{"id":7904,"date":"2017-02-15T15:30:13","date_gmt":"2017-02-15T15:30:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thehighertempopress.com\/?p=7904"},"modified":"2017-02-15T09:23:07","modified_gmt":"2017-02-15T09:23:07","slug":"fm17-islanders-xviii","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.thehighertempopress.com\/2017\/02\/fm17-islanders-xviii\/","title":{"rendered":"#FM17 | The Islanders XVIII"},"content":{"rendered":"

OSU!<\/p>\n

We’re all about the J1 today and, for some weird reason, I am wishing this season away. ‘Why’s that?’ someone at the back just enquired. Well, we’re not going down, we’re not going to qualify for the ACL and I doubt we’ll get past FC Tokyo in the League Cup. It feels a little like the mission of staying up has been completed ahead of schedule and we are now in the Stoke City zone of going through the motions for the rest of the season and probably finishing 9th.<\/p>\n

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That there is the current lie of the land as we near the end of the summer break. I say summer break, I don’t believe it to be an official one just that with four less teams in J1 than J2 fixtures will become way more spread out and this four week gap coincides with (a) the summer and (b) the transfer window.<\/p>\n

So yeah, we are 9th with 13 to play. Of course, we can still get relegated but I don’t believe we will. On our day, we can compete with any side in the division but our relative newness to this level has exposed a couple of times, as you can see.<\/p>\n

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That screen doesn’t do us justice – tw wins in the last nine league games sounds really bad, doesn’t it? We haven’t played that badly and in there we have drawn with the leaders Sanfrecce, the biggest club in the country in Urawa Diamonds and were seriously unlucky to come away from the match with FC Tokyo with nothing. I am seeing enough to know we have a solid base to build on for next season.<\/p>\n

As I mentioned, we are still in the League Cup where we will face Tokyo.<\/p>\n

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Generally, that group was very pleasing and the 5-0 win to get it all going was as well as we have ever played.<\/p>\n

Our performances often come down to how these boys do.<\/p>\n\r\n