Livi v County

No wins in their last 5 games and just suffered a heavy defeat to Motherwell last night, and us playing at home where we've won our last 3 league games, so i'm going all Auld Nick fearing the worst, we're going to lose this game aren't we?

Aye, it's the Livi way. Last season St Johnstone came to the Macaroni not able to buy a win from anybody. Kind hearted Livi obliged though.
Incidentally the referee for this game is one Graham Grainger. I am open minded enough as always, when it comes to our whistleblowing friends, to give him the chance to show that he is competent.

Yeah, it’s a stick on. We will lose 2-1, probably after scoring first & the winner will be in injury time on a breakaway from us having a corner.

Killie beating St Johnstone tonight at the moment too, so no doubt Saints will beat us when we play them too.

Why were last night & tonight’s games played anyway? Seems odd that 4 teams are playing their 9th games when no one else is.

And Orco, I’m sure Mr Grainger will live up to your expectations.

These will be the games postponed for Lizzie's passing, suppose they're being played when teams are able to fit them in, and with Celtic in Europe ours will have to wait till December for Celtic to have a free midweek available. The games against Sevco and Hearts will be in the same boat.


John Beaton the 4th official.

If wrongs do get righted with us getting penalties for nothing, we better start scoring them or it'll be a waste, because Motherwell didn't miss theirs. Hibs did last season right enough but the one we got on Sat was the correct decision, so we're still due that one too, and the one we should've had against St Johnstone.

Really looking forward to this.I just hope the players turn in a winning performance. Big crowd anticipated and to send them home Happy would be great PR for the club and get them to come back regularly.County are there for the beating and I feel we will all be celebrating at the end of this game.We should be nearly at full strength for this and hopefully Bruce and Guthrie do the business here.Got to get last week out of our system and for gods sake keep going for the 90 or so minutes.Failure is not an option here and il stick my neck out by predicting a home win.Cmon Livi big opportunity not to be missed.Do it..

Hope you've not just jinxed us Troy. If we don't win you're gettin' it.

Brickin it already Maw.Normaly sit on the fence but confidence in the Trojan house is reasonably high for this one.But I get it,its Livi after all.‍�.

Aye there is no game in the Premiership a gimme for Livi, we need to be at our best in every game to make sure we get a win. County at home is one we should be looking to take all 3 pts, but we wont get them given to us, we'll need to go earn them.

A bit wary of them being skelped 5-0 by Motherwell, but our players should be looking to make up for losing against St Mirren too, and well fired up, the place will be buzzing with all the kids there too, cheering Livi on. So lets go got them points mon the Livi Lions.

The thing that worries me a bit about this game is complacency. I hope we don't look at the 5-0 score from Tuesday and think we just need to turn up. County will be smarting and determined to show what they can do. We need to match their endeavours and more.
I'd rather they had drawn with Motherwell or had a 1-0 win. Hope I'm wrong.

Tough one to take, undeserved defeat, a point would have been fair. Plenty of possession during the game and did hee haw with it. An all too familiar sight - plenty of the ball but a counter attack/error from Livingston concedes the points.

County were very lucky to finish the game with 11 men, but thems the breaks.

Guthrie will/should feel disappointed with his shift today. Seemed to be a hindrance to his team-mates at times, not as good as Nouble at holding the ball up and his first touch was pretty bad. Needs to cut out the dramatic dives and complaining to the ref act.

Plenty of possession but no end product - big opportunity for points lost today, same last week as well. Very frustrating.

The free tickets given to County didn't go down well at all eh.

This game had 1-0 defeat written all over it (I said as much in the 1st half) from early on… here’s why I say that…

First half we were light years ahead of them but we had no end product and did not work their goalie. Their defence was getting ripped up regularly by the wide men but they couldn’t deliver a final ball and whenever we took a shot County defenders got their blocks in. Guthrie had the best chance but it was blocked for a corner. Disagree with you Oliver on Guthrie, he had a decent game today and won a number of cute free kicks… however we are on today’s evidence the worst team in the league at set plays. Martindale raves about Sean Kelly’s deliveries but they are worse then useless; Holt’s (never MotM IMO) were at least getting in the box but still easy meat for the keeper and defenders.

Second half County were more in the game even though we still had the bulk of possession but we did even less with it than we did in the first half. I’d go as far as to say our second half performance was woeful. That said we had two decent chances that I remember second half, one from our best set play where we worked it on the deck for a shot at goal that the keeper saved well with his foot & the other when Obileye failed to get the ball in from about 6 inches out.

