What a time to be alive! These are certainly heady days for fans of Shimizu S-Pulse, who are gearing up for three massive clashes in just seven days.

The first takes them to a sold-out National Stadium in Tokyo, where one of Japan's most popular clubs will be looking to see off Oita Trinita in the League Cup final. "Kokuritsu" will be a sea of orange with more than 30,000 S-Pulse fans expected to turn out in the capital, but with Shimizu red-hot favourites to claim the title, coach Kenta Hasegawa will do well to dampen some of the euphoria currently surrounding his team.

Any suggestions that this will be a mere walk in the park should be dispelled by memories of Shimizu's opening day home defeat to Oita Trinita in the J. League this season. That spelled a catastrophic start to the new campaign for S-Pulse, but for Oita it set off a fairytale run that is yet to cease, with the Kyushu side not only qualifying for the League Cup final - they are also sitting fourth in the table, just two points behind league leaders Kashima Antlers with four games to go.

Oita's chances of winning a first ever trophy have been cruelled by a suspension to influential midfielder Shingo Suzuki for this match. Worse still for coach Pericles is that goalkeeper Shusaku Nishikawa has not recovered from injury in time to take his place between the posts, while fellow Beijing Olympian Masato Morishige is also suffering from injury, meaning that Oita could start the League Cup final missing arguably their three most important players. Much will rest on the young shoulders of midfielder Mu Kanazaki who has been the driving force of the Oita attack for most of the campaign.

Travelling up to Sendagaya could prove problematic for S-Pulse fans given that seemingly half of Shizuoka is planning to decamp to the National Stadium, but spare a thought for Oita supporters - who have probably left for the game by now - with barely enough seats on JAL and ANA airlines between the two to accommodate those wishing to fly up to the main island of Honshu for Oita's big day out. 

As if one Cup outing wasn't exciting enough, S-Pulse are back in action on Wednesday evening, this time in the Emperor's Cup. There'll be no repeat of Shimizu's nail-biting penalty shoot-out win over the students of Meiji University in the fourth round last season - no sir, this time it's the big guns coming to town, as Alex Miller brings top flight outfit JEF United down from Chiba to the atmospheric Nihondaira Stadium. Both clubs must have sighed a collective groan of disbelief to have been drawn against each other - particularly as the two also meet at Nihondaira in the penultimate round of the league campaign - but only one will progress to the fifth round of the Cup and a chance to claim a coveted place in the newly cashed-up AFC Champions League next season.  

If S-Pulse fans weren't already frothing at the mouth at the prospect of these two clashes, they'll be suffering from severe heart palpitations come next Saturday when Shimizu make the seventy kilometre trip down to Ecopa Stadium to take on bitter local rivals Jubilo Iwata in the fabled Shizuoka derby. S-Pulse fans are still revelling in the glory of last season's double over Jubilo, but the hero from those fixtures is long gone, with Cho Jae-Jin these days not endearing himself to K-League fans by missing open goals for his new club Jeonbuk Hyundai Motors.

The big South Korean will always be a legend around these parts, but S-Pulse fans can't afford to dwell in the past, and they've already played Jubilo three times this season as the two clubs drew 1-1 in front of a full house at Nihondaira Stadium in the league. They met again in the League Cup group stage, with S-Pulse crushing Jubilo 4-2 at Nihondaira, only to be on the end of a 2-0 defeat at Yamaha Stadium in the final group game.

Kenta Hasegawa will hope that his team is not punch-drunk given the critical fixture list come November 8, but with Jubilo Iwata sitting second-from-bottom in the league and Dutch coach Hans Ooft desperate to drag the Shizuoka giants to safety, this will be a bitterly contested clash with more than 40,000 fans expected to pile in to the windswept Ecopa Stadium to witness it.

All to play for, then, for Shimizu S-Pulse and fans of the popular seaside club will hope that it doesn't end in tears in seven days time.

On a quick personal note, I hope you guys are digging the new banner and profile pic I've come up with as a means of increasing readership from more than just that Mongolian yak herder and the Obscure Leagues Of The World fanclub in the Faroe Islands. I had a thousand monkeys working for a thousand years on a thousand typewriters to come up with that one (but seriously, cheers to Soul Rebel for the professional-looking banner and my old mate Rieper for the life-like portrait). Hold on to your hats, guys, I can feel a Pulitzer prize coming on here. 

