Jambos v Livi.

This is gonna be a toughie no dobt.Hearts are up there for a reason.3 points would be more than welcome but 1 would do me which I think we're capable of.Once again strikers will come at us no doubt,but hopefully we can eradicate the mistakes from Wed night from our play.No idea what the injury situation is at the moment,but I suspect our lineup will resemble along the lines at Ibrox.If we can somehow offer an offensive option to our game we might just get something from this.Another big crowd who hopefully we can keep quiet.Anyway as always,do your best Livi.You just never know..

This is set up for us to be the first team to beat Hearts in the league, we've done this a few times now, been the first team to take points off Hearts when they were top of the league a few seasons back, and iirc first team to take points off Sevco last season. A draw would be a good result too, just to keep our league run going since the Dundee game, remaining undefeated in 3 would pretty damn good considering the teams we've played.

We'll have to be on our game defensively though, Boyce is a good goal scorer, and we can't afford any gifts setting him up around our box.

Omeonga did well in his debut against Sevco, apart from losing possession for their first goal, looks a good player, reckon we'll start him again, and prob see Williamson coming back in too. Reading that Lewis rolled his ankle in the warm ups and that's why he got subbed just before half time, Martindale saw him limping on it, so prob going to be doubtful for this game.

Line up something like this i'd think.

Stryjek, Devlin, Obileye, Fitzwater, Penrice, Holt, Omeonga, McMillan, Bailey, Williamson, Shinnie.

Another tough game…. I suspect they will have too much fire power for us but I thought that about Celtic too.

Liviforever wrote:

Line up something like this i'd think.

Stryjek, Devlin, Obileye, Fitzwater, Penrice, Holt, Omeonga, McMillan, Bailey, Williamson, Shinnie.

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Stryjek, Devlin️, Obileye, Fitzwater, Penrice, McMillan, Holt, Williamson, Lewis, Bailey & Shinnie.

Subs - Barden, Kelly, Longridge, Montaño, Omeonga, Forrest & Anderson.

Wasn't far away, just Lewis remaining in the team and Omeonga dropping to the bench, got Williamson & McMillan coming in and starting right.

Omeonga and Forrest will prob come on as subs 2nd half, maybe Anderson for Shinnie too, though depending on how it's going i'd prefer we brought Anderson on to play off Shinnie. Swapping one for the other if we're needing a goal isn't much use. That wont happen if the game is tied either, Martindale would settle for the draw, rather than go for a win and risk losing the game.

Looking like Shinnie is our new striker, and Hamilton has dropped out the match day squad. As has Panayiotou.

Not our most offensive lineup,but expected.Would have liked to have seen Omeanga and Anderson start.But think Davies hands have been tied here.Gonna be a long afternoon methinks.Mon the Lions.

Pittman missing from the squad again.

Game plan is already out the window at Tynecastle, half an hour gone 2-0 to the home team… hate to say I told you so LF but I think you have vastly underrated the Maroons whenever you have discussed them.

For me,due to our lack of strikers we can't play our normal pressing game.Its so frustrating but becoming a habit now.Soft penalty has probably put it beyond us,unfortunately.

The games gone imo.Might as well come out and have a go now.What have we got to lose.Depressing.

No elaborate rhetoric required here.As comfortable a win that Hearts will have all season.Once again the stats say it all unfortunately. Slightly better 2nd half but the damage had already been done. Don't know whats going on down there with our strikers,but questions are beginning to be asked.Some asking for Davies head.Is it to premature?but many are voicing their opinions as they are entitled to do.Aint going to happen imo.Weve a run of games where I sincerely hope we redeem ourselves.Pitts Sibbs and others are sorely missed.Cant wait to get them all back fit.Hearts thoughrally deserved their win,but we didn't half make it easy for them.So frustrating.

If Davie wasn’t Davie he’d have been out the door before now. The terrific run that announced his tenure is no longer relevant, what is relevant is the current awful run, yes we beat Celtic but we will not survive with current run of form. Something needs to change & maybe that is to play as we did against Celtic all the time. There is no point playing a passive, defensive game. We have to be aggressive, closing down, pressing, supporting the striker, blocking shots etc etc.

Yeh,I agree Bertie.In many other circumstances Davies position would be in jeopardy. But we all know that won't happen in the foreseeable future.We won't play as we did against Celtic.That was a one off.As it stands at the moment other teams will know we have frailties with key players missing and will use that to their advantages.Its tough at the moment ,but I live in hope we get those players back that will undoubtedly help us in our quest to stay in this league. .

Yeah hold my hands up and admit Hearts are a lot better than i gave them credit for, easy afternoon for them though, with us offering little goal threat. Again had some spells at the beginning of both halves where we put decent balls across their box and almost got something from them, but we faded very quickly after that and got into a rut of punting long balls up to either Shinnie or Anderson. Really don't know why we can't play it through the midfield or down the wings, we've got the players to do it.

Pittman is injured but don't know why Forrest didn't get on, he's prob our best attacking threat for cutting inside and having a shot at goal. Really missing Sibbald too, about the only other player with the skill to take his man on and get past him to open up defences.

Still far too early talking about the manager's job, the games we've played are all the top 6 teams, apart from Dundee. Motherwell are on a really good run of form, Hibs, Aberdeen (who are consistently top 4), Sevco, Celtic, and now Hearts, seriously want to know how anyone thought we'd be getting points from all those games, we're about where we'd have expected to be, although beating Celtic instead of perhaps Motherwell is what folk would've predicted. However we could easily have had something against Aberdeen but for Max fumbling it in injury time, apart from that i don't see where we'd have realistically expected more points.

