Livi v ICT

Looking forward to this now Nouble is back, perfect timing for us to go on a Scottish cup run, a bit of luck avoiding Celtic and we could even get to the final.


Needless to say i'm really confident we're winning this, predict another load of goals being scored by the team in Amber/yellow, 4-1 Livi.

I'm sure Davie won't take this tie for granted. Caley have just picked up the Championship POTM & MOTM so they must be doing something right.Not sure what starting lineup he'll go with,nothing unusual there.For me we've got to go with our strongest 11 from the off and really get at them from the start.Bruce,Joel,with Holt Bradley and Pitts behind them.Suspect the defence will pick itself.Its the Scottish Cup after all and a potential banana skin for us.Caley won't be coming down just to make up the numbers.Give them the respect their due,then by one way or another get ourselves to the quarter final for the first time in years.Fully expect that scenario come 4 45.Do it Livi..

First time in 4 years we've had a home tie at this stage, prev times we lost 1-0 to Hearts, 1-0 to Caley, pen shoot out to Aberdeen, & a pen shoot out to Hearts. The fact it's at home this time is a good sign with the home teams beating us in those games, hopefully it's a more convincing win than 1-0, or even worse ET and pens, don't think my heart could take a pen shoot out with our recent record missing them.

Won't be easy. Caley have a habit of beating us in cup competitions. We underestimate them at our peril.

Agree with your sentiments Orco.I kinda feel that this will be a tad more difficult than some are anticipating. But ive been wrong before.Lol.T..

I really don't think we'll struggle winning this, yeah we've lost to Caley before, and even lost in the league cup group stages, but we have moved on hugely from that performance and starting XI, we're a completely different team just now, massively improved. I'd even say we've hit our peak just perfectly for this cup game, and have as good a chance as any of going to the semi's, providing we avoid Celtic home or away, and Sevco away, as i'd even give us a chance against Sevco at home.

With Nouble back and looking as good as i've seen him, Anderson on top form, Kelly & Bradley also in peak form, we're scoring 2,3 and 4 goals in games now, where before we struggled to score more than one goal a game.

Also expect Martindale to have us well fired up for it, you heard how much of a rocket he put up the players arses at HT against Stenny, he's bursting to have a good cup run in the Scottish this season, and it's the best squad we've had since coming up into the Premiership, so lets get ourselves to a cup final.

Agree it’s our best squad but it’s not our best defence, always prone to concede. Caley were more up for it in the league cup game than we were but we have improved massively since then. All things being equal we should win, but complacency & underestimation are what could let us down.

Well that was shite, left when the 3rd goal went in, cracking finish but oh so avoidable with us getting caught in possession fannying about with the ball.

1st half we played it at a snail's pace and had nothing in the final 3rd, Anderson going off injured was a big blow but we still should've had enough to win the game comfortably. Nouble was playing as if Anderson was still on the pitch, winning flick ons to him, but he wasn't there. As good as Nouble was against Killie he was totally ineffective today.

2nd half we stepped it up a good bit but got hit with sucker punches and well taken goals, 2nd one looked miles offside and kept waiting on the flag going up, dunno if our players were doing the same but it never came and they scored.

Took off the wrong players too imo, Pittman was far better than Holt but Holt stayed on, and would rather have kept Bradley on too, thought Guthrie had his best game for us though, but still needs to up it a good bit, esp with headers, they all go flying high over the bar. Dunno what happened to our free scoring shots on sight of goal, we kept trying for the perfect threaded ball for a tap in, instead of just taking a dig.

Scottish cup dismal run continues for another season then.

Embarrassing, disgraceful, gutless, inept, shambles… and what makes it even worse, Goncalves scored for Raith!!

Disagree with your second half assessment LF, we lacked ideas all game & showed no urgency or any sense that we could break down a very average Caley side.

DM made ridiculously poor decisions with substitutions as well. We dominated the first 15 mins or so but completely lost any direction when “wee Brucie” got injured and that stemmed from sticking on Montano when he should have just put Guthrie on and left the rest of the team the same.

