Livi v Hearts

This should be fun.


Hopefully lessons learned from the midweek debacle, and we set the team out a lot better, think Fitzwater and Bahamboula are suspended for this game, Fitz def is anyway.

Hearts have signed a brick shithouse striker, so that will be interesting, i'd like us to start Brandon on the wing, could double up with Devlin on McKay too, helping our defence, and get Guthrie on from the start with Nouble on the left wing. Lets see if any of that happens, or if we stick with the tried and tested Nouble up front as a No9.

Anyways, fingers crossed we take something from this game, an Edinburgh double would be nice, we've already done Hibs. Mon the Lions, lets do this.

Part of me has the fear for this game.The thought of Forrest,Shankland and Mackay coming at us is frankly concerning.Yeh,theve got injuries as have we but your not third without a reason.Right that's enough of patronising them.As for us,don't expect Davie to change things once again. Guaranteed Anderson will still be out and as you say Fitzwalter still suspended .Will Davie be brave enough to start with two strikers,I really doubt it givin the opposition.Another thing,our midfield were unacustombly poor the other night.Pitts Omeonga and Holt to name were conspicuous for two thirds of that game,which is a worry.Would be great to get one over the Jambos,but to be perfectly honest I'd bite your hand of for a share of the spoils right now.Sorry for the negativity, but thats just how I see it.Mon the Lions..

It's Barry McKay that is the danger in the Hearts team. We will need to get back to playing at our best to take anything from this game. I'll settle for a point and a referee that gives us a fair crack of the whip for a change. Some hope!

Show Forrest down the line, don’t let him cut inside, his crossing wasn’t particularly good but he could hit a decent shot when cutting in.

MacKay has been outstanding so far this season, he usually dominates proceedings. Don’t give him time or space.

Craig Gordon regularly breaks our hearts, IMO the best Scottish keeper of his generation.

Both teams looking to bounce back from what were unexpected cup exits.

Like Troy I’d take a draw & hope for more.

orco wrote:It's Barry McKay that is the danger in the Hearts team. We will need to get back to playing at our best to take anything from this game. I'll settle for a point and a referee that gives us a fair crack of the whip for a change. Some hope!

It's Wullie Collum.

We only went and did it, the Edin double, Livi officially the best team in the Lothians.

Superb win, gets us back on track for a very decent start to our league campaign, we desperately needed it with us playing Celtic next weekend.

Bahmboula and Guthrie need to be starting games, both lift our attacking performance, Bahamboula has a great first touch and quick feet, a proper winger getting us up the wing. Lovely cross back heel attempt on goal from Guthrie, got a feeling he'd have buried one of the first half chances Goncalves missed.

Montano the hero again, taking some punishment from knocks and kicks, surprised he lasted as long, looked in pain going off at HT after taking a sore one, what a trooper.

Kelly did well when he came on too, great free kick that produced a good save from the header, but it was offside, looking forward to seeing more from his set pieces.

Terrific 3 points.

I thought we started slowly but grew into the game and once we got in front I thought we were the better side even with them having more possession. Nouble and Montaño are sensational working together up the left. Guthrie offers much more movement than Goncalves but at least Goncalves was getting into scoring positions (definitely should scored at least 1 of his chances though) Guthrie only denied by Gordon’s brilliance between the sticks. Montano was MotM so it was good to hear that the sponsors got it right.

Pitts looked much more like himself, Holt too, he & Devlin looked determined to keep Forrest quiet after he came on & they pretty well did. We also did a decent job of stopping McKay from dominating the game. Defence was largely solid, George had virtually nothing to do. Omeonga did well most of the time he was on but he’s not a winger so we shouldn’t be using him as one.

I would have liked to see us go with a Nouble & Guthrie to really get at their central defenders.

Great to see the obnoxious Halliday whinging & moaning like the crybaby he is. He throws himself to the ground and expects to be given fouls, must have forgotten he’s not wearing a Hun shirt anymore. Seems to think he’s CR7 what with all his hissy fits.

Collum wasn’t quite as bad as he is capable of being but why do our “players of colour” get punished when they are the ones being fouled? Why do they get booked for less of a foul than one they suffer earlier on and are lucky to get if they get it at all? Why does Nouble get a foul against him for shirt pulling once when he is having his yanked every time he’s near an opponent? Do Scottish refs (cos it’s happening every game) have a problem in their midst that needs to be called out and addressed?

Neilson does some moaning too, was never away from the 4th official standing over at the halfway line.

Nouble needs to take lessons from Guthrie on how to get a foul, dropping to the ground when you're being fouled. It's ridiculous the amount of times Nouble is being held onto and gets nothing from any of the officials, then Collum has the cheek to give fouls against Nouble for shrugging off the guys holding onto him.

I'm just back.Pished so won't give my thoughts,until I'm compost mentos.Sorry guys this was a struggle writing this.Forgive me.Lol.T.

Troy wrote:I'm just back.Pished so won't give my thoughts,until I'm compost mentos.Sorry guys this was a struggle writing this.Forgive me.Lol.T.

How will we know the difference?




Sorry Troy couldn't resist.



Was hoping our goal was offside just for the LOLS with Jambo's going off their heids, but it was well onside. So we're still due tons of dodgy referee calls going our way. The Lino getting one right is about the best we can get these days, they still get plenty wrong unfortunately. The foul they gave Nouble for the set piece we scored from was actually softer than a lot we didn't get, yeah it was def a foul, but i've seen Joel getting grabbed a lot harder, and by 2 players, and get nothing.

