S-Pulse 3-0 Cerezo Osaka

BARRY WRITES... 

S-Pulse 3-0 Cerezo Osaka
Ishige 8
Hiraoka 77
Murata 94

Att 11917
IAI Stadium Nihondaira, Shizuoka

Line Up

GK Kushibiki

DF Kawai
DF Jakovic
DF Hiraoka
DF Yoshida

MF Honda
MF Omae
MF Musaka
MF Ishige

FW Novakovic
FW Takagi T

Subs Used

Murata on for Omae (84)
Mizutani on for Honda (85)
Takaki on for Takagi T (90)

Report



Our first win after six defeats and a draw. Halle-bloody-lujah.

Not enough to take us out the drop zone though, and nothing has been achieved yet. Regardless, this is huge in terms of turning our season around. Yes, Cerezo were crap. They were irritable, desperate and let themselves down, not least for their red card. But we dominated from start to finish and should have been 3-0 up at half time, let alone full time.

The starting eleven, still missing Jong a Pin, was far more solid than some of Oenoki's recent line ups. Kawai I'll take over Mizutani any day of the week, and the same for Jakovic over Miura. Defenece after all is where we've come undone with goal after goal seeping through. Today we kept a clean sheet, and when Cerezo were hitching it forward for Diego Forlan for the last half an hour, that's far from a given, even in a game we dictated.

That's what these last seven games are all about. Being solid. Getting points. This is not the time to give minutes to youngsters, at least not from kick off. So a better performance, but everything still to do. We have four of our last seven games at home, so with home advantage and our boys doing what we all know they can, we should stay up.

Well, next week we have the nice distraction of the cup 1/4 finals. Away at Nagoya, which is going to be very tough to overcome, but with the carrot of a semi final dangling in sight we'll be up for it. Kick off Saturday at 7pm - excited? I know am. :)

Videos

Highlights.



The goals in beautiful slow motion from YouTube user imoimo9.