Livi v Aberdeen (Tues Night)

Not sure if we'll line up as attacking as we did against Killie, it's at home so we should, but with Martindale i get the feeling he'll be a bit more defensive minded with it being against a bigger team sitting in 3rd place. Can see us sacrificing Bahamboula for Holt or Omeonga coming in to give us an extra midfielder.

Hopefully we'll make only 2 changes, bringing in Montano for Longridge, and Holt for St Kelly, think we need Holt's experience for this one, and he'll be pretty fresh after only coming on as a late sub against Killie. As i said though, can see Omeonga coming in for Bahamboula too, and just having Anderson and Nouble up front.

Also a bit apprehensive if Martindale will rest up Anderson for the Hearts game and not risk playing him 3 games in a week, and we'll see Nouble as a lone striker again.

Yeh, it's hard to second guess Davie sometimes. I'd like us to keep the trio of Bahamboula, Anderson and Nouble and agree with Montano for Longridge and Holt/Omeonga for Kelly.
Do we know what's up with Penrice? I'm not convinced by Longridge though I know injuries have forced his inclusion.

In Kevin Keegan style I would really, really love to beat Aberdeen to make up for the 5-0 mauling up there. I felt it was a harsh penalty and sending off that started it all though we were the architects of our own downfall  with the crazy defending just before it. They also have some outrageous divers in the team that the VAR team seemed unwilling to pick up on v Hibs. They would do well in a swimming pool.

I see Nick Ross is the ref. He owes us for that penalty he gave to Motherwell a few weeks ago. Sadly that's not how things work though.

Mon the Livi.

Aye Nick Walsh is the ref, Craig Napier 4th official and Andrew Dallas on VAR.

Tough night in prospect imo.Aberdeen are a different proposition to Killie.Theyl no doubt come down here expecting to win i suspect.Yeh were at home but I still think we're trying to find our best starting 11 and Davie has confounded us in recent weeks with his selections,granted some of them enforced.I really hope we go after them from the off and not sit back hoping for a break away.And please Lions,keep 11 of you on the park.Hopefully VAR has a quiet night.Mon the Lions..

They will be on a high after gubbing Hibs but aside from their number 9 banging in the goals and the cheating divers they have in their team (loved it when Goodwin called out Porteous but he shouldn’t be throwing stones in his house of glass) we have nothing to fear…except the officials.

No doubt we will lose to a completely innocuous incident awarding them a penalty by VAR

Excellent 3 points; excellent first half performance; woeful second half performance.
Not convinced that any of the pens were actually worthy of being pens. The one Aberdeen scored from was ridiculous, it did hit Fitz on the arm but his arm was not sticking out and the ball dropped on to him.
McCrorie’s handball was probably the one that looked most like a handball to me but if it was why was he not given a second yellow?* Holt was yellow carded for the first Aberdeen pen. Fitz wasn’t for his.
*just saw the highlights and it wasn’t McCrorie but the question remains, why was Holt the only one yellow carded?

Great save by George from their first pen and good follow up save. He had one or two other decent saves too and I’d probably have given him MotM. Bahamboula was outstanding in the first half but MIA in the second. Montano similarly had a decent first half but poor second. Nouble wasn’t as effective as I hoped he’d be after McCrorie’s early yellow, but he became our outball towards the end.

Two big questions for DM…
1 What message was given at half time because our second half started badly and got worse. Surely it wasn’t to go to 10 men behind the ball? We were whipping them first half and there was no reason why that couldn’t have continue especially after the penalty save at the end of the first half.
2 Why was Goncalves sent on for Anderson? Goncalves offers nothing as a lone striker, he doesn’t retain possession and he’s too slow to chase anything down.

God,where to start.Ive never sat through a game like for years.The proverbial game of two halves.First half brilliant, second half thought we were going to blow it .We held on by the skin of our teeth imo.The pens awarded to them via VAR were absolutely nonsensical for me,its getting fechin ridiculous. Will need to see them back to put my sozzled mind at ease.Yeh,Bruce and Bahamboula coming off did us no favours.And Goncalves is League One at best,should be punted in January. Will watch Sportscene tomorrow as I'm brain dead and heading for ma scratcher.Want to say well done Livi,but I'm too drained to dish out plaudits after that.But we won‍�.Big shout out before I go to big Ayo for that clearance,won it for us.Night Night..

Wooft what a result, relieved at the end to take all 3 pts, isn't good for the nerves having to watch us hanging on for dear life for so long in the match.

Yeah first half we looked like we could score at will, absolutely bossing them all over the pitch, pressed the life out of them and they were shaky as feck. Dunno why we stopped doing that and just dropping deep allowing them the freedom of the pitch to bring the ball out of their half, and have so many shots at our goal. When pressed Aberdeen's defence is pretty shite.

Brilliant game by Shamal, as Bertie said, had a few cracking saves even when we were on top in the first half, and the double pen save. Dunno what has happened to L Kelly but his set piece deliveries have improved a hell of a lot, every corner caused havoc in their box, same with Obileye's free kick, stunning curling effort forcing a good save from Roos.

Where to start with VAR, was pretty funny when it got us our pen and called play back from an Aberdeen attack, think Devlin got his card rescinded after the rugby tackle too, not so funny when it gave them 2 pens though. The amount of hand ball pens is going to go through the roof, can't remember us seeing 3 in the one game before. The time it takes to give them and letting play go so far too is ridiculous.

