Livi v Dundee

About time we beat this mob, in both our previous encounters they haven't looked better than us, Montano being sent off was the difference in the home game, and dear knows how we lost in the away game, we were the better looking team. Hopefully their defeat against Hearts after throwing away a 2-0 lead will have deflated them going into this game too.

We desperately need to get a win if we're going to get ourselves off the bottom of the table, County are in turmoil with their barmy manager not wanting to be there, a win would start things rolling for us. Mon the Lions, lets do this.

Yeah, our position doesn’t foster confidence but we’re only 2 wins off the pace. I wasn’t at the away game but thought we were far better than them at the ‘Vale, until the red card and them capitalising on it knocked us down.

Get the right players in their right positions and get stuck in about them.

Glad the court case shenanigans are over,for now anyway.Can get back to onfeild issues of which there are many.Call me cinical but I'd already givin up on our aim of staying in this league.However typical Livi giving us hope false or not that somehow we could turn this around.As for Saturday, another must win game for us against a team whove done reasonably well so far despite capitulation against the Jambos after blowing a 2 goal lead.Would love Davie to start with Anderson and Macky up front and have a real go at them.Dont know about the injuries situation, but hopefully we can put out the strongest starting 11 and see where it takes us.You never know,it might just work‍�.

I guess I am stating the obvious but we need to win this.

orco wrote:I guess I am stating the obvious but we need to win this.

Yep.

I thought we were a tad unfortunate to be behind at the break, both teams had some decent passages of play. Unfortunately, rank awful defending presented them with the chance to shoot and their lad took it well. No chance for McGovern but it should have been cleared long before the chance occurred. Compound that with yet another penalty miss although for the life of me I’ve got no idea why. I thought the push on Holt was outside the box and saw nothing else to merit it…and not one person claimed it. Also, why did the ref give it without reviewing it at the monitor?

Last week the pen miss seemed to be the catalyst for us to get back into the game but this week we seemed to lose our way.

Second half was again fairly even until more appalling play by our defenders (particularly Nottingham)gifted them the second.
McCowan stupidly gets himself a second yellow and they go down to 10 men.
Nouble then wins a second pen and looked more like the player we enjoyed last season. Yengi tucked it away having looked like a fish out of water prior to that. Now you’re thinking “we have a chance now” only for more calamitous defending immediately after the restart allows them to get a third. Then comes the 4th where McGovern doesn’t exactly instill any confidence that he can improve our last line of defence.

Thankfully Ross lost as well so we have a chance to close the gap on them on Tuesday but that one really is the last chance saloon. Right now I’d say we are going down but win on Tuesday and we give ourselves a chance. Sadly, I do not foresee that outcome.

Would love to share your opptomism Nick.Deep down we all knew this was going to be inevitable eventually. Tuesday seems a dead rubber imo.Today was so important. Weve been put unfortunately in our place.Simply not good enough for the top table.Wee chance of some extra cash at Firhill, but thats about it for me.Youve covered todays game top notch.Just to say,how poor the bottom 6 are at the moment makes it all the more galling to find ourselves in our current position..Been good,but can't wait for this season to finish. ‍�.

Yeah you summed it up really well Nick. Just wish we had a keeper that pulled off the odd save, and not just a regular save you'd expect him to make.

First goal was a mix up between defender and keeper, ball was going to our keeper and the defender (can't remember who) kicked it away and landed at a Dundee player. 2nd goal was another defensive mistake, Nottingham fucking up and losing the ball, 3rd was a complete joke from a long ball, where 3 of our players couldn't outmuscle a Dundee player, by the 4th i had completely lost all hope with our defending. Like you said Nick, and Martindale saying the same, there was good passages of play but our defending is killing us.

Ok watched sportscene, wanted to see if our defending was as bad as i thought.

1st goal Penrice should've either booted it into touch or knocked it back to the keeper, instead knocked it into the path of the goal scorer.

2nd goal, McCowan should actually have had a 2nd yellow for clapping the ref when he got booked, but gets away with it and scores after Nottingham gives the ball away in our half.

3rd was poor defending from a long ball straight up the pitch, but should've been a foul on Penrice for a blatant push with 2 hands on his back, if that was up the other end it would've been another penalty.

4th might've been offside for a player jumping up to avoid the shot, in an offside position.

All in all could easily have been a 2-2 draw, but between dodgy ref decisions, us missing another pen, and shite defending, we got gubbed.

Positives.

Good ball across from Bradley that MacKay narrowly missed, Nouble looking his old self getting into the box and winning a pen (more of this please). Some decent passages of play including a great through ball from Anderson to MacKay which their keeper managed to block running outside his box.

If we could just tighten up in defence we'd have a chance in games.

The problem at the top end is we have to work like bears to get a chance and because they are few and far between our guys don’t have enough chances to actually bury one purely on the law of averages. And we are gash at penalties (wasn’t that long ago we were winning penalty shoot outs by scoring all 5)

The problem at the back is that our opposition don’t have to work very hard to get chances as we are gifting them.

Combine the two and it’s got relegation written all over it.

Where is the team that beat Hibs at Fester Rd so comfortably?

I know it's all ifs' and buts but I think if we had scored that penalty the outcome of the game would have been so different. Instead of defending deep and trying to hit us on the break Dundee might have come out a bit allowing us to create more chances. It would also have boosted the lads' confidence as our equaliser did last week. But sadly that's been the story of our season and why we are where we are.
Defensive errors apart I thought we played ok. Anyone who watched the game would have said there were not 3 goals difference.
The fates have not been on our side this season. A club with our limited resources needs to get the rub of the green a bit more often than we have so far. But c'est la vie.
A word on the referee - he obviously hadn't got the memo from HQ telling him that every 50/50 ball was to go to Dundee. Some of his decisions were strange but for the most part they were equally strange for both sides.
PS Myself and the folk around me were saying they'd rather we got the free kick instead of the first penalty even before it was taken. Nae point getting all these penalties if we keep missing. Time wee Kelly or Bradley took one. They can be no worse that the rest.

For a professional club our penalty record is embarrassing. At least Shinnie made the keeper work this week. We kicked on a bit last week when he hit the post but this week it seemed to knock us down.

I agree that there weren’t 3 goals between the sides in terms of play and possession but by the same token with the number of times they capitalised on individual errors we got off lightly, cos if they had taken any chances they created for themselves it would have been worse… that said they didn’t really make too many of their own as McGovern didn’t really have a lot to do.

Wont get us the pts back but he's right, Penrice was pushed in the back, and VAR is meant to check the phase of play leading up to a goal, and the player who assisted the 3rd goal was well on his way in our half before the ball was even kicked. What is the point of VAR when it misses something so obvious as encroachment from KO that led to their goal.

Davie Martindale has revealed that Livingston will submit an official complaint to the Scottish FA over VAR after claiming the officials got two major decisions wrong in Saturday’s defeat to Dundee

The Lions boss is adamant that Lions defender James Penrice was shoved by Michael Mellon in the build up to Zach Robinson restoring the Dark Blues’ two goal lead in the visitor’s 4-1 win. And he also claims that Mellon had encroached in Livingston’s half as the game restarted just moments after Tete Yengi got Livingston back into the clash from the penalty spot.