Our defence was comfortable all game so the sickener was that Kelly made such a pig’s ear of a bread & butter clearance to play in the lad who rattled the bar only for his tiny team mate to react quickest and head it in. Game over because we were never going to score if we’d played until 5pm tomorrow afternoon.

We are woefully inept in front of goal, so much so that you have to wonder if any of them practice their finishing. It is this that is going to have us dragged back into the scrap at the bottom in no time.

Martindale needs to rethink how he is going to set the team up because we are not scoring and have a proven scorer getting splinters (or he would be if we didn’t have such comfy looking bench seats).

Our best players in the first half were (in no particular order) Nouble, Montano, Bahamboula & Guthrie.

Officials were at least awarding us free kicks (not that it mattered as our delivery was shockingly poor) but should have been carding County players for persistent fouling. Ref also should have clamped down on time wasting…. Speaking of time, the added time today was a joke. 2 mins added first half after treatment to three players that took at least 2 minutes EACH! 3 mins added second half which should have been substantially more due to the County time wasting at throw-ins and our free kicks as well as the substitutions. Wouldn’t have mattered if they had added the correct amount of time on but it’s the principle of the thing.

Yep everything has been said already, hugely frustrating game with us dominating it so much and not being able to score.

Anderson on from the start and we'd have run up a cricket score, first goal opens the floodgates imo, Nouble esp was absolutely ripping them, Bahamboula too was getting in behind them on the other side, but just no end product. That's when we needed Anderson on though, because by the time he came on we'd dropped that energy levels in attack a bit and weren't pummeling them like we did first half.

Yeah like Nick i saw us conceding a daft goal and game over for us, because County were shitfesting it right from the start for a 0-0, so going a goal up would've had them doubling it up and making it even more scrappy and stop start.

Couple of points on the bookings, Nouble going through on goal gets chopped down, and 2nd half Anderson gets an elbow to the coupon, how are both not red cards?

Even more frustrating was as Nick said, our terrible set plays, we're getting tons around their box and are just so useless at them, if we were having to defend so many i'm certain we'd conceded some goals, about time we scored some from them.

Coudn't understand Montano being on the keeper at corners either, i wanted him free to get on the end of a header, given he can actually score goals for us, but was wasted being the blocking the keeper guy.

I'm not even as pissed off as i was last week against St Mirren, i was resigned to us losing this, sooner Anderson starts games the better, because until he does we're fecked.

Oh and their time wasting didn't get me riled either, because we were never scoring a goal in that game and getting 5 more minutes wouldn't change that, it would just prolonged us having to endure the game.

County are the worst team i've seen this season, even us losing this game giving them the 3pts wont save them, they'll be in a relegation scrap if that's the best the can play. I'm not too disheartened by our last 2 defeats, we're playing some good attacking football, as soon as Anderson starts getting games the goals and points will come. God help us if he gets injured again though.

What a frustrating afternoon.

Still no starting place for Anderson. Either he’s fit or he’s not so why is he not being used? I see him as a better striker than Guthrie who seems to be still living on that debut goal.

For the second week in a row we have outplayed the opposition and come away with nothing. We came close both weeks but need that wee break of the ball, something we are not getting these days. Folk are criticising us having so many shots at goal without enough being on target but when the opposition come to sit in in front of goal it’s hard to find a way through.

And as you would expect I also have a few words about today’s man in the middle. It was clear very early in the game that County were going to see how much they would get away with before getting a card. As it turned out, quite a lot. They were complete thugs. The first yellow should have been a red. Nouble was bearing down on goal and stopped by a scything tackle. That set the tone for the rest of the game. A yellow or two for the worst of them would have sent a message to County and allowed us to make progress with some of our nice football. We got plenty of fouls but they needed to be followed up with cards.

On to St Johnstone next week then. Last years winners of the diving Oscars

I will end on a more positive note. I spoke to Fitzwater today and he said he is hopeful of returning next week. Not brilliant, but at least it would give us more options.

Just watched the highlights. Looks like the only person on the planet who didn't think the foul on Nouble was a red was the referee. If it wisnae for bad luck we'd hae nae luck.

Yeah, I braved the highlights just to see what the reaction would be to everything and to see how Obileye managed to miss his sitter (complete mistiming of the first attempt which allowed the keeper to react and save the second, absolute shambles, Guthrie miss first half was a harder chance as he had a man on him and tried to steer it past the keeper but he too should have done better).

And yeah I agree the foul on Noobs and the elbow on Anderson should both have been red cards.

