Football Season Guide

Were incredibly fortunate to survive the relegation dogfight last season. Aside from Albirex Niigata and juggernauts Yokohama F. Marinos, the only teams to concede more goals than they did got relegated. Luckily, their attack was phenomenal last season and it made the difference. They'll be hoping for more of the same this season. Lost a couple of players pre-season though. GK Bum-keun Song and especially Satoshi Tanaka. The rest were bit-part players that will not be missed. Tanaka was the biggest loss by far; their defensive midfielder. They've found a good solution to the problem in Ze Ricardo from Kawasaki Frontale though. It's not yet clear who will replace GK Bum-keun Song. Nagai was brought in from FC Osaka but Kamifukumoto will want to replace him, having started a number of games last season. It's also not clear what will happen in attack now that Luiz Phellype has joined to compete with Lucian and Suzuki; all three are dangerous attacking options. Spoilt for choice, really. Should be able to continue scoring goals for fun this season, given their impressive ability to both hold onto existing attacking talents and sign new ones. However, there are no obvious improvements in defence, which was their Achilles heel last season. Indeed, it may take time for defensive midfielder Ze Ricardo to step into Tanaka's shoes too, which is only logical. Furthermore, some of their new plans have had to be shelved for now due to injuries with an ACL injury suffered Kanari Matsumoto, and an ATL injury for Sena Ishibashi, both of which will be sidelined for a while. Therefore, it's logical to expect them to continue as they left off last season - scoring a lot, and conceding a lot. Should be able to cement a mid-table finish this season if they can improve their defensive setup, and avoid a nervy finale to the campaign.