Livi v Motherwell

Could be doing with a win here, was great getting the monkey off our back for our first league win of the season, and in an away game, but we've not had one since and are having a bit too many draws, need to start turning those into wins.

Saying all that, Motherwell are not the team we manage wins over, though we usually draw with them at home, so can see another draw coming our way. They're looking better than us too, but so were St Mirren and we almost pulled off a win there, so lets pull off a surprise win here and lift us up to 10pts.

Motherwell seem to have hit a bit of a slump in terms of results, hopefully that continues but I rather expect it won’t

I like your positive spin on them hitting a slump Nick, but they just played the top 3 teams, and narrowly lost to all 3 of them, Celtic scoring after Motherwell equalised in the 5th min of ET too. Compared to us drawing with St Mirren and losing 3 zip and 4 zip to the cheeks. Put up a lot better showing to the cheeks but i suppose we're a point better off than them against the same 3 opponents, and that's all that counts.

There you've got me around to your way of thinking, i think we swapped places there for a minute.

They are a bit of a bogey team for us and with Don Robertson and Greig Aitken the ref and VAR ref I suspect there will be no favours handed our way.

No easy game,and this is another in that category. The wait goes on for us to get back to Winning ways.Suspect it won't be Saturday against a good Well team.Devlin and Montano have been huge misses for us recently,can't wait to get them.Once again id take a point if only to keep our heads above the paraphet,although 3 would probably take us into the top six,its so tight.Anyway as always get intea them Livi..

You must be on cloud 9 with the way things are going on Tyneside Troy… what a performance and result tonight

Morning Nick.Yeh,man for man they played PSG off the pitch.No mean feat considering the opposition.Il be back down to see them early next year,can't wait.Special times in Tyneside indeed Magnificent.🤍.

I’ve been a couple of times, the first time they lost to Man City 1-0 with M’Penza scoring second time was 3-1 win over Spurs, Shearer bagged a pen but I can’t remember much more but the atmosphere was tremendous.

Best I experienced though was watching Leeds beat Exeter 2-0 back when they were third tier, Elland Road was sold out, first day of the season, Snoddy was immense that day. I think Leeds got promoted that season too.

Sorry guys hijacked the thread a bit…

Looking forward to seeing a game tomorrow but still not confident we can get much out of it. DM talking about how it’s been a great week of training and getting info into the players. So no doubt there is a tactical masterplan… and we all know how they usually turn out. Still, we can but hope that after the game we all have smiling faces whether we’re ganging doon the Scotswood Road to see the Blaydon Races or not.

As opposed to gannin doon the Scotswood Road to see the Blaydon Races Nick,il settle for jiggin up the Boulevard wea 3 points tomorrow. St James Park can wait🤍.I'll get ma coat..

Are you no able to talk to someone at Newcastle about loaning us a good young player or two Troy. Preferably a decent striker.

Great Idea L/F.Il give Eddie a call and see if he can help us out.🤍.

That lad Callum Wilson, he’s not playing every week for them… we could maybe let him play every week for us eh?

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Morning troops.Not looking good out there.Hopefully club make an early decision as to wether this game goes ahead.Can imagine the seeth from Well fans and ours if they leave it late.‍�.

All weather pitch, blah blah blah etc.

The grassy bit across the road i take my dogs to for their business before i go to bed was waterlogged, and it hasn't stopped all morning, just know this will be called off. Hopefully if it gets to 5 mins before KO the ref wont do what he did when we played Aberdeen, coming out to do a bounce test over in a puddle and call it off.

Firstly let me say that was a very important 3 points.
Secondly let me say it was a turgid game.
First half Motherwell weren’t interested in attacking and we were inept at it.
Anderson underhit the pass to Mackay which caused the Motherwell lad to trip him for the red card.
For me that was a pity because I’d like to have seen Mackay 1 on 1 with Kelly.
I feared the sending off would make Motherwell even more defensive.
At half time I also said why are we not giving Mackay the chance to attack his full back and see what he can do, because everything, as always, was going through a largely ineffective Nouble.
We finally did that, he skinned his opponent with ease and fired in the low cross for Anderson to finish in typical style. Our first bit of decent play and we score but from a Motherwell point of view it was poor defending, as was the penalty. The pen itself was well taken.
Don’t know why the second pen was changed to a free kick because to my mind it was clearly in the box and if there was a foul outside the box first who cares? Holt continued until being felled inside the box so surely the advantage law means he can carry on and the only foul that matters is in the box?

I also knew DM would take Anderson & Mackay off before the end.

All in all, we deserved the win but it wasn’t a great watch.