We're finally getting some fixtures we'd be looking at winning, St Mirren at home (again though we haven't a great record at home against them, but we put them out the cup twice), St Johnstone away, another tough game but have to be looking for a point there, and Ross County away, bottom of the league and although an away game that really has to be a game we target a win, then Utd at home, again they're doing better than i thought they would but home games really need to be where we look to get wins, we just beat Celtic at the TMA so we are capable of winning against anyone there.

If we can get a win or two or a win and some draws from those games we'll open up a few points on the bottom 2, esp if we beat Ross County. Have to be looking at between 6 to 8 pts from those 4 games. 4-6 points from the home games and an away win against County would do nicely.

Sorry L/f.Im off too bed.Expected your response earlier. Bertie and myself said earlier, no problems with the result.

Troy wrote:Sorry L/f.Im off too bed.Expected your response earlier. Bertie and myself said earlier, no problems with the result.

Take your laptop or tablet to bed with you Troy, and read my long post, that'll put you to sleep.

I agree we have had a tough start but… as you say but for a very expensive brain fart by Max we’d have had a point against Aberdeen, but it was a game we could have won never mind drawn although a draw would have been about right over the piece…. Motherwell… we simply through that one away, we were 1 up & comfortable. Dundee… we got a point but if we had shown more ambition we might have won it, they are not a great side, ok they restricted Rangers to 1-0 & missed a pen in doing so but even Rangers are flattering to deceive this season, which is another reason why we should have had a go at them in the cup tie.

We seem to have gone down with a whimper against both of Edinburgh’s big boys now, which is disappointing.

But to say it’s too early to consider the manager’s position? No, like I said in an earlier post, anyone else would have been ousted long ago… but he won’t be, so it’s time Davie showed us his mettle because, as I see it, he is maybe too comfortable because of this “security” & if so he needs to start earning his status again. I hope he does because I genuinely like his press conferences.

Lets split this into last season and this, last season Martindale got us 6th place and our 2nd best points total in the top flight, so all this hand wringing about finishing the season poorly is a tad OTT. Also our last 5 games were against all the teams that finished above us, and one of those won 2 cups, the other the league title, lets get a bit of perspective there.

This season we've not had our problems to seek, from an outsider not bothering to look at our pre season and first four or five league games, seeing how impacted we were by covid, a sickness bug, and injuries, as well as the teams we've played, yeah just looking at stats and league placings it doesn't look great. Taking those circumstances into consideration though, and you'd have to be trigger happy  firing the manager this early in the season, before we've even played every team.

I'll ask the question though Bertie, how many points did you think we'd get from;

Sevco Away-

Aberdeen Home-

Motherwell Home-

Hibs Away-

Dundee Away-

Celtic Home-

Hearts Away-

I'd say most people would be looking at us getting nothing against Sevco, Hibs, Celtic & Hearts, and maybe an optimistic draw against Aberdeen, but they usually do smash and grabs at the TMA against us so no big surprise we lost again. So basically Dundee and Motherwell were the only teams anyone would be looking at us getting something, 4 points even, and that's what we're on, but instead of getting them against Motherwell we got a win over Celtic.

Sure you can get the odd unexpected result (as we did against Celtic) and be ahead of where anyone expected us to be, but why start calling for the manager's head when we're about where anyone would've thought we'd be after that run of fixtures?

Next 4 games we've got;

St Mirren Home-

St Johnstone Away-

Ross County Away-

Dundee Utd Home-

Those are the games we've got to be looking at picking up points, esp the St Mirren and Ross County games, 2 wins there would make a massive difference.

No point asking me that question, we are already 4 points better than my expectations

The point I am making is that the run of form we are on would have had another manager fired because there is no sign of it changing. We got a great performance & result against Celtic but we were very poor against Dundee. Then after being excellent against Celtic we reverted to a passive defence rather than the aggressive hunting players down that worked so well.

We have been fortunate in that the other teams at our end also seem incapable of putting a run together, so yes if we get 4 decent results in the next 4 games the picture will be completely different. However, laying aside my natural pessimism… I still see no sign that we will actually get any decent results in those games because our good performances against Aberdeen & Motherwell were spoiled by errors & we have only performed against Celtic since.

I think our home form playing wise has been decent, not so much in results though, but our away form is pretty poor, results wise and playing. If we pick up wins at home then the away form wouldn't really matter so much, but we've lost to Aberdeen & Motherwell, where we didn't really deserve to, and should've picked up 4 pts in those games, or at least 2.

So have to start getting results at home, and looking at why we are doing so poorly away from home. The Hibs and Hearts games were a cake walk for them, really need to change how we set ourselves up in attack, to try and score goals.

On the game there, will be interesting to see if Halkett plays next weekend, after coming off and them using a concussion sub with all 3 subs already used, wasn't a head knock and looked suspiciously like they were at it. Sure the rules prevent a player coming off with concussion from playing within a certain period, looked it up and it's 12 days.

Hearts fans on P&B reckon Halkett was pretending to have a head knock too, as he'd a calf injury and they'd used all their subs up. Players will always con refs, pundits call them 'clever' when they go down for a foul/pen, like Martin Boyle does all the time, no doubt they'll be 'clever' holding their head to get the game stopped when there's a break up the pitch by the opposition, and holding their head like Halkett to exploit the concussion sub rule when you're going have to go off injured and have used all your subs, but surely it triggers an automatic 12 day lay off whether he has consussion or not, because he pretended he had, and the sub was used. Otherwise this will happen all season.