St Mirren v Livi (Top 6 Showdown)

This could go a long way in securing us a top 6 spot, a win here would put us 4 pts ahead, with St Mirren having 3 games left to play before the split, and 2 of those are away to Hearts and Sevco. However a draw wouldn't be a bad result for us either, giving us the next 2 games to get a win. esp with us having the home game against St Johnstone, and depending on them not getting an unexpected result in those 2 games, we'd hopefully be 4pts clear going into the final pre split game against Utd.

Bottom line is we can't afford to lose this game, or we'd need to win away to Motherwell and at home to St Johnstone, to avoid a nervy game against Utd, and deja vu of Motherwell last season, falling at the last hurdle.

Heading through anyway, to cheer the Lions on, hopefully we have a big away support roaring the players to those 3pts. Mon the Livi Lions.

Yeah it’s a proverbial “6 pointer” which is of course nonsense but we all know it just heightens the sense of importance.

A win would be ideal and outstanding- they have been very solid at home this season - and a draw would still be decent.

With my usual doom & gloom outlook… I suspect we will have to do it the hard way

Tough game in prospect i reckon.Wouldnt be adverse to a point from this tbh.Paisley certainly not a happy hunting ground for us,but we're capable of taking something from this.Cant call the starting 11 but hopefully with whats at stake we turn up and have a real go at them.Theyl no doubt fancy their chances I suspect, but so should we.The chance is there for us to put the marker down.I sincerely hope we take it.Mon the Lions .

Paisley used to be a very happy hunting ground, it’s time to restore that trend, however we are notoriously bad at resuming after an international break.

Auld Nick wrote:Paisley used to be a very happy hunting ground, it’s time to restore that trend, however we are notoriously bad at resuming after an international break.

Aye Callum Carson posted the stats, we used to never lose in away games against them, same with them playing at Livi, think the last time we won a game there was Holt's first game as manager though.

Callum Carson
@CallumCarsonWLC
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10h
Livingston's record away to St Mirren is a classic case of bring able to spin stats whichever way you like. They've actually got a brilliant record there - just 4 defeats in 16 games. However...they've not won in their last seven.

Not an International break but we won against County after not playing for 10 days in the Cup weekend break.

Always seems to be pissing of rain when i go through there to watch us, looking awfy like it'll continue that trend tomorrow. And we usually concede a late goal and lose too, hope to feck that stops happening for this game.

Think it needs to be the same as the County game, getting an early goal and then scoring a 2nd, to have a chance of getting the 3pts. Got a feeling Bruce is scoring a goal or two, and Joel gets us another early goal, 3-1 Livi.

I can't call this one. It really could go either way as we are pretty well suited to each other this season. I'd feel slightly more confident if it was at Almondvale though since Saints have a good home record this season. I'm still annoyed at the Pittman sending off last time we played. Their guy (Baccus?) made an absolute meal of a nothing tackle which influenced the ref and the VAR guy. Mon poetic justice!
I'd take a draw.

2-0 down already with a joke of a starting line up. 3 central defenders at the back and 2 up front with Guthrie starting. Why? What has he done in his time with us to merit starting ahead of Anderson unless the latter is injured, but he’s on the bench so surely can’t be injured.

Let’s just hand the game to them… after all they are away to Hearts and Rangers we’re bound to make up for losing… yeah right.

Yeh,having seen that starting 11 gave me the fear tbh.Sincerely doubt that even Lazarous could pull this back,but what do I know.‍�.

3-0 down at HT less than half an hour to go. And there goes the top 6 sailing into the sunset… yes I know Saints have tougher games on paper ahead… but we will not win at Motherwell (they are winning at Fester Rd) which means we will need to win against St Johnstone and probably also need a result at Tannadice. So let’s just forget about the top 6 and focus on regrouping for the post split games.

I would like to point out though that this has been the first season where our manager & players have spoken about aiming for the top 6… and it looks like we have capitulated since starting to talk about it. Which just proves my usual mantra, don’t talk yourselves up, it just just sets you up for falling flat on your face.

Get this out of the way ASAP.Yes th

Get this out of the way ASAP.Yes the opptomists among us will say we're still in with a chance of top 6,and looking at the table possibly so.Our goal difference is absolutely horrendous compared to those around us,-16.At this stage of proceedings id be astonished if we pull it off.On todays evidence highly unlikely imo.Catastrophic first half,due in no uncertain terms to the starting 11 which like it or not Davie got horrendously wrong.Slight improvement in the second half but the game was gone long before that.Starting to believe my pre season expectation of 8th is looking gainable.Although my arse is squeeking even on that eventuality. Opportunity lost again Mr Penrice Dissapointing. .

Auld Nick wrote:2-0 down already with a joke of a starting line up. 3 central defenders at the back and 2 up front with Guthrie starting. Why? What has he done in his time with us to merit starting ahead of Anderson unless the latter is injured, but he’s on the bench so surely can’t be injured.

Let’s just hand the game to them… after all they are away to Hearts and Rangers we’re bound to make up for losing… yeah right.

Troy wrote:Yeh,having seen that starting 11 gave me the fear tbh.Sincerely doubt that even Lazarous could pull this back,but what do I know.‍�.

Martindale overthinking it again and playing it safe going for a draw by the looks of it. The 3 CB's just didn't work, neither did Guthrie and Nouble up front, launching long balls up to them, biggest disappointment for me though, was his refusal to change things when game plan A had clearly gone out the window at 2-0, by 3-0 we were in drastic need of ripping it up and going for a formation and team that would get us back in the game, Montano, Bradley, Kelly and Anderson should've been subbed on at HT.

