The upturn in Sagan's fortunes and performance levels looks over, they were pretty awful in Hiroshima at the weekend and back to early season standard, they had just one attempt ITB on Saturday and looked worn out. Since September 19th , that's 18 days they will have played Marinos, Kobe, FC Tokyo, Marinos (again), Sanfrecce and now Gamba, all are amongst the top 8 clubs in the country and playing catch up fixture wise has caught up with and found out Tosu.

 

Gamba are probably the single J-league team we know best and two things always remain true about them, they play a high quality passing game and that is ingrained at the club at all team levels, from juniors upwards and they "always" come on strong through the second half of the campaign, something we have discussed multiple times. No need to go over that again, they have hit their stride now, have won their last four and the last two were a 2-1 win away to Sanfrecce which gives us a great and very recent formline and 2-0 home defeat of Kashima Antlers last weekend. Gamba have lost 6 times this season, but 5 have come in Osaka, on the road they are 6-2-1 and seem able to play with more freedom away from home.

 

A win today would take them fourth, they would then be just four points adrift of cross town rivals Cerezo and only six off second place, with (still) three games in hand of FC Tokyo. Gamba have some very talented youngsters alongside ageless Yashito Endo who is actually 40 yo and he has an incredible 782 appearance for the club, with 123 goals and 178 assists, along with 152 caps for the national team. Upfront they have  a vast array of options with Patric, Kazuma Watanabe, Ademilson and Takashi Usami all in form and scoring goals and battling for starting spots. That quintet has over 350 top flight goals between them, plus circa 225 assists. Away win.