Livi v Motherwell

Battle for 7th place, we briefly went back up to 7th on Sat, before Motherwell's 39th mins of ET penalty got them the win, chance for us to get there  again by beating them. Can't remember the last time we got a win against them at home, so it's well past time we did, feel we owe them one after the 2-2 draw last season knackered us for top 6, and that piss poor away performance pre split, oh and the ref gifting them 3pts for a non existent penalty, so we actually owe them a few gubbings, lets start with this game.

Hopefully Omeonga starts, Motherwell are always a physical team, so we could do with his combative style winning possession in midfield. He also sets up quick counters when he overturns possession around the halfway line, and looks to go forward rather than turn back (looking at you Shinnie). Would  also rather have Parkes starting than Boyes, but might not be fit enough yet, i'd feel more confident of him being able to deal with Van Veen than Boyes. Anderson again starting up front, don't care what Martindale says about justifying reasons for not starting him the last game against them, his pressing up front helps us in more ways than just scoring goals, it stop them bringing it out of defence so easily, and being able to set up attacks. With him scoring against Utd it'll have boosted his confidence too. Mon the Lions, lets have another home win.

Renewed our season tickets today so hopefully our faith is rewarded with a win. They have kicked on superbly under Kettlewell (aptly named for a ‘Well boss I suppose) - got a lot of time for him, he would regularly talk about Livi in positive ways when he was a pundit, pointing out stuff we knew but that the more regular pundits failed to recognise.

It will be a tough game no doubt and we simply have to keep Van Veen quiet. We are long overdue a good result against them, so hopefully we get it and go into Sunday’s finale on a high with 7th place a distinct possibility.

Yeh,I renewed last week like I hope many others.Unfortunatly I wont make tomorrow night as I'm delivering electrical cable to Fort William first thing in the morning. Long day ahead for me.Hoping to get back in time to catch the PPV if its available. Realisticly my season ended on Saturday which I thoughrally enjoyed.Would be pleasantly surprised if we took anything from this,though as has been said,we owe them one and indeed would have a reasonable chance of finishing 7th.Just hope unlike myself we turn up.Does have an end of season feel to it.Would be nice to finish on a high though.As always Mon the Lions.

Motherwell will be looking to hold on to that 7th spot. What a turnaround by them. We've only taken one point from them this season. Maybe van Veen will tweak a wee hamstring in the warm up.

orco wrote:Motherwell will be looking to hold on to that 7th spot. What a turnaround by them. We've only taken one point from them this season. Maybe van Veen will tweak a wee hamstring in the warm up.

Yeah but should've been 2 draws, the ref cheated us out of a draw in that first game. The 3-0 humping at theirs is the only real defeat we have against them this season, and much of that was self inflicted with Martindale's team selection and tactics. Still be a tough game, and although Van Veen has gone off the boil a bit, only scoring from the pen spot the last few games, he's still a threat, has one hell of a shot on him.

We set up right and go at them, we'll get at least a draw, it's when we go into games trying to contain teams and lack a goal threat doing so, that we end up being stuffed. We're playing at home, and have a chance to beat the team a point above us, and move up to 7th, for once this season, can we have faith in ourselves and go out to stuff them, feck being that scared of Van Veen we drop Anderson to the bench and stick on an extra CB, lets go for this and let them worry about us.

Yep, couldn’t agree more

A bright opening minute quickly became a dull thud when Van Veen struck with only 3 minutes on the clock. Thereafter we didn’t look like scoring until we equalised, although we did improve as a team in the second half.

On the red card… I thought incorrect offside decisions were only to be checked when a goal was scored? If they are going to overturn them to award free kicks then every single offside flag has to be checked.

8th place guaranteed now but we needed all 3 points to have a serious chance of 7th.

Only saw the highlights unfortunately last night.Firstly shambolic defending for Van Veens goal,put us under pressure so early.You don't give a player of his quality time to put that away.Secondly,Jamal.WTF was he doing.Been watching too many King Fu films I suspect.Its becoming a trait with him him and one he needs lose from his locker imo.Could be a liability next season.Well taken equaliser for us.Nice to see Nicky on his swansong busting a gut and putting it on a plate for Shinnie to guide home.Hearing he got a good send of from the fans.Overall as I said on Saturday ,can't wait for this season to come to an end up in Perth on Sunday.Huge close season ahead I suspect,gonna be interesting watching the ins and outs before pre season. Ach well its only a game,isn't it..

Yeah the highlights didn't show our quick start where we got in on their goal and looked lively, before Motherwell did the same to us, but had Van Veen making the difference.

Shamal came charging out a few minutes earlier to the one he got red carded for, needs to get that sorted, esp jumping up with knees and high feet going into players. The VAR delay was ridiculously long, so was the award of a foul for the red card, Van Veen was offside, but VAR overturned an offside to award a foul, can't understand WTF is going on with the rules nowadays, and if they'd stick the flag up these things wouldn't happen, same with the Ross County one Sportscene showed, that was offside too, but they let play go on and then the same thing happened.

Anyway feck VAR and the SFA.

Thought Brandon was playing well, doing an Omeonga role in attacking midfield, aggressively winning the ball and playing it forward, it was him winning it and passing it to Nouble that set up our early chance at goal i mentioned. But he had to be sacrificed for Hamilton replacing Shamal. Thought Hamilton looked ok, not the bombscare i've seen at other teams, actually looked a bit more solid than Shamal.

Devlin doing what Devlin does, bombs forward and putting the ball into the box, had to be Shinnie on the end of it scoring after i moaned about us putting him on for Anderson.  Shinnie was getting stuck right in quite aggressively too, big improvement from our away performances, hopefully we carry it into the St Johnstone game. The club sent my mate's son free tickets for Sunday, as a thank you for us going up to Ross County, so looks like we're enduring another away game this season.

Oh and i take it Motherwell will be sent the bill for the damage to our pitch from the flares their idiot fans chucked on it. Between that and the time it took getting it sorted, and the VAR delay, must've been about 12 minutes wasted, but they put up 6 mins ET. While i'm on it, WTF was that ref like, allowing blatant pushes on our players all game, i mean just running up to us and giving our players a push out of the way, till finally awarding us a foul for one late on in the 2nd half, and not booking their player for catching the ball when it was hit over his head, ref just ignored the fact he caught the fecking ball, giving us a foul and carrying on with the game as if the deliberate hand ball hadn't happened.

Agree with all of that… I would say though that while you got your wish of Omeonga starting, I paid particular attention to his performance and found that he passed sideways and back more often than he passed forward and only looked like himself in the latter part of the second half.

One more thing, kudos where kudos are due… we outplayed them with 10 men in the second half and fully deserved the draw.

Yeah i feared the worst when we went down to 10 men and dropped right back for the remainder of the 1st half. Thought we'd continue to stay deep and let Motherwell fart about with the ball killing time, but we came out and had 3 players up chasing them down putting pressure on them, and made a game of it. Hold my hat off to Shinnie, i'd never have brought him on, i'd have gone for Bradley, but he looked the biz getting stuck in and got us the equaliser.

On Omeonga, 1st half it looked like he was a holding mid playing deep and Brandon was doing the same job further up the pitch, and it all went out the window with Shamal's red card. But we regrouped 2nd half bringing Holt on and pressed them more.