Anyway, buzzing to come away with 3 pts and go level with Aberdeen on 22pts, bring on the Hearts.

The big question for me is how we could go from coasting in the first half, cutting through them at will, to struggling so badly in the second. I really don't think Jim Goodwin is such a brilliant manager that his half time team talk engineered such a change in the game. I suspect it was more to do with our players being told to sit in and hold on to what we had. If so then it isn't acceptable to put fans through such a gruelling 45 minutes.
While I was delighted at the first half showing and pleased at the eventual win, we offered the square root of zero in the second. On another day we would get hammered playing like that so every bit of luck for the season so far has now been used up.
To make matters worse we took off Anderson and replaced him with Goncalves. For all Davie's eye for a player and getting the most out of them is impressive, occasionally he gets it wrong. Goncalves may have a decent history with other clubs but he has shown nothing for us so far. It says a lot when Livi fans, who usually put up with a lot, shout at one of their own players. He's had months now to get up to speed and it hasn't happened. Jack Hamilton could have done better!
I've spoken up for the team many times when they have been beaten but played well but that second half had me going home feeling annoyed.
I'll be looking for 90 minutes of effort against Hearts. If we give that and still get beat then we can do no more. It's a hard place to get anything and I can't remember the last time we won there but you never know. A third win on the trot would be amazing.
Mon the Livi.

Agreed Orco, it’s the first time I can remember winning but feeling angry about the performance. If it had been a poor first half and a good second half with the same outcome then we’d probably be praising all concerned for getting the improvement in the second but because we were so good first half and so passively poor second half I had to keep reminding myself we’d won.

Bruce was isolated in the second half with everyone else so deep. Penrice and Boyes both helped Nouble in getting the ball up the park when they came on but it remained wave after wave of Aberdeen attacks and I was convinced we’d end up conceding another innocuous handball penalty.

Having seen the highlights last night, in the first two pens, the players both raise their arms to protect their faces but neither are doing that to deliberately handle the ball and the one Fitz concedes is laughable. I think I said on the VAR thread that we were going to see loads of pens now with the way VAR is judging every incident of the ball making contact with the arm/hand as a pen (Martindale mentioned in his post match interview as well) and so far I’m being proven right. When the ref goes to the monitor you know that he is going to change the ruling on the pitch which I find not only annoying but also a case of the ref copping out. The video shows the ball/hand contact but they ignore the context of whether the player has deliberately blocked it with his hand/arm. The video replays of the incidents IMO all show ball to hand; on the one we got the ball changes direction but Holt’s is a slight deflection rather than a block and Fitz knows nothing about it at all.

And given that they always then agree with the VAR recommendation, why bother looking at the monitor? They take VAR’s word on offside, why not just take it on the other incidents, it would cut the review time in half at a stroke.

As Davie said its something we will have to live with and adapt to.That last 6 mins injury time didn't surprise me in the least. You just knew it was coming.And that was just for the second half. It is a cop out for referee's and we as fans will just have to live with it unfortunately. As I said last night I've never felt so deflated heading home after a game that we ultimately won.And Goncalves should be shown the door ASAP imo.Anyway on to Tynecastle.

Must be the only one that doesn't give a jot we were pummeled when coming away with the 3 pts, it was annoying at the time the way we dropped right off, and nervy as feck watching us hanging on, but the relief soon turned to joy for me that we won the game. I'll take that over a glorious failure every day of the week. Makes up for the St Mirren game, where we did all the work, missed a pen, then left with nothing, and even worse against County, where you came away saying how the feck did we lose that game, with County scoring their only shot on target after getting an absolute pummeling from us.

At this stage where we're playing 3 games in 8 days, the results are more important than performances. I don't think it was just the 2nd half we dropped off either, towards the end of the 1st half Aberdeen were in control coming at us, hence why they got their first pen. 2nd half was a continuation of that.

Aye Goncalves was worse than Chuky, getting shouted at by both the fans and Martindale for his lack of effort, walking about when we were under so much pressure, funnily enough it was against Aberdeen Chuky came on and did the same thing, then got subbed back off again. Goncalves looked knackered after only being on the pitch a few minutes too. He can't trap the ball either, giving us no out ball when we fired it up to him, waste of a jersey last night.

Anyway, as i said, i'm just relieved to have won the game, i would've been raging had we drawn or lost though, the way we dropped so deep after being 2-0 up, felt at the time when we were on top we could do with a 3rd to really deflate them though, but i thought after we got away with not conceding from their pen just on the brink of HT, it would've been a wake up call for us to come out the 2nd half and push for a 3rd, wasn't to be though.

22pts is a brilliant tally at this stage, would be incredible if we could make it 3 wins in a row and get up to 25pts, we'd be well on our way to smashing our best ever top flight pts total for a season. Last season after 14 games we were on 13pts.

Belter, St Johnstone equalised with St Mirren in the 96th minute, so we remain in 4th place.

Results all going our way tonight, Sevco beating Hearts, Celtic beating Motherwell, Utd beating Killie, and St Mirren drawing with St Johnstone. Don't think it could've gone any better for us.

Yeh,agree.Very good night for us.These last 6 points could be so pivotal for us in the context of the season,and hopefully that continues at Tynecastle.