Managers Ring Changes at Toyota

Both managers were forced to make early substitutions, as both Montedio's Miyazawa and our Aussie forward, Kennedy, made way for early replacements. An early goal by Ogawa and an insurance goal by Magnum sees us win comfortably in our final home game of the season.

This was a more convincing performance from the home team, playing with fully-fit squad for the first time in several months. However, it was not to last long. A smack in the eye from a clearance saw Josh Kennedy retire after 30 minutes. The blow left the lanky forward feeling a bit groggy and suffering from blurred vision for a while, but is unlikely to hinder his appearance in the team's final game of the season, apart from sporting a beauty of a shiner. :-)

The match started with Nagoya fielding a nominal 4-4-2 lineup, but actually saw the Tamada and Igor spending most of the game up front to form a 4-3-3 formation. This was partly due to Montedio's failure to pressurize the home team, which allowed them to control the pattern of play. As such, the team's inability to turn this control of the game into more goals is a testament to its need to sign some creative players during the off-season.

Ogawa, who has struggled to find his form of last year, gave Grampus the perfect start as he produced a neat finish from Kennedy's flick-on after 11 minutes. Kennedy, before his departure, Burzanovic and Tamada all had opportunities to extend the lead before half time, but failed to seriously test Kenta Shimizu in the Yamagata goal. The visitors' one shot of the half, came from an Ishikawa free kick that had Narasaki scrambling but failed to find the target.

The second half saw Nagoya continue to dominate possession, but without its big target man up front, the team could not create many clear chances. This allowed Montedio to regain some confidence and make a more determined effort to get back in the game, with both team's having an equal share of the attempts on goal. However, while Yamagata's efforts were all inaccurate, Magnum capitalised on a neat angled pass from the quick-thinking Tamada to make the game safe midway though the half.



Nagoya Grampus
Seigo Narazaki
Hayuma Tanaka, Milos Bajalica, Takahiro Masukawa, Shohei Abe
Yoshizumi Ogawa, Naoshi Nakamura (Magnum 64), Keiji Yoshimura, Igor Burzanovic (Alex Santos 77)
Keiji Tamada, Josh Kennedy (Yuki Maki 31)
Scorers: Ogawa 11, Magnum 76

Montedio Yamagata
Kenta Shimizu
Takuya Miyamoto, Shogo Nishikawa, Hidenori Ishii, Tatsuya Ishikawa
Kohei Miyazaki (Tomayasu Hirose 77), Takumi Watanabe (Tetsuro Ohta 65), Kentaro Sato, Katsuyuki MIyazawa (Tomotaka Kitamura 14)
Yu Hasegawa, Tatuya Furuhashi