On a day like this we were never likely to see a lot of silky football, it was a good solid 2nd half performance against 10 men, we've seen games where we have the man advantage force the other team to put everyone behind the ball, and be difficult to break down, but once we scored it forced Motherwell to wake up and come at us, which suited us, having the man advantage.

MacKay doing what Nouble needs to be doing again, driving down the wing hitting the byeline, and getting a ball across the line. It is where Bruce is most likely to score, Pitts loves those typ of goals too. The difference between MacKay and Nouble is, MacKay likes to jump on a mistake and make runs into space, whereas Nouble stops and invites players to come at him before making a run, drawing them in to outmuscle them and dribbling past. It hasn't been that affective for him this season though and i prefer MacKay's style.

Anyway great 3pts, making a big difference in us looking up and not down the table, brightens up our season hitting double figures and having played the erse cheeks we've a few games against teams we can take pts from.

Good game management for a change, seeing it out comfortably too.

Just back,Hic.Yeh,agree with your collective sentiments.Tried to give both sets of supporters info as to wether the game would go ahead as per usual i was at the Stadium at 12pm.Nothing from the club as usual so was sitting on tenderhooks for 3 hours. Thankfully the game went ahead.For me the sending off affected the game no doubt. But the thing that impressed me was the game management to see this out.Looking forward to seeing the highlights just to ease my concerns about the various incidents during a game where we imo deserved to win that game.On a footnote,the booing from a section of our support when Bruce was subbed left a bad taste in the mouth,and it wasn't due to the overpriced Tikka pies on offer.Its a team game,but suspect there's no pleasing some of our demanding support. And to finish, leave Noubs alone.He did what he had to do and imo.Yeh,he's not firing on all cylinders but leave him out at your peril.Incidently,thought Pitts was outstanding today as were a few others.Rant over.Im sure like me you will have an enjoyable weekend, doesn't happen often,but on this case I'm sure we will..

As I said a great 3 points and we deserved to win but I’m not buying that it was a good performance. We were a little better than a very poor Motherwell who for some reason thought they had to play us as if we were one of the so called big boys, by putting as many as possible behind the ball and then breaking out to no effect.
Shamal could have spent most of the game in the stands beside us such was Motherwell’s threat. The only time he really had to do something was the audacious free kick when for some reason he was miles out of position but he tipped it over the bar easily. I said we weren’t much better than them and I think the evidence of that is I don’t remember Kelly having to do much either except pick the ball out of the net twice. Yes we tried to play but we were largely ineffective, and yes we got a clean sheet but none of the defence broke sweat. We saw the game out comfortably but why were Noobs and Guthrie taking it into the corner with 5 mins left? They gave it away in that incident too.

Our first goal was the best bit of play all game, the pen was as a result of a completely stupid challenge by Mugabi and seeing it on the highlights last night, he should have been sent off, and I still think the second possible pen should be a pen… Holt’s front foot as he runs is in the box and his trailing leg is admittedly outside but surely if one foot is in the box it’s a pen?

As i also said, the conditions didn't help any, and i can't remember many games against Motherwell where we play them off the park, only one recent performance i can think of was the 1-0, where we absolutely bossed it and should've been 3 or 4 up, also almost conceded right at the end when they hit the post, which would've been  undeserved. Anyway, who cares, we won a much needed 3pts and kept a clean sheet, good day at the office and brightens up the misserable rain soaked weekend.

That's the first time Motherwell have had a bad performance in 8 games, even losing by a single goal against both cheeks they played 'well', maybe have to credit Martindale and the players for Motherwell being poor? No doubt they'll blame it on the pitch though, the usual scapegoat when teams lose to us at the Spaghettihad.

MacKay looks like he can cause teams problems down the wing, plenty pace and has an end product on him, looking forward to seeing him getting more starts.

The conditions didn’t help, I agree, bottom line for me was getting the win. I don’t think we can credit us for them playing badly cos I didn’t think we played that well ourselves.

I would disagree on us not having played Motherwell off the park relatively recently. We have been mugged by them snatching flukey equalisers and wins at the Vale often enough in recent seasons when we have dominated the game, so much so that I was only confident of a draw when we went 2 up.

Having said all I have, I have to admit I’d take winning every week playing poorly over playing well and losing.

Good result between St Johnstone and Aberdeen, keeping us in 6th place. Interesting looking now, 2 weeks ago i wouldn't have given us any chance of being above Aberdeen, or catching up with Motherwell, and being anywhere near top 6. Hopefully we can beat Killie in our next game and keep this going.

We'll see where we are after playing Killie, Dundee and Hearts, all 3 games are winnable for us, even keeping the unbeaten run going against teams outside the cheeks would do, a couple of wins and a draw would be pretty good.