Coming off a nice little break, the Green machine hooked up with the striped lads from Yamagata. Currently sitting at the bottom of the J2 table, Montedio was starving for a win and it showed. Let's just say that at the beginning of the game, Montedio was playing the role of Carnie Wilson and Verdy was the donut.
Here are the lineups
Montedio Yamagata
GK 1 Shigeru Sakurai
DF 16 Kohei Usui 3 Leanardo 4 Shogo Kobara 17 Makoto Kimura
MF 6 Hayato Sasaki 8 Atsushi Nagai 18 Yuki Takabayashi 28 Nobuyuki Zaizen
FW 15 Ryoji Uehara 9 Leandro
SUBS: 5-Takumi Watanabe (59 min-Leandro), 7- Kenji Takahashi (68 min-Nagai), 11-Ryuta Hara (85 min-Sasaki)
VERDY
GK 1 Mizuhara
DF 3 Fujita 5 Dedimar 4 Togawa 6 Sugawara
MF 22 Kina 11 Ono 8 Nagai 10 Anailson
FW 39 Saito 25 Hiramoto
SUBS-15-Shin Kanazawa (35 min-Kina), 9-Basilio (63 min-Saito), 32-Masatomo Kuba (74 min-Sugawara
Hate to say I told you so........no I really don't............the Montedio "One to Watch", Leandro, struck very early in the game to give Montedio a 1-0 lead. I'm guessing that there was problems without Verdy's anchor in the back.........Hagimura has been arguably the most effective player in the back 4 this season. In a slightly ominous sign of things to come Anailson got carded in the 9th minute. This was a reversal of last weeks game against Ehime when absolutely nobody was carded.......not even Captain Hack himself, Harutaka Ono. in the 29th minute, Leandro put in the brace, putting Montedio in a seemingly insurmountable 2-0 lead.
Coming to the conclusion that there is a problem putting two beat-up midfielders in at the same time, Ramos pulled Kina for Shin Kanazawa.........yeah, I blew that call big time, didn't I? This seemed to give a spark to the squad because in the 38th minute, Hiramoto broke through with his first goal of the season. Dedimar was so excited that he went out and got a yellow card.
The second half started with a lackluster offense (according to Ramos on Js Goal via Babelfish). Montedio was hit with their first bit of misfortune when superstriker Leandro went down with a leg injury. A few minutes later, Montedio took a second blow when DF Kohei Usui got hit with a red card giving Verdy new life and continuing a trend of red cards for Montedio.
In a reversal of fortune, Ramos pulled one of last week's heros in Saito for the benched Basilio. Right on cue, the diminuitive Brazilian vet evened the score for Verdy. Also right on cue was another yellow for Verdy courtesy of Fujita.
With about 15 minutes to go, Ramos pulled DF Tomo Sugawara for a new addition to the varsity, Masatomo Kuba. Obviously, the gamble worked because Kuba put Verdy up for good at 3-2. Of course the game wouldn't be complete without Ono getting a yellow card, and he did just before the end of the game. I can sleep easy tonight.
STARS OF THE GAME:
Since, I didn't see the game, I'll give respect to all the goal scorers. Kuba, Basilio, Leandro (Yamagata), and Hiramoto all can call themselves stars!
FINAL THOUGHTS- Right now I'd give Ramos an A for his in game adjustments and a D+ for his game preparation. All the credit in the world goes to his substitution patterns........Kanazawa looks like he settled down the midfield and Basilio and Kuba scored almost instantly after coming off the bench. However, it looks like the team was overwhelmed out of the gate and I'm assuming that without the red card, Verdy doesn't score twice.
I think something else that's not helping matters is the lack of consistency and cohesion in the starting lineup. There were 3 new people in the starting lineup this week, just like last week. The week before saw 2 new people in the lineup. Injuries and inconsistency with the players are the big cause but it's also Ramos having an extremely quick trigger. Kina is probably out next week and Kanazawa will probably be back in.......Basilio will probably replace Saito, and maybe Kuba finds a place for someone in the midfield. I don't completely blame Ramos for this shuffling.......the midfield is a disaster. the main problem with continual change is that players don't know their roles, can't get comfortable with the lineups, and tend to have breakdowns at inopportune times.
Next week is the huge game of the season thus far when Verdy goes up against a very dangerous Kashiwa Reysol squad who is winning with young, homegrown talent. They have 13 points in 5 games and have let up one goal. I'm not optimistic.
Again if anyone watched the game.........write in and I'll give you the feature spot! I will be at Ajinomoto for the game next week and hope to have a comprehensive report.
HAPPY 100th post!
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