Ross County v Livi

Will be interesting to see who will be dropped for this, if anyone. Imo we should drop Fitzwater, Devlin, and Nouble, bringing in Parkes/de Lucas, Brandon, and Bahamboula, no point playing players that wont be here next season, esp ones not giving it their all, Nouble in particular was playing well within himself against Utd, continually cutting inside and lobbing diagonal balls into the box, rather than his usual, taking on players to hit the bye line. Would also like to see Sean Kelly instead of Shinnie.

Get the ball down and work the wings, then we'll get the best out of Anderson with balls across the 6 yard box, instead of fecking diagonal high balls into the box from 25 yards out. Which is easily dealt with by big CB's. If we play to our strength i'm sure we'll make it 9pts from 4 games against County, if not we'll continue to struggle. No pressure game for us, so lets just go out there and play with the shackles off, getting right in about them. Mon the Lions.

I can't really see where our next win will come from. All the teams below us have something to play for and three of them are away from home. That game against Dundee United took away my enthusiasm for the rest of the season. If they had put in a battling display and been unfortunate in the manner of the game v Motherwell at this stage last season I'd have felt differently. I just felt let down by them.

DM saying he wont be making changes for these games, and will field his strongest team.

https://www.irishnews.com/sport/footballsoccer/2023/05/03/news/livingston_boss_david_martindale_vows_strong_finish_after_missing_top_six-3251864/

“Our next three games are Ross County, Kilmarnock and Dundee United who are all fighting for their lives to stay in the Premiership.

“I’ve got to make sure for the integrity of the league, not just Livingston Football Club, that I’m not tinkering with my squad thinking about next season because there’s a lot at stake for teams within the bottom six.

“I’ll be trying to play my strongest team possible because I genuinely do think I’ve got to do that for sporting integrity.

“Have I got one eye on next year? Potentially. But is that going to have an impact on my decision-making just now? Probably not because of the reasons I’ve touched on, for the better of Scottish football and the teams in the bottom six.”

Not sure that's good or bad news tbh, will depend if they give it 100% or not. Got my ticket for the game anyway, never been to Dingwall before, so looking forward to it. Renewed my ST whilst i was at it, must be the earliest i've ever done that, before the season is even finished.

Sporting integrity? Don’t really care too much as IMO sporting integrity left the building years ago.

For basic personal integrity he should be fielding the strongest side available based on form not perception. If some guys who are leaving have stopped trying as hard as they should then surely playing them would compromise any so called sporting integrity?

Also, he should be playing his strongest available team in order to ensure we get the points needed to make staying up an arithmetic certainty rather than the current very high probability.

Like Orco I cannot see where the next win is coming from but I would happily take 5 draws.

Aye as long as he plays the same players in all 5 games what does it matter anyway, it'll be the same for every team we play. Brandon needs game time because Devlin wont be here, same with de Lucas, that's more important than getting 3pts at this stage of the season. I don't think either would weaken our team anyway. Would also argue Bahamboula would be more effective than Nouble, if Nouble is going to be playing within himself, holding back from being injured.

We've won most of our pts against the bottom teams this season, particularly County and Killie, that's where we should be getting wins from, however unless we freshen things up and bring in a few fringe players that are going to be desperate to play and do well, i'm not sure we'll do so.

So much shite been written on various forums.Its beginning to feel repetitive and nauseous.Yeh,everyone is entitled to an opinion, but realism surely has to take precident here,which some obviously overlook with ongoing denial.Anyway to our own forum.Someone said earlier they'd take draws between now and seasons end.Id take that tbh,although its extremely doubfull with the way weve succumbed recently when we we're in such a position to challenge for another crack at the top six.We failed yes,but I go back to that word realism.I won't go over budgets,punching above ourselves fanbase etc etc.Thats all been said countless times before.Anyway to tomorrow's game.Feels like last chance saloon for County.Would love them to stay up tbh,but I darent oppose the Lions.And it wouldn't surprise me if they turned up and got a result here,highly unlikely of course after the horse has bolted,but it would be the decent thing to if only to reward those making the long journey north.Safe travels to all and as always Mon the Lions .

Here I sit about 4500 miles away and currently being thankful that the 2 teams closest to us in the bottom 6 are winning so that the teams directly in the relegation fight are not gaining any ground thus making our top division status more certain than before kick off despite the fact we are losing again.

My tip for next season is this… shut up and put up, ever since Martindale opened his mouth and said we are aiming for top 6 it’s been downhill all the way. So get back to the “one game at a time and let’s see where that takes us” mantra and start battling for each other and the shirt on the pitch.

Cos the form since beating Killie 3-1 has been relegation form and if we carry that over into next season we will be down by Christmas.

Firstly,absolutely gutted for those few souls who made the trip.Wish we could refund them after that display.Secondly,yeh we're 11 points clear of 11th thank fech.Surely we can pull a draw from these last four games to make us mathematicaly safe from doom.Suspect we will.County knew what they had to do against a team devoid of tactics and the inability to put the ball in the back of the net.Its a recurrence which has set in among the team and just doesn't look to have an answer to.Davie will take the flack coming,and rightly so.Like others im despondent and frankly can't wait for the season to end after looking so promising a couple of months ago.Ach well might as well head down and get my S T renewed for next season.And prepare for a turbulent campaign ahead.Chins up laddies and Lassies.‍�.

