Championship Expectations (2017/18)

If we'd managed to hang onto Buchanan i'd be pretty optimistic of us challenging for 4th place for the play offs, but it wasn't to be. We've got a good keeper signed (at last) and our defence is solid, cracking midfield, but a bit light up front with Mullen being our main goal threat. Carrick is yet to feature though so hoping he'll chip in with 8+ and Mullen can get 15+ goals, with the midfield scoring a few too.

I don't think mid table is beyond of our capability, i'd be pretty happy if we could finish 5 or 6 points above 9th place in a group of 3 teams in 8th, 7th & 6th place.

I'll wait till our Betred cup games before making a stab at where I think we'll be though. If Carrick can partner Mullen up front and be the goal threat we're needing then things should look a bit brighter.

8th and we've had a good season IMO.

I have no current expectations for this season and probably wont until we're about five games in.

Too many variables I'm afraid.

Would happily take 8th all day along. We seem to have some degree of stability off the field coming into this season, I think that will play a large factor in how the squad copes during numerous defeats etc.

Surely to Christ, Dumbarton will finish in the bottom two this season. Please.

I think i'll have to wait till next week before posting my early season expectation, it'll depend on whether Mullen is still here and if not, who we replace him with.

Still think we're another good striker away from being a mid-table side. That's assuming Peters/Mackin don't turn out to be very good though.


Like the look of that team, I just hope the options we have from the bench are capable of producing something if we're chasing the game. Saying all that though I haven't been to any of the pre-season games so not sure if my pessimism is misplaced, have to wait and see. Excited for the season though, good to be going into it without all the backstage drama going on.

Mullin/Knox and Lithgow have featured heavily in pre season games,  De Vita on the other side too but Longridge was recovering from an op an has just caught the last couple of games to get some game time under his belt. Haven't seen Cadden or Crighton in any of them.

Knox has actually looked pretty good, i'd expect him to start if he's stiill here.

Liviforever wrote:Mullin/Knox and Lithgow have featured heavily in pre season games,  De Vita on the other side too but Longridge was recovering from an op an has just caught the last couple of games to get some game time under his belt. Haven't seen Cadden or Crighton in any of them.

Knox has actually looked pretty good, i'd expect him to start if he's stiill here.

Crighton was wandering around in a tracksuit at the Killie game; Cadden was in the stand for the Motherwell game.

As of now, my expectations are that we will give a good go at competing in this division.

Where will we finish? Anyone's guess but we will need to start hitting the rigging & shutting the back door if we want to be higher than 9th.

I expect Brechin to be 10th & Dumbarton & Morton (given the way they ended last season) to be at the wrong end of the table. Splitting those two would do for me, anything higher would be excellent.

One wee bonus so far is that Dunfermline's preseason results have been worse than ours.

Bertie Bassett wrote:One wee bonus so far is that Dunfermline's preseason results have been worse than ours.

We've played four teams with a budget significantly above us and generally are considered considerable better. However in all four games we've competed and given as good as we've got. The Sunderland team in particular is valued on paper as being in the region of £100 million.

Yes; we haven't scored but the team have had their chances; we nearly scored within the first two minutes last night for example.

If our pre-season friendlies had been against Whitehall welfare; Linithgow Rose; Bathgate Thistle and Bo'Ness we may well have won all the games but what would that have proved?

Unfortunately if Cardiff do stump up an offer will they offer more that £100k?

I agree, which is why I used the word "results".

I have only seen two Dunfermline results, they lost 4-0 at Hibs & 3-0 at Raith. I have no idea whether they played well or were outclassed. Their results are worse than ours.

The downside to our results is that we have lost 4 games without scoring, it might start to affect confidence levels. Hopefully the fact we seem, by all accounts, to have competed & lived with the opposition for large portions of each game will be enough to balance that out & keep confidence up.

You can only take about 60 minutes from the pre season games, after that all the changes got made and it was a completely different game. Against Hearts it was a dodgy goal that didn't look in, Motherwell and Sunderland there was only one goal in it too before numerous players came on, esp the Sunderland game with Maley gifting the goals. Wasn't at the Killie game but also seems there was little in it. We came close to scoring in all the games, but it would've been nice to score. Good thing about the Betfred cup is we'll have 2 League One teams to play, so should get goals in those games, esp against Airdrie.

Durnford wrote:

Liviforever wrote:Mullin/Knox and Lithgow have featured heavily in pre season games,  De Vita on the other side too but Longridge was recovering from an op an has just caught the last couple of games to get some game time under his belt. Haven't seen Cadden or Crighton in any of them.

Knox has actually looked pretty good, i'd expect him to start if he's stiill here.

Crighton was wandering around in a tracksuit at the Killie game; Cadden was in the stand for the Motherwell game.

Neither have been in the pre season games though, or even on the team sheet, you'd think they must be injured or it would be very strange. Longridge and a new signing from East Fife got ops on injuries just after the season finished and are back training, Jacko even got some game time in the last 2 games, Carrick too has had half an hour in the last couple of games after not playing in the first 2 games. Toddy only missed the Hearts game, must be something in the deal where he can't play against them, even in a friendly.

I think Crighton and Cadden have been injured.