Can't remember who  was running through on goal for us now (yesterday), but he was tugged by the arm, spinning him round and slowing him down and we got sod all for that one too. Only blessing was Collum keeping his red cards in his pockets, ridiculous he gave us more cards than them though. Sibbick especially was getting away with murder not getting booked.

Right,here goes.Sorry about last night,couldn't help my over exuberance get the better of me.Firstly have to hold my hands up.I certainly wasn't expecting that.From start to finish the lads were magnificent to a man.Especialy Montano, what a shift he put in as did the others.Was great seeing our midfield back to their old selfs.Yeh,was glad to see Colum not reverting to a one man show.And as for Craig Gordon,what a display from him.Kept his team in it with some brilliant saves.Felt we got our tactics spot on and the margin of victory would and should have been far greater if not for the aforementioned. All in all a long day ,but so memorable from what I can remember, hic🤪.Well done to the Lions and again we're on our way,well until next week anyway. .

For the first 15/20 minutes Hearts ran the show and I thought we were in for another spanking. Safe to say I was delighted by the turn around. We ran them ragged and we're unfortunate not to add to the score.
I said the same as you Liviforever. I hoped we had got an offside goal to make up for previous ridiculous decisions against us. As you say they're still in the bag since the lino got it right.
It was a great team performance Guthrie and Bahamboula adding something when they came on. Stephen Kelly was like a wee terrier chasing everything. I've got a feeling he might have to watch for yellow cards though.
Getting those 3 points before the trip to Parkhead was brilliant.

Auld Nick puts many of my questions re how Livi are refereeed quite succinctly.
Here's one from me. I watched the Sportscene highlights of the St Johnstone/St Mirren game. In the 86th minute Fraser chops down McLennan in the penalty box. Penalty awarded. Now, McLennan was the last man with no one to beat but the goalie so my point is - why was Fraser only given a yellow when Fitzwater got a red last week at Aberdeen? Consistency??? Or did I miss something?

Not sure about race having anything to do with officials decision making, you'd need to look at all the other teams in the league and how players are being treated. I think in Nouble's case it's more about his size, and his honesty to play on and just keep going when being held, Guthrie was being held and fell to the ground and got a foul, Joel maybe needs to do the same but he manages to get a pass off or set up good attacks when being fouled, and if he changed how he plays we wouldn't be getting those attacking moves as often.

Refs just need to do their job properly, but honest players get punished, and dishonest players like Boyle get rewarded for going down easily, or just plain diving.

Forgot to say in my initial post that our slow start was rectified by DM tweaking the formation; once Joel went out wide we were easily the better side.

On the ref issue… it is very obvious during our games that our non-Caucasian players get the raw end of the deal on most fouls, it’s not just Nouble but he gets the bulk of it. Omeonga was fouled a number of times with nothing given but got booked for something less than happened to him. The irony yesterday was in the free kick we got for the goal, it was the least obvious and least effective of the shirt pulls on Nouble.

Yes you would have to check all games but I’ve seen enough in our games to raise my suspicions.

Yeah they mentioned on Sportscene how Martindale wasn't slow in changing our formation when it wasn't working. Thing is though, he did the same against Utd and we were a lot better in the 2nd half, so why go back to what wasn't working the next game, then quickly change it to what we all know works best for us. We all know Nouble is best out wide, and Omeonga isn't.

Same goes for starting Gongalves, Guthrie is looking a far better option as a No9, Anderson was also the obv choice to play there, but he hasn't had the chance yet with Nouble being the preferred choice, and now he's recovering from injury when Martindale is starting to stick Nouble out wide, maybe, hopefully, he'll get the chance to play as our No9 again. Looking good if we have Guthrie and Anderson playing there, one starting and the other coming on fresh 2nd half.

Getting back to my point though, he stuck with Goncalves starting and Anderson coming on as sub in the cup games, now he's doing it again with Goncalves starting and Guthrie being the sub, it really should be the other way around.

Bahamboula should also be starting, playing a proper winger, getting fed up with us starting with a weaker team and not playing our best formation till after we're being out played, against Utd we left it too late before changing it, thankfully we changed quickly against Hearts and won the game, just once can we start with the right formation and best starting XI.

Auld Nick wrote:Forgot to say in my initial post that our slow start was rectified by DM tweaking the formation; once Joel went out wide we were easily the better side.

On the ref issue… it is very obvious during our games that our non-Caucasian players get the raw end of the deal on most fouls, it’s not just Nouble but he gets the bulk of it. Omeonga was fouled a number of times with nothing given but got booked for something less than happened to him. The irony yesterday was in the free kick we got for the goal, it was the least obvious and least effective of the shirt pulls on Nouble.

Yes you would have to check all games but I’ve seen enough in our games to raise my suspicions.

Maybe it's just Livingston's black players then because he was pretty lenient with Toby Sibbick, letting him away with countless fouls and no cards.

Re referees, I think it's just a Livi thing. This is our 5th year in the SPL and for all of that time opposition managers have done their best prior to every game to tell anyone listening that Livi are a physical team. Sometimes I actually find myself thinking that must be the case since it now appears to be accepted knowledge. Referees live in the same football world so are looking for it too. We are also smaller in crowd numbers in most games and we all know how a roar following every tackle helps referees make their minds up. Nearly every game we play is v 12 men.

Just a wee thought, maybe we could just forfeit the Celtic game. It would be a 3-0 loss but that's a better result than Aberdeen and miles better than 9-0 v Dundee United.

Or they could forfeit it, or agree to a 0-0 draw just to get the fixture out of the way.