After his venomous left-foot free-kick against Kawasaki Frontale helped propel JEF United to the League Cup quarter-finals, Australian defender Eddy Bosnar scored an even more important goal for the Chiba outfit this weekend... particularly as JEF United were knocked out of the League Cup at the quarter-final stage last week.

Despite propping up the J. League table bottom club JEF United out-fought and out-enthused league leaders Kashima Antlers in a 3-1 victory at a packed Fukuda Denshi Arena, with the much-travelled Bosnar - once on the books at Everton - opening the scoring with all the subtlety of a sledgehammer, as he smashed home an unerring left-foot free-kick just minutes before half-time. His goal was the lanky defender's first in the league, although in a game of high drama it was barely even the pick of the bunch, as United's talismanic front-man Seiichiro Maki chimed in with two superbly taken headers to give fans in Chiba renewed hope that their team can launch an improbable escape from the drop.

Ex-Liverpool first team coach Alex Miller will no doubt forgive Bosnar his former Everton connections, with Bosnar's Glaswegian tactician praising his side's efforts for the victory against the defending league champions, before pointing out that "it's only one win." Indeed the three points weren't even enough to lift United above second-from-bottom Consadole Sapporo in the standings, and with Yokohama F. Marinos also winning this weekend, things are looking increasingly bleak at the bottom for both JEF United and Consadole Sapporo.

Losing in the League Cup quarter-finals to Nagoya Grampus last week was an added blow for a team that won back-to-back League Cup titles in 2005 and 2006. To add insult to injury United were drawn away at fellow J1 club Shimizu S-Pulse in the Emperor's Cup this year, with a Fourth Round trip to Nihondaira Stadium hardly the easy draw fans were craving this November. By then United may have already said goodbye to top-flight football, as one of only six J. League teams to feature in every season in the Japanese first division looks set for life in J2 next year. They'll need a few more goals from Eddy Bosnar to avoid that fate, but for now the Chiba Dogs are no doubt basking in the glory of one of the most unexpected wins of the season.

JEF United have hired former Rangers star and Liverpool first team coach Alex Miller to take over as coach of the J. League's bottom club.

Presumably United have kept Miller more up-to-date than they did the departed Josip Kuze, who claimed that he was unaware United had sold their five best players before he took over as coach in January.

The Chiba side are already ten points adrift of safety even at this early stage of the season, and they need a drastic change of fortunes if they are to climb out of the J. League basement.

While the question remains as to just how much Miller knows about Japanese football - and why he would even give up a comfortable job with Liverpool to take over an outfit that look destined for the drop, a more pertinent question has been raised over at the always amusing Soilent Green. Just how responsible is the JEF United front office for the Chiba club's current plight? The answer appears to be 'very.'

Verdy fans more than most might question JEF United's hiring policy. Yet more than poor player recruitment, it has been some baffling off-field decisions that have seemingly crippled the 2005 and 2006 League Cup champions.

Tadashi Karai's reward for dragging the once-mightiest club in Japanese football into the depths of J2 in his role as General Manager, was to seal a move from Tokyo Verdy to a JEF United side that was once touted as genuine title challenger.

Yet United's most damaging move was surely installing the inexperienced Amar Osim as coach, following his father Ivica Osim's decision to take over as coach of Japan after the World Cup in 2006. When Osim Jr took United to within an inch of relegation last season, he was stoutly defended by the United back room staff - to the point that defender Ilian Stoyanov was sacked for speaking out against the hapless Bosnian. But after defending Osim Jr for months - and even seeing him keep the Chiba Dogs in the top flight by the skin of their teeth, United then chose to sack Osim Jr after the final game of the season... just two weeks after his father had suffered a life-threatening stroke.

Then came the bizarre post-match interviews after United's most recent 3-0 loss to Urawa Reds, with new coach Josip Kuze insisting that JEF United had pledged their full support to him. Kuze, at least according to his version of events, had even been lining up reinforcements for his struggling side. Yet less than 24 hours later the Croatian was shown the door.

It's a sorry state of affairs for a club that enjoys some of the more passionate support in the league. Unless Alex Miller can pull the proverbial rabbit out of his hat, he could be the next high-profile foreign coach to take the fall for the Chiba Dogs' bumbling bureaucrats behind the scenes.