We are safe from the bottom two, we were safe before this game, no danger 42pts is anywhere near the bottom two. Utd and Killie losing is exactly why we were safe, and still are, four of the teams below us will continue to drop pts and not reach us, however Motherwell are likely to go 7th, because i have no faith we're beating anyone in these last four games, we are absolutely awful just now, four away games i've gone to in our last five games, and we've yet to score a goal in any of them. As soon as we concede we look beaten.

We again started ok, Nouble was a lot better today, but again we just have no cutting edge to our attack, plenty shots at goal in the first half, but none were anywhere near getting us a goal. Anderson turning and hitting on the spin was as close as we got, and again in the 2nd half it was Anderson managing to take it on the turn when a ball was put into the box, and this time came close. After that though we just dropped right off it, and you could see County growing in confidence knocking it about till they scored a second goal. Taking Anderson off was a joke, he was getting shit service, but was still our best chance of getting something, Guthrie just knocks ball on for another player, which would be Anderson if we'd keep him on the pitch. The red card was prob a blessing, because Martindale wont be able to play Guthrie the next 2 games, and a few of the 40 Livi fans were shouting to the ref to just red card him without bothering to look at VAR, and cheered when he got sent off, which shows how fecking pissed off Livi fans are of Guthrie getting played, when they actually cheer their own player being sent off.

I've def had it going to anymore away games this season, i've sat through 3-0 to St Mirren, 3-0 to Motherwell, 2-0 to Utd, and now 2-0 to County, wouldn't be so bad if we could score a fecking goal, but it is soul destroying watching this pish.

Started brightly without actually doing much then reverted to the usual away form. We are an easy team to beat these days because we've lost the signature Livi style of in your face football fighting for everything. The Livi work rate was what got us up to the SPL and kept us here for five years. I am left wondering what has happened to see the team play like they have recently. Something is not right.

Meanwhile what has happened to Pittman? He's gone from first pick to benchwarming. It gets curiouser and curiouser.

orco wrote:Started brightly without actually doing much then reverted to the usual away form. We are an easy team to beat these days because we've lost the signature Livi style of in your face football fighting for everything. The Livi work rate was what got us up to the SPL and kept us here for five years. I am left wondering what has happened to see the team play like they have recently. Something is not right.

Meanwhile what has happened to Pittman? He's gone from first pick to benchwarming. It gets curiouser and curiouser.

Yeah i said that at the game, we aren't pressing them in numbers and Anderson is chasing ghosts up front when we aren't cutting off their options to pass the ball to. How many times did we make a slack pass in the final 3rd too, Bradley twice knocked it on for Kelly, who wasn't making the run, even a free kick got knocked forward to an invisible Livi player with nobody on the same wavelength. WTF are we doing in training, it's like nobody has played with one another before.

I genuinely believe that Davie has lost the dressing room because he repeats the same comments week after week; they are communicating what they want, training is fine and then match day comes and they don’t execute the game plan. For which he takes the responsibility (aye right, if half time at Stenhousemuir is anything to go by, he’ll be lambasting them, which won’t help cos they have stopped responding to him anyway) as he recognisises he hasn’t got the message across or motivated them properly.

I also think he needs a much more experienced number 2 who will have the cojones to tell him when he’s wrong and offer an alternative.

Looking at the squad there isn't too many changes he can make really, i was wanting Bahamboula in for Nouble, but Nouble played much more like himself and Bahamboula came on and looked like Bambi on ice trying to play football. Devlin was one of our better players too, though we really don't know how Brandon would do as a RWB, getting down the wing and putting balls across, but next season that's what he'll be doing, so why not play him instead of Devlin to get some game time. Bahamboula may just need a run of games and be a bit match rusty, so prob best giving him the last 4 games too.

Parkes is back fit to play, but obv can't be thrown in for the full 90 mins in games, but would like to see de Lucas starting instead of Fitzwater, and Parkes coming on for the last 15/20 replacing Boyes.

That's about it i think, dropping Fitz, Nouble, and Devlin, who will all be away. Pittman for St Kelly is about the only other option, but don't think Kelly is playing badly, and the same for Montano being replaced by Penrice.

The main problem in attack is we're not making runs and driving forward enough, too many players standing still waiting for a pass, then when they get it they're closed down and knock it back again, they need to be on the move making runs, and getting the ball played in behind them.

Auld Nick wrote:I genuinely believe that Davie has lost the dressing room because he repeats the same comments week after week; they are communicating what they want, training is fine and then match day comes and they don’t execute the game plan. For which he takes the responsibility (aye right, if half time at Stenhousemuir is anything to go by, he’ll be lambasting them, which won’t help cos they have stopped responding to him anyway) as he recognisises he hasn’t got the message across or motivated them properly.

I also think he needs a much more experienced number 2 who will have the cojones to tell him when he’s wrong and offer an alternative.

It wont be helping hearing the more vocal shouts from the stands right enough, i know we're all frustrated and pissed off watching this decline from 10 games ago, but it is pretty toxic just now, a few have got serious anger issues.

Anyone making the slightest mistake is getting pelters from our supporters, which isn't exactly going to help them play better, esp the younger ones like Bradley and Kelly, older ones might just say fuckit, and not bother their arse trying.

Yeah agree Martindale could do with an experienced No2 helping him out next season.