After what I've seen over the past couple of weeks a feeling of hope and optimism has risen in m and others but is it unreasonable to think we could possibly make the play-offs this season?

In a season with reportedly big spending St Mirren; Falkirk who are always there or there abouts; Dunfermline who have been dipping in and out of the transfer market; Dundee United who must get promoted this season else there in deep financial do-do; even ICT who will be desperate to bounce back is getting into the top four an unreasonable expectation.

Even temporarily ignoring the likes of Morton and QoS this is going to be a tough league.

Probably we won't have a good idea of things for another month of so but I still ask myself "can we really do it?"

If we had someone like Andy Ryan up front then i'd say yes, we'd def be in with a great chance of a top 4 place, but I still think we are light up front and will finish mid table. I can see us drawing quite a few games because we're not scoring enough goals but wont concede many either.

I like how Hoppy is keeping a low profile saying 8th would be like winning the league for us, well played sir. Nobody is even looking at us as a threat, I think we'll surprise a lot of teams and are dark horses flying under the radar just now. We're expected to be down struggling with Brechin but I think we'll be comfortably in mid table and maybe just outside the promotion play offs.

orco wrote:I think Crighton and Cadden have been injured.

I had forgotten Cadden got an injury to his neck/shoulder just before the season finished, when he was knocked over and landed awkwardly, hopefully he's back soon, he's a game changer when on form.

Dislocated shoulder

Obviously i cant comment on the last five games as iv just returned from my holidays.The impression im getting however is that weve done really well against better quality opposition than we will be used to over the coming campaigne.If it was Hopkins doing to arrange this pre season against such higher opposition than ourselves then all kudos to him for arranging such a tough test for the Lions.Great to see Neil back however as i highlighted before i went away i sincerely hope the lack of quality we have up front doesnt hinder our chances to hopefully consolidate our place back in this division.Its gonna be a long hard season ahead but early signs are reasonably promising.Expectations=Consolidation.Its good to be back.T.

Liviforever wrote:If we had someone like Andy Ryan up front then i'd say yes, we'd def be in with a great chance of a top 4 place, but I still think we are light up front and will finish mid table. I can see us drawing quite a few games because we're not scoring enough goals but wont concede many either.

I like how Hoppy is keeping a low profile saying 8th would be like winning the league for us, well played sir. Nobody is even looking at us as a threat, I think we'll surprise a lot of teams and are dark horses flying under the radar just now. We're expected to be down struggling with Brechin but I think we'll be comfortably in mid table and maybe just outside the promotion play offs.

Not changed my opinion much since this post, we're still light up front with goal scorers but everyone else is chipping in and it has gotten us to 4th place. Whether we can keep that going or not we'll just have to wait and see. We did start off drawing games, which I expected, but it was games we could've/should've won, so that was disappointing, however we've got better towards the end of the first quarter and won 3 games on the bounce now.

I still like how Hoppy, and our players, are keeping a low profile on expectations, and letting their results do the talking. Pars, Buddies, and Utd players have been in the press talking about winning the league, even heard a Dumbarton player in a post match interview saying they could get a top 4 spot , but not one Livi player has said anything other than league survival is our aim. Even our fans are keeping it quiet, we may have a wee hope we can get a play off spot but nobody is going about posting we're going to do it...........................yet.

Let everyone else bump their gums on what they're going to do, we'll just keep a low profile and stay under the radar until they realize we're there, and by then it'll be too late for them to do anything about it.

Not sure if I'm more proud or depressed about this, but if we scored our penalty v Dunfermline and didn't collapse v Brechin we'd be sitting top. That's not even thinking about the St Mirren defeat.

Still think anything above 9th is a brilliant season, but if we keep this up and avoid too many injuries/suspensions there's no reason we can't challenge for one of the play off places. Definitely haven't already planned on taping our play off final v Kilmarnock...

Irrespective of what result we get in a fortnight against Utd, it has been a terrific first quarter for Livi. The 2nd quarter will be a lot tougher though, teams will now know how we play and opposition managers will have the opportunity to set their tactics to deal with that, if we can get around the same points total again then i'll start believing we can do it.

Still a pretty open league though, everyone will drop points so we just need to stay compact and hard to beat and we'll do fine.

I think it's fair to say that so far my expectations have been exceeded; it could all still blow up but it's so far so very good & while we have had some dodgy results we have also had some good ones.

Depending on the United result we might be 4th not having beaten any of the sides above us. Which will be indicative that we will probably finish below them. The most important thing for me so far is that not one team has outclassed us & in the games I've seen we've looked at least as good as the opposition over the 90 minutes; we have had spells in games where we have been second best but not for an entire match.

We've definitely been the surprise package so far in this league but we have a small squad and we will eventually get caught out with how we play, injuries and suspensions. 8th place will still do me.

Has Bertie hacked your account LC.

Actually, I think our squad is the best it has been for years, it is full of players of equal quality, so the players coming in are not dropping the quality of the team, every area is well covered too, well apart from Alexander's, we've a really well balanced squad. I think we'd cope a lot better than other teams when suspensions and injuries hit, in fact we already are.
The team has been rotated quite a bit at times too with 5 changes from one week to the next and we still played well.