Let's talk about a more interesting race. The race for Top Scorer. After last year's boring 1-man race this year is turning out to be extremely close. There are 8 games left. 14 players have > 8 goals 9 players have > 9 goals 5 players have > 10 goals 4 players have > 11 goals 1 player has > 12 goals Top 5: 1. Ryoichi Maeda 13 (6 out of 8 games left against Top 8 teams) 2. Naohiro Ishikawa 12 (4 out of 8 games left against Top 8 teams) 3. Juninho 12 (4 out of 8 games left against Top 8 teams) 4. Shinji Okazaki 12 (4 out of 8 games left against Top 8 teams) 5. Hisato Sato 11 (5 out of 8 games left against Top 8 teams) I think that Okazaki will win it.
Re: Who's gonna win it then? Part II Ishikawa seemed off the mark against FCT, but I think I'm still going to go with him.
Re: Who's gonna win it then? Part II I'd go for Maeda, his composure and experience gives him that bit of an edge over Okazaki. Won't rule out Sato though, especially with Kashiwagi's service.
I say Maeda, but basically because of Lee and Gilsinho... Still, it would be good to have a Japanese to win it.
For a while, in the middle of the season, I thought Sato would win the boot, considering how frequently he was scoring, and that it seemed like he could score from any chance. But it now looks like Sanfrecce are less spearheaded, and everyone's taking on the task of scoring goals, so he's not scoring as many, now. Attention turned pretty quickly to Ishikawa, and he hasn't disappointed my fantasy team for quite a while, so I've tipped him to take the golden boot. It could easily be Juninho or Okazaki, though, considering how they've been playing, and the teams they're up against in the upcoming fixtures.
Hiroshima vs. Shimizu coming up that could knock off one of the contendors. Unless something amazing happens where both Sato and Okazaki get hat- tricks or something similar. Ishikawa might have problems this week against Nagoya. Maeda has a good chance of getting another against the 2nd worst defense in the league (Kashiwa). While Juninho might see limited chances against a stingy Marinos defense. My bet would be that Maeda gets another this week.