Livi v Celtic.

As usual il have my reservations concerning this fixture. If we can avoid an early goal then I'm sure the boys will grow in confidence. Hearing its a sell out so the atmosphere is going to be terrific. Would be good to keep the Green hordes quiet for most of the game.Were on good form and Celtic won't take us lightly.But their a good team who will obviously start as favourites. For me weve nothing to lose here and hopefully we can put a dent in their title aspirations. The defence including Max are going to be put to the test undoubtedly. I just hope we play the team and not the occasion. Anyway good luck lads,il be there cheering you on.Have to believe you can do it again..

Yeah always a feeling of trepidation going into this fixture, amazing as we've been against them at home, they will win eventually, hopefully not this season though.

We can relax on Saturday and watch how results go in other games, then see what we can do against Celtic.

Will be interesting to see how Nouble gets on, and if he can get us up the pitch for Forrest and Anderson to do their stuff, if we can get him up there in the final 3rd he'll cause them problems. Think this is as good a team as we've had since coming back up, lets go out there and gub them. Mon the Lions.

We are playing well while they are winning ugly in most games, that is usually a recipe for disaster but assuming Rangers win today then they may either be put under more pressure - to add to their psychological plastic problem - or will know they have to win & come out all guns blazing.

I suspect we will revert to backs to the wall - 1 man up style of play, which in some respects you can understand, but as they are not playing as well as their results suggest maybe it’s time to actually go for it. What we certainly don’t need tomorrow is tippy tappy stuff at the back.

Our penultimate home game before the split… I think I’d be delighted with a point as I think a win is probably just out of reach.

One thing we've seen from us defending set pieces into our box with everyone back, is when we do get the ball, we break very quickly, playing Celtic pretty much suits that style of play, and we're very good at it. Our midfield 3 are the best in the league at pressing opposition players too, and turning over possession, i really think we have a good chance of getting something against them, even a win.

It would be glorious reading their fans greetin faced comments again, 'slagging' us off for not playing the way they want us to, so they can beat us, absolutely love it.

I think we will likely get hammered.

We woz robbed.

When the breaks and ref decisions don't go your way you're never going to get a positive result against Celtic. Ref giving them a ridiculous penalty, which they deservedly missed, lino missing a blatant goal kick for us and instead gives them a corner, which they scored from, Ayo missing a free header just before HT, hitting the bar, an OG after the break, just wasn't going to be our day.

Always going to be up against it against Celtic, home or away, they dominate possession and are all over us like a rash whenever they lost the ball, but we had chances, and the decisions and breaks didn't go for us. Point blank save from Hart in the first 6 mins too, from Obileye's shot, the 3-1 comfortable win doesn't tell the whole story of how this game went.

It was bound to happen sometime right enough, just a shame the officials had to have a hand in Celtic finally getting their first win at the TMA.

Yeh,totally agree mate.Ive no complaints about the result,Celtic were the better team,no argument there.But the decisions that went against us were utterly ridiculous.You just knew it wasn't going to be our day.Couple of decent chances for Obiley and a good goal from Shinnie, but only a consolation in a game Celtic dominated.Was surprised with Bruces omission and he came on too late when the damage had already been done. Anyway glad to get that out of the way and look forward to the run in.

I sit in C2 & I saw it clearly from there that the ball hit our player after it had gone out of play. To make matters worse Ralston handled it before it went out of play, so there were 2 mistakes in awarding the corner, it was either a goal kick or a free kick.

The pen was a joke as well but justice done with the miss & Max looked like he may have saved it had it been inside the post.

The Rogic handball in the build up to the second was right in front of the ref so how he missed that is beyond me, Rogic almost carried the ball for a step.

So, yes potentially we could have got something out the game but we’ll never know, they may have scored at other times because even if those decisions are called correctly the play develops differently from the restart positions.

I thought we stood off them too much & I think Omeonga needs a rest, might be time to bring Sibbald in for a few games.