We then had to shuffle the pack again when he took Bradley off  at half time (why? He was no worse than anyone else in the first half).

Then he takes off Pittman & Penrice, the only players giving us any bite in midfield to bring on Shinnie & Bahamboula… both of whom were ineffective. Holt started well but faded badly, he was the obvious one to be subbed, Montano had his worst game since coming here, Nouble had no support after Anderson went off. Shamal gave a ridiculous pass to Fitz which led to the 3rd goal. Devlin couldn’t pass water or cross the road. Kelly was probably our best player on the day but would be lucky to get 5 out of 10 and please don’t get me started on Obileye…. When they announced him as MotM at least it gave us something to laugh about, his defensive heading generally went out of play when we needed to be keeping the ball and his distribution from the back was slow and sideways or quick and over hit. In general terms our playing out from the back was too slow and predictable.

Just watched DM’s post match reaction… agree with his assessment of the game but he should also be looking at why he made the subs that he made.

To be fair to Obileye… he had our 3 best chances, one of which brought a good save from Ridgers but the other efforts were woeful.

Can't bring myself to watch the highlights, but probably will if only to see how bad we were yesterday. You guys have covered the relevant points so I won't Labour over mine.Suffice to say wholeheartedly agree wit your comments.A total day to forget and a huge opportunity not taken from us.Fair play to Caley,they wanted it more albeit against a Livi team who simply just didn't turn up.Kinda knew we would struggle when Bruce went off and for me the plan b if there was one obviously backfired.All in all an absolute deflating day that couldn't wait to end.Arses need kicked this week as we prepare for the visit of Sevco.On that evidence, we'll get gubbed.Gutted..

Yeah if we tried to go toe to toe with Sevco they'd just pick us off, but we'll do what Caley did to us and try to frustrate them and hit them on the counter.

Difference with this game and the Steny one was Caley didn't just sit back completely and allow us to bring the ball out of defence though, they forced us into mistakes, with 2 or 3 players in our half pressing us when we faffed around with the ball, but they were also very direct when they got possession and clinical as feck with their shots on goal, 4 shots at goal, 3 goals.

For all our possession, we played most of it in our own half, the heat map would've been red hot around our back line, where we passed the ball back and forth, then back to Shamal. Haven't watched the highlights either, but the defending for their goals was terrible. The kind of game where Alan Forrest rescued us, cutting inside and having a shot at goal, none of our attacking players wanted to have a dig, think Montano tried when he came on, closest we came from a shot was the free kick from Bradley but he was taken off at HT.

Brought myself to watch the highlights, just to see if that 2nd goal was offside or not, woeful footage, doesn't show our half up the pitch enough to see where the players were when the ball was hit, but still looked well offside from what i could see. Wouldn't surprise me if they screwed us deliberately just because we didn't pay for VAR.

Was waiting on the flag going up, like they sometimes do after a player scores, or maybe the officials are so used to non comital with VAR checking it they've got out the habit of doing their job.

Doubt it would've made a difference right enough, we weren't scoring a goal yesterday after Anderson went off.

Yeh,I said that earlier about Anderson going of,changed the game imo.We had a bad day and Caley thoughrally deserved their win.No complaints from me.Got to get this out of our systems and quick. Only Sevco on the horizon, God help us..

I will start by saying that Caley totally deserved the win. It was one of those days that nothing was going to go well for one team and it was all going to click for the other. No prizes for guessing which was which.
I couldn’t believe that this was the same team that blew Killie away in the first half last week. I wonder sometimes if Davy over thinks these cup games when he sets out the game plan. I was reminded of how badly wrong he got it v St Johnstone in the final. I don’t know what was in his head when he replaced Brucie with Montano given that there was a striker sitting on the bench.
Anyway Caley totally bullied us for 90 minutes and in that time got away with some rather rough play that possibly would not have been allowed in the more sanitised realms of the SPL. But you have to adjust your play to the circumstances and we failed to do that. I was going mental at the passing it about at the back and the lack of desire to get forward to have a go at them. Billy McKay took his goals well helped in no small measure by our totally disorganised defence. We could be doing with a striker like that.
Finally, not that it would have impacted on the result, but in the lead up to their 2nd goal did anyone else think that there was a blatant Caley offside? I guess on a day when the Gods were not on your side no surprise that it wasn’t given though.
Just The Rangers next then. I hope we have a go at them.