We did start the 2nd half well and almost got a goal back with Montano heading down to the bottom corner, but it was finger tipped away. We then had another good chance and were piling it on, but one of those needed to go in for us to get back into the game and the fans to get behind the players. Nouble broke through on goal too but somehow blasted it high and wide. Really don't know why we left Anderson on the bench till 71 mins, totally baffled by Martindale's reluctance to changing something that just hadn't worked.

The VAR hand balls were frustratingly long, esp the first one, it was a clear hand ball for both, no arguments there, but de Lucas looked like he had pulled his arm away behind him trying to get it out of the way when it hit his arm, can only imagine VAR had a big discussion on whether it was deliberate and in a position to give the pen, imo it wasn't a penalty, but when Beaton went over you knew he was giving it. Holt's looked more straight forward, his hands were high and asking to be hit. Ridiculous length of time to make that first decision though. I don't think the VAR shambles before the International break helped us in this game, after they got so much flak for missing that Killie hand balls pen i think VAR went back to just giving every hand ball as a pen no matter what. I really don't think de Lucas would've been given before last week.

Annoying that we've had 3 chances to put the top 6 to bed and every time we've lost, Aberdeen, Hibs and now St Mirren, this was without a doubt the worst one though as we totally shit going for a win and just tried not to lose, a mindset that always comes a cropper, just ask Hearts fans when they lost the league to Celtic in the last day how playing for a draw works.

Going to the wire now, i wont even bother talking about our chances till after i see how we do against Motherwell, we'd need to win that game to get us back in pole position, and that's depending on other results going our way too.

I'm a glutton for punishment, gonna go through to that game too, must need my head examined.

Thank fech I'm heading down to Newcastle on Thursday for my annual jolly with the lads.More on that to come.Il go with the well trodden asumelate that we always do things the hard way.But on this occasion il reserve my judgement till I get back.Piss poor today and a huge opportunity lost.Gutted.

First off Hearts didn’t play for a draw at Dens Park, they had a few chances at 0-0 one of which went agonisingly wide of the post after bobbling on a rough bit of pitch. Then as time ticked down with the knowledge that Celtic had overturned the GD by half time, the nerves were jangling, when Dundee scored with 7 mins left the heads dropped and that was that, the second goal killing any lingering hope.

The penalties today… just saw the highlights… both definitely hit arms but both were extremely short distance between the last touch by a Saint and the ball hitting the arm. Neither player moved their arms towards the ball and in bygone years would have been “ball to hand rather than hand to ball” - yes Holt’s arms are up above his head but when they went up the ball’s trajectory was actually downwards and it didn’t shoot upwards until it hit the Saints player that Holt was challenging. In my opinion neither should have been penalties but by the current interpretation of the law they both are.

We have seen it all before, whenever we have a chance to get ourselves in pole position we fail to do so.

Arithmetically we still have a chance of top 6 but I think we have blown it.

We never do things the easy way do we. A win at Motherwell would go a long way to making up for that freak last minute winner last season that cost us the top six. But we all know what we're like at Fir Park. They got a penalty this season too that VAR would have denied. I'm sick of VAR. We are never on the right side of it - the Kelly penalty claim being a case in point. The joys of being a Livi fan eh.

I think it's going to the last pre split game again, unless we beat both Motherwell and St Johnstone, and i don't think that's likely. Motherwell are just 2 wins away from going above us, and yet again we're in a position to see them off opening the gap to 9pts, or them closing it to 3pts, though i don't think Martindale will be so defeatist as to be looking at that and doing another overthinking it masterclass in fecking it up again.

Just get our best formation and player selection to go out and win the game, and don't start trying to nullify Van Veen & any of the other Motherwell players, instead just concentrate on our own goal threats, and play them.

Absolutely right LF, play to our strengths not the strengths of the opposition.

Liviforever wrote:

I don't think the VAR shambles before the International break helped us in this game, after they got so much flak for missing that Killie hand balls pen i think VAR went back to just giving every hand ball as a pen no matter what. I really don't think de Lucas would've been given before last week.

Just to go back to what i said earlier, after seeing the Ross County game and Celtic getting a hand ball pen, yep, they've gone back to giving every single hand ball as a penalty, because that one was never a pen and wouldn't have been given a couple of weeks ago. Well unless it was for Sevco. I just hope we get a few now too, and we can actually score from the spot.

Yes, my fear is that Van Veen will be the equivalent of Adam Rooney in Martindale's head and the whole approach will be to nullify him. That didn't work in the league cup final and it is unlikely to work here. Let's just play to our strengths picking the best 11 we have and stop overthinking.

Yeah the problem with this nullifying their attack is it's always to the detriment of our own attack. We're playing not to concede and hoping to nick a goal, and seeing it out for a 1-0 win. Or just finishing 0-0.

However if we do concede we haven't the players on the pitch to get back into the game. Only time we should even think about setting up like that is against the erse cheeks, where going toe to toe would be suicide.

Liviforever wrote:I'm a glutton for punishment, gonna go through to that game too, must need my head examined.

Didn’t go to Paisley but got tickets for this one despite the result… last time I was at Fir Park McFadden ripped us to shreds in 6–2 hammering. At least there’s a Tim Horton’s nearby to drown my sorrows with a decent coffee