Words fail me for once.How the he'll we contrived to lose that game is beyond me.Cant really add much that hasn't been said already.Tottally agree County should have been down to ten men in that first half.The referee absolutely shat it.So many chances missed and total domination counted for nothing in the end.Such a shame for the many extra fans in attending what should have been a great day for them.Not sure how many will return after that.Huge opportunity lost imo,and that was my main gripe on a day to forget..

We need the kind of breaks that our opposition seem to be getting. Motherwell stealing two points due to a wrong penalty call and County keeping 11 men on the pitch due to a weak referee.
We can outplay the opposition every week but when decisions go against you like that it's soul destroying.
I found last week's result hard to take and yesterday's was worse if anything.
Scunnered!

Well we got an opposition player sent off and a pen awarded last week and still blew it, missing the pen.

We're dominating against 11 men and should be winning anyway, not even sure if we had the 2 red cards given to County it would've made any difference, when we can't stick the ball in the net, not even when we get penalties. Crux of the problem is not having a goal scorer just now, and us desperately needing Anderson back in the starting line up.

Oh and if Sean Kelly is so good at taking set pieces in training, he's either doing all his best work there, or we're just shit when defending them and making him look good in training. We always look more likely to get onto Holt's efforts when whipped in from outside the box.

Liviforever wrote:Well we got an opposition player sent off and a pen awarded last week and still blew it, missing the pen.

We're dominating against 11 men and should be winning anyway, not even sure if we had the 2 red cards given to County it would've made any difference, when we can't stick the ball in the net, not even when we get penalties. Crux of the problem is not having a goal scorer just now, and us desperately needing Anderson back in the starting line up.

Oh and if Sean Kelly is so good at taking set pieces in training, he's either doing all his best work there, or we're just shit when defending them and making him look good in training. We always look more likely to get onto Holt's efforts when whipped in from outside the box.

Aye but that point we should have had v Motherwell would have been welcome plus an opposition team having two less and  a decent ref v County would have given them one less on the pitch and maybe stopped their rough tactics earlier.
Kelly missing the penalty and his daft header yesterday are part and parcel of the game which I accept nae bother. It's the injustice that frustrates me

Yeah, we can accept errors as part of the game but as LF says, Kelly is being lauded as the best left foot at the club with terrific delivery and yet I can only recall scoring 1 goal from one of his set pieces, can’t recall which game it was (Killie maybe?) so either we are poor in training defending him or he does all his best work in the stress free environment of training but can’t deliver in a game situation.

Also, another good point made by LF… we need Anderson on when our creative guys are at their peak in games not when they are tiring…but we also need them to make better decisions with their final ball.

Got lucky today with Hearts equalising in the 94th min, same yesterday with Celtic scoring a winner against St Johnstone late on, but Utd and County both closed the gap on us by 3 pts, and Killie 1 point today, we really better get the finger out against St Johnstone next week or we could be seeing ourselves dropping down to the relegation dog fight. Something i never even thought of a couple of weeks back. Our lack of scoring goals is killing us just now. Esp as we'll have Sevco and Celtic after that too, we should've had 5 to 7 pts on the board in the 3 games before the erse cheeks, but we absolutely need to get 3 pts next week to give ourselves some breathing room going into those two games.

orco wrote:

Liviforever wrote:Well we got an opposition player sent off and a pen awarded last week and still blew it, missing the pen.

We're dominating against 11 men and should be winning anyway, not even sure if we had the 2 red cards given to County it would've made any difference, when we can't stick the ball in the net, not even when we get penalties. Crux of the problem is not having a goal scorer just now, and us desperately needing Anderson back in the starting line up.

Oh and if Sean Kelly is so good at taking set pieces in training, he's either doing all his best work there, or we're just shit when defending them and making him look good in training. We always look more likely to get onto Holt's efforts when whipped in from outside the box.

Aye but that point we should have had v Motherwell would have been welcome plus an opposition team having two less and  a decent ref v County would have given them one less on the pitch and maybe stopped their rough tactics earlier.
Kelly missing the penalty and his daft header yesterday are part and parcel of the game which I accept nae bother. It's the injustice that frustrates me

Aye the point v Motherwell and another one against Sevco with Ayo's goal standing would've been handy. Point i'm trying to make now though, is the opposition always seem to score from their breaks with dodgy ref calls, just now we aren't taking advantage of any coming our way, and they're not even dodgy, they're just ones we deserve and are actually getting for a change, with the ref doing his job properly. Last week anyway, yeah he should've handed out at least one red to them and it would've stopped them being so aggressive with their cynical fouling tactics.

If everything had to click in a game i could see us handing out a 5 or 6 nil pasting to someone, we could easily have done that yesterday, which makes it so frustrating seeing us lose the game.