I would also suggest that they are currently the best team in the country, that was probably the best opposition we have faced this season.

Yep def Bertie, best we've played against, they were dominating play all game and even when we overturned possession they got it back again by being on us with 2 or 3 players, first time i've seen us out fought like that. They were by far the better team, but still needed bad decisions from the ref to beat us, which is annoying, one thing being beaten fair and square by the better team, but sucks when 2 of their goals shouldn't have happened/counted, even the missed pen was unjustly given.

Reading Walsh ignored the lino and 4th official telling him it went out for a goal kick to us too, and gave them the corner they scored from, he really shouldn't be officiating at this level making so many important bad calls.

orco wrote:I think we will likely get hammered.

Acht well, wrong again. We didn't get hammered. It was really just like 2-0 which is not too bad against a team with 20 times our budget.

orco wrote:

orco wrote:I think we will likely get hammered.

Acht well, wrong again. We didn't get hammered.   It was really just like 2-0 which is not too bad against a team with 20 times our budget.

Or 1-1 taking away Walsh's freebies.

Just a pity Ayo didn't bury that header going into HT, might've taken the wind out their sails, going in deflated. He's getting closer though, last one went over the bar, hit the bar today, he's gonna score the next one against Hearts.

Really thought we looked sluggish in the second half. Did Martindale's half-time team talk fail or were the players just knackered from knocking their pans in over the last month or so?

Yeh,bit of both.Guess its a compliment that Celtic had to step up their game to beat us.Martindales reluctance to start Bruce didn't help our cause.The amount of knock ons from Nouble with no one there was frustrating to say in the least.Have already commented on the officiating so won't dwell on that again.A dissapointing day for us,but bigger picture, look where we are.Il take our position anyday and look forward to getting back to our old selves.

Troy wrote:Yeh,bit of both.Guess its a compliment that Celtic had to step up their game to beat us.Martindales reluctance to start Bruce didn't help our cause.The amount of knock ons from Nouble with no one there was frustrating to say in the least.Have already commented on the officiating so won't dwell on that again.A dissapointing day for us,but bigger picture, look where we are.Il take our position anyday and look forward to getting back to our old selves.

Yep, you'd think someone (Forrest) would be automatically making runs when Nouble went up for a high ball, he wins at least 80% of them, but tactically we had Nouble as a No9 again so he was often up there by himself. No idea what position Shinnie was playing seemed to float about as a DM, and wasn't very good at it.

Maybe have to give Celtic the credit for making us look off our game, we've so often done it to other teams, making them look poor, Celtic were really, really up for this game, chased us down and had groups of 2 or 3 players on every loose ball, honestly can't remember us being out fought like that in midfield, we just couldn't keep possession, and it had a knock on effect in making us so poor with our passing, making us rush everything.

We maybe need to freshen it up a bit against Hearts though and give Sibbald a start in midfield, Omeonga has looked a bit jaded the last few games, and was knackered looking yesterday.

You could sense the pressure Celtic were under to get a win here.Fair play to them for doing so.As you say some of ours looked jaded.The decisions that went against us stick in the throat,and had we taken those chances could have been interesting.But its gone now and we move on.Still in our hands to do something special. Mon the Lions..

It’s always more tiring when you concede possession because you are constantly chasing shadows.

We weren’t up to our usual level of tenacity but we still caused them the odd problem or two. Hart probably had the save of the game at 0-0 when Ayo somehow got his foot on the ball & Hart scooped it up & past the post, Fitz was close to it but didn’t even try to knock it in but maybe it was always just spinning out of his reach. Max almost matched it from the corner that wasn’t but unfortunately Maeda pounced on it. Ayo’s header off the bar had Hart beaten all ends up but the crossbar saved them. Fine margins and all that.

Ifs ands buts & maybes - but we have nothing to be ashamed of or to feel down about. We are in there fighting for a top 6 place again & that is nothing short of miraculous after the start we had & the turn over of players.