The Ramos has no Clothes-384 minutes+ Montedio vs VERDY

I'm gonna do the preview and the lineups and then I will give the rest of this post to Nick who sums up the game perfectly (No internet till this morning so I'm a bit delayed!)

This post is dedicated to naked Berkeley guy from the 1990's. Naked Berkeley guy wanted to walk around Cal University Berkeley in 1992 as a form of protest. He had others pop up on the campus naked as a form of free speech. In 1993 Berkeley passed a school code saying that nudity in public was not allowed.......naked guy was kicked out of school. Yesterday,he was found dead in a prison cell. Recently Ruy Ramos has been parading around naked as well......and it should be banned, counting the Ulsan game, Verdy has dropped 3 of the last 4 games......they have been out scored 4-0 and are dropping precipitously from the top of the rankings.

Montedio has been sitting in 9th place. They come in led by former Omiya striker Leandro, who notched two goals against Verdy in a fortunate 3-2 victory at Yamagata.

Awww, hell........it's 474 minutes now and Leandro scored the only goal.......6th place, 6 points and 22 goals from a playoff spot. 1-0 loss

Here was Ruy's experiment

GK Takagi (happy birthday)
DF Dedimar (45 min Nejime), Hagimura, Togawa, Fujita(64 Kuba)
MF Nagai (56 Morimoto), Sugawara, Kanazawa, Ono
FW Basilio, Hiramoto

No Anailson...........outshot 14 to 6 and corner kicks were 12 to 5. This team has bottomed out.

Anyhow, here is Nick's view

Just watched todays "festivities" and the good news is Takagi made it to 27 years!! It was the boys birthday today and the commentators seemed especially happy about it,maybe they had a nice bit o` cake.Now I have to say I don`t mind the odd bit of gateaux myself but if the most interesting thing you have to keep saying about a guy is " Well its Takagis birthday today,he`s 27 you know!!Congratulations!!!" something must be amiss.Cake is all well and good but surely a goalies actual performance in the game is more important?? errrrrrrr......So, to the game, for the first ten minutes we looked great, Hiramoto banged one over the bar and had a one on one with the keeper when the ball just seemed to run away from him and the keeper was able to smother it, Nagai hoofed one over the bar and that was it really. I was thinking,summers here,Ive had a long day at work,relax have a beer or two watch the game. Things were going fine till after our initial bright start,the boys couldnt seem to get anything going.After about 10 minutes in,I dont think we had a decent attempt on goal for the next 70 minutes!! The midfield were a big let down today,they just couldnt seem to get through the Montedio boys, Hiramoto and Basillio were pretty much out of the game for 35 minutes up to half time.Montedio controlled things more and more as the game went on and if they were any good ,would have had Verdy 3 or 4 down by half time. Leonardo flashed a header just over the bar and Leandro had one fly past the post.All against a backdrop of stuttering,hesitant stuff from the Boys in Green. Half time came and we were lucky to be going in evens. Wasn`t to be for long though. Shortly after the break, the increasingly more confident forward breaks coming from Montedio,produced a telling cross from the right,somebody (dunno who) had a pop at goal it came back of the foot of the post and fell into the path of Leonardo who shin rolled it into the top corner. 1-0 to Montedio. From this moment on, the boys from Yamagata seemed to invite Verdy to try to break down their defence and hope to catch them on the counter.A cunning plan knowing the difficulty we have had finding the net in the last few games. Anyway the plan was going great till Basillio got through on a slide rule pass!! He controlled it beautifully,taking all the pace of the ball and clipped it over the goalie but unfortunately for the Green Army behind the goal he lifted it a touch too high and it landed tamely on the roof of the net. That was it,our one "clear" chance in 90 minutes of play!! Game Over!!No get out of jail free card!No big brother to come and sort out the bully boys who knicked the ball!! To quote Full Metal Jacket..."Its a big sh*t sandwich and we all gotta take a bite!!" (Apologies nephews if you are reading). Thing is though (and I truly mean this) when the bad times are bad,the good times are FANTASTIC!! So Long Live Verdy The Boys March On!!! Onwards and Upwards (or at least sideways).Im thinking at the minute how long Ramos will last. With the start we had he obviously has a bit of time on his side but if we keep playing as we are ,his days are numbered. Legend or not, the further we sink,the shorter his time.Losing is not so bad if we give a good account of ourselves as against Reysol,Yokohama and even Bellmare,but to lose as we have done in the last two games,coupled with the crap draw with Ehime,the capitulations against Sendai and Kobe and the loss to Ulsan.The Magic Perm may soon be on his way back to daytime telly.What does anyone else think?? I dont think we should get rid at the first sign of trouble but time is limited and the longer you stay in J2 and given the low numbers we are getting (5000 odd today) we could get in a rut.I think if we miss the boat this season,(and lord knows we will need a miracle to get anywhere near the playoffs given the last two performances!!)next season and thereafter will become increasingly difficult.

MY VIEWS

I think that Ruy will get one more year........they won't burn him up right away. The problem is that the top teams have settled lineups, there's not a change from day to day. Vegalta, Kashiwa, and Yokohama have lineups that know eachother. Verdy seems to be pulling guys from off the street and putting them in the midfield. It seems like this team is still confused. The whole Morimoto as third striker seems to put the team out of sorts as well........they move Hiramoto into the distributing role (which he's awful at BTW) when Basilio seems to be the more likely candidate. Hiramoto and Morimoto are a similar type of player, nothing changes when they bring in Morimoto. Neither has the speed of Iio or the hustle and brute strength of Saito. I also hate the Dedi/Fuji/Hagi/Toga back line.....it is Verdy's weakest option by far and has been the weakest all season. Aoba and Hiroyama had the back line in a deent place and Ruy pulled the plug...............he's micro-managing right now and his players are extremely tight and making nervous mistakes. It's like he showed them the nearly perfect Sapporo game and told them not to play like that anymore.

It's funny that Nick mentioned brother because Nagai went up against little brother in yesterday's match. And it was Takagi's birthday, and he didn't have an awful game.....the goal wasn't his fault, he was in perfect position for the shot and it took a tricky bounce off the post, Hagimura didn't clear and a opportunistic Leandro poached one for the team in yellow.

The Ajinomoto streak continues:

So far Verdy is 2-1 at the National, 1-0 at Komazawa and Nishigaoka and 0-3 at Ajinomoto.....
4-0-4 total for 8 points.

Next game is on the road to Tokushima to take on the pathetic Vortis side who have a 500 minute scoreless streak going and a 10 game winless streak......something has to give.