the wordwork last with a goal bound shot across Shibasaki which the big fella managed to push onto the post.
So a 1-1 result not much use to either side but it is now plainly obvious that whoever can string a couple of results together can make a charge for the top of the league. FC Tokyo have dropped off following the finish of their unbeaten run and nobody looks likely to run away with it. JEF and Verdy will both be thinking they are losing ground on the promotion positions though in reality with the form of the top teams both teams need just a couple of wins to be knocking on the door.