FC Gifu gained a very valuable point from our trip to the SunPro Alwin stadium last Sunday. Here is how the game went down, by Stuart Smith

 

FC Gifu starting XI: Victor, Abe, Takeda, Kitatani, Aoki, Miyamoto, Mishima, Kazama, Paulo Tanaka, De Vries, Yamagishi

 

Gifu made one change from the team which started against Fagiano Okayama the previous week, with Fumitaka Kitatani replacing Henry in the centre of defence. Matsumoto Yamaga were desperate for points in order keep their championship challenge on track, but they were also looking to avenge their 2-0 defeat in Gifu earlier this year and they started the quicker side. In the first half, they attacked a lot down the left hand side with Serginho and Ishihara attacking as a pair, and this meant a very busy afternoon for FC Gifu captain Masanori Abe, who had to defend resolutely to keep Yamaga at bay.

Yamaga had more of the chances in the first half. Daizen Maeda was played through on goal, but Victor rushed out to stop the danger - and the offside flag was raised anyway. Next, Victor produced a strong hand to push Hayuma Tanaka’s header away from danger and that was closely followed by a long range Serginho shot which flew just wide. FC Gifu had rarely threatened in the first half, but just before half time Yuya Yamagishi’s deflected shot forced Matsumoto goalkeeper Tatsuya Morita into a fine save.

 

In the second half, FC Gifu were more offensive minded and got more control of the game, although it was Matsumoto who had the first chance of the half; Victor making a fine stop from Iwakami’s free kick. Then it was Gifu’s turn to attack. Good work from Koya Kazama and the wing, and Ryan De Vries in the middle gave Shohei Mishima a great chance to score, but the Gifu-born midfielder unfortunately couldn’t keep his shot on target. Next it was De Vries’ chance after being played through, but his left foot shot was saved by Morita. Matsumoto had a couple of chances to score before the end of the game, but Gifu held firm and claimed a deserved point.

 

After the game captain Masanori Abe told DAZN “This point away from home is a big point for us. Each player put everything into this game in order to keep this clean sheet. The manager told us to try and get on the front foot, and to try and spend some time on the ball and get forward as much as possible. Ultimately, we are happy to come out of here with no goals conceded. From now, we just have to look at each game individually and we’ll go out to try and take three points from all of our remaining games - our focus is on survival in J2. The supporters were excellent, and got behind us once again, and hopefully we can reward them with a home win next week.”

Manager Takeshi Oki said: “It was great, on the way to the stadium, to see so many of our supporters - it looked like a home game. The players deserve a lot of credit for this game, they put a lot of hard work into it, and we worked a lot on defending set pieces, because we knew that is a Matsumoto strong point. The coaches can feel very happy about their work.

We didn’t win, but I think it was important not to lose. We wanted to build on the momentum gained from last week’s win (against Okayama) and not to go into another defeat spiral. In that sense, this was a good point for us."

 

Goalkeeper Victor spoke after his first clean sheet in three months: “It was a hard game, but 0-0 was probably a fair result. It was good not to concede today. We’ve trained hard and maybe the footballing Gods haven’t been on our side all the time so maybe we were due for a bit of good fortune. We have to have confidence heading into our final four games. We came here (to Matsumoto) knowing they were a strong team, but we came away with a point and if we can keep that momentum then we will have a good chance in our final games.”

 

A point away from home, against the league leaders was a very creditable result for Gifu. We hope to build on this positive result in our next game, when we face JEF United Chiba at home on Sunday.