Edited to add that you mentioned that offside Liviforever while I was writing my post. It really was blatant even going by the poor highlights.

orco wrote:I will start by saying that Caley totally deserved the win. It was one of those days that nothing was going to go well for one team and it was all going to click for the other. No prizes for guessing which was which.
I couldn’t believe that this was the same team that blew Killie away in the first half last week. I wonder sometimes if Davy over thinks these cup games when he sets out the game plan. I was reminded of how badly wrong he got it v St Johnstone in the final. I don’t know what was in his head when he replaced Brucie with Montano given that there was a striker sitting on the bench.
Anyway Caley totally bullied us for 90 minutes and in that time got away with some rather rough play that possibly would not have been allowed in the more sanitised realms of the SPL. But you have to adjust your play to the circumstances and we failed to do that. I was going mental at the passing it about at the back and the lack of desire to get forward to have a go at them. Billy McKay took his goals well helped in no small measure by our totally disorganised defence. We could be doing with a striker like that.
Finally, not that it would have impacted on the result, but in the lead up to their 2nd goal did anyone else think that there was a blatant Caley offside? I guess on a day when the Gods were not on your side no surprise that it wasn’t given though.
Just The Rangers next then. I hope we have a go at them.

Edited to add that you mentioned that offside Liviforever while I was writing my post. It really was blatant even going by the poor highlights.

Oh he def does, i've no doubt he'll have a great thought process for that substitution but it really didn't help us any, up until then we had been by far the better team, bringing Montano on and then having to switch players around blunted our attack. We just needed to bring on Guthrie and keep everything as it was, then the HT sub taking off Bradley to bring on Guthrie was another blunder, and one that looked like he was doing because he knew the Montano one was a mistake.

We were playing like the old Livi under Hughes, plenty of possession, playing it out slowly from the back, and when we got up to the final third, totally clueless how to break down their defence. Frustrating to watch, and not helped by McKay scoring 2 of the best goals of his career, which he admitted in the post match interview, and saying he's not known for scoring goals from outside of the box.

Troy wrote:Yeh,I said that earlier about Anderson going of,changed the game imo.We had a bad day and Caley thoughrally deserved their win.No complaints from me.Got to get this out of our systems and quick. Only Sevco on the horizon, God help us..

Despite our poor performance it really wouldn't surprise me if we beat Sevco in our next game, i see they scraped past Partick Th at Ibrox scoring the winner in the 86th min. If we get back to our normal play at home i fancy us to take at least a point against them. They got lucky drawing with us at Ibrox too, they aren't anywhere near as good as Celtic this season, and def beatable.

Liviforever wrote:

Despite our poor performance it really wouldn't surprise me if we beat Sevco in our next game, i see they scraped past Partick Th at Ibrox scoring the winner in the 86th min. If we get back to our normal play at home i fancy us to take at least a point against them. They got lucky drawing with us at Ibrox too, they aren't anywhere near as good as Celtic this season, and def beatable.

I watched it live. Thistle had a good go at them. I hope we don't treat them with too much respect.
Watch the highlights. Rangers' Tillman intercepted an attempt by Partick to return the ball to McGregor after they had put the ball out of play for an injury and scored. The Thistle players went mental. To his credit Michael Beale told them to let Partick go up and score, which they did. Great scenes. McGregor obviously had difficulty allowing the ball to go in for the goal but he did in the end.

Interesting footnote to Orco’s description of the Tillman goal… it was Tillman that was the player injured. He then intercepts and scores causing a ruckus until Beale tells Tavernier to let them score, which Tiffoney does despite McGregor being a pillock and putting up token resistance.

Caley getting Killie in the next round gives them a decent chance of reaching the semi's.


What our Scottish cup run made us.




Erse cheeks and Hearts getting all the TV money on top of their prize money.