Agent Orange Reports: The Most Offensive Agent Orange Ever

Wow. Just wow.

Tinkering Jang Wae Ryong is back in full effect as another "experimental" line-up took the field for Omiya. Part of it wasn't under his control - Shin Kanazawa was out with yellow cards, bringing in U20 stalwart and former Maebashi Ikuei star Takuya Aoki for his first start ever. The sensible thing in that case would be to keep that side of the field relatively intact, so that the kid could rely on some familiarity.

You could do that, or you could pretend like the team is a gigantic snowglobe and shake things up until everything is all cloudy and falling down left and right. Evil Genius decides to go the B route, moving Chikara Fujimoto over to the left and pairing a forward out of place on the wing with a midfielder who was also out of place, against a very, very mediocre Nagoya Grampus squad who was far more interested in falling down and diving and killing time rather than playing. I'll get to them in a moment.

Why mess with a defense that was allowing a respectable one goal a game? Kohei Tokita is worse at defense and, judging by the stats, worse on offense than Taishi Tsukamoto. Didn't we figure that earlier in the season with the multiple three-goal games he was featuring in as a right back? Why did we do that again? Yoshizumi Ogawa was the talented, relatively non-offensive player in the Grampus line-up and Tokita gave him yards of space. That second goal was probably the easiest of his life, considering that Tokita had no clue how to mark him.

The good news is that Tokita has four yellows, so next week we won't see him. I think he's fine as an energy guy for twenty minutes, but as a starter? No way. The bad news is that Ryohei Arai has been getting ample time in reserve games as a left back. Does that mean we might see yet another midfielder mis-cast as a wingback... move Yasuhiro Hato back over to the right again and pray?

We are four points away from danger. The time for dicking around with your back four has long since passed. I don't want to see Yusuke Murayama again this season. I don't want to see Daisuke Tomita or Shunsuke Fukuda or Haruki Nishimura or any other bench player in the back. Hato, Mato Neretljak, Yosuke Kataoka and Tsukamoto are our best option for the rest of the season. End of story. Knock it off with the tinkering.

Even with the odd combinations, Aoki played very well for a home debut. He didn't look out of place at all after his nerves settled a bit and he had moments where he controlled the flow of play. Hayato Hashimoto was a disaster and things weren't helped when Tomoya Uchida came in and laid a stinker. He's probably the most frustrating player on the squad because he has a ton of talent, but injuries and inconsistency seem to get in his way. Naoki Ishihara wasn't bad on the wing, but he was able to get shots off when he moved back to the middle.

Ahh Yes, Nagoya

Another unlikeable squad came in and took two points away. Their defense was alright - a little cynical and cheap, but OK - but that offense was really not that great. Ogawa was good, he had a lot of pace and good touch. Josh "Jesus of Nagoya" Kennedy did nothing all night except fall down and whine to the refs. If you want to compare him to Jesus of Nazareth, you could say that one created great miracles and died for our sins, while another created dodgy fouls out of thin air and whined everytime we supposedly sinned. Advantage Nazareth. And before you give me that gentle soul crap, he throws elbows to the back of the head as well as anybody else in the league. Nice dive on the penultimate foul to set up the first goal, too.

Keiji Tamada - diving, no-talent hack. Why is he on the national team? Finally, Magnum. What is it with Kawasaki Frontale, bringing in talented yet extremely histrionic and overly cynical drama queens to sully our little league? Renatinho, Juninho, Hulk-amania? There ought to be a law. He went down easier than a gaijin-hunting OL after a two fruity umbrella drink night at GasPanic.

FC Tokyo South, you just moved up the Hatelist.

One Coin Armageddon

The new thing this year is letting young children and old people in for 500 yen in order to fill up the stadium. Yeah, alright. I'm not happy at all that, for a fifth of the price I paid, people are able to sit in the same seats I bought at the start of the year, but OK. I get it. Get 'em in and sell 'em stuff.

However, if there are two groups of people who have smaller attention spans than old people and young children, I'd love to know who they are. Also, if there are two groups of people that need to get up and go to the bathroom more during a 45-minute half, I defy you to find me that group.

Now I get why you target small children. Small children bring their full-paying parents to the game, eat a lot and ask to buy every souvenir under the sun. And like any good drug-dealer or clown pushing greasy burgers would tell you, you need to get them hooked young. Come for the squirrels, stay for the football!

Old people, I don't get. Especially because eventually they do something that starts with a D. That's right. DISTURB ME WHILE I TRY TO WATCH THE GAME. Group of old men come in about five minutes after kick-off, stands up in front of me, turns around, looks at the seat, looks at each other, turns around again, get their smelly behinds eerily close to my head, turns around again and sits down. Then gawks at me uncomfortably for the next 65 minutes or so, only pausing fifty or so times to clear the phlegm from their trachea, until they decide they've had enough and turn around and gawk some more until they figure out they are leaving.

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