Pars v Us.

Still just about got over Saturday's excitement.Thats gone now and in the bag.Tommorow night provides another stern test of our credentials.Could we possibly do the double over Fife in such a short time.Saturday would have taken a lot both physically and mentally from the team.Hopefully theve recovered and ready to maintain our unbeaten stretch for as long as possible.Its our game in hand.Got to capatilise.Wont be easy,but we're good enough to achieve that goal.Mon the Lions. .

We only played for about 35-40 minutes on Saturday, 5 mins at the start, another 10 at the end of the first half and about 20 minutes of the second half, so physically we should be fine.

Taking my tongue out of my cheek… Dunfermline arguably had the harder match at Falkirk and lost, so they should be more tired and more mentally jaded than us. That said they appear to have improved. It won’t be easy but we could do with the win.

Also kudos to Dunfermline for bringing Twofer Tuesdays into football.

Auld Nick wrote:We only played for about 35-40 minutes on Saturday, 5 mins at the start, another 10 at the end of the first half and about 20 minutes of the second half, so physically we should be fine.

Taking my tongue out of my cheek… Dunfermline arguably had the harder match at Falkirk and lost, so they should be more tired and more mentally jaded than us. That said they appear to have improved. It won’t be easy but we could do with the win.

Also kudos to Dunfermline for bring Twofer Tuesdays into football.

Aye should be a decent away support heading through, think there's 7 of our lot going, mon the Lions.

Sum up tonight’s performance in two words: utter garbage

Sum up Martindale’s performance in three words: Schooled by McPake

Can’t say I’m surprised about us losing, I was expecting us to lose at Falkirk & we could easily have lost games before now but the manner of the defeat was appalling. We couldn’t get out our half for most of the first half because of Dunfermline’s high tempo, high press but what did we do to counter this? Absolutely nothing. Just kept making the same mistakes over and over again. It could have been very different if Sole had taken his early chance but he managed to put it over the bar. Thereafter we didn’t really lay a glove on them. We were so poor Benedictus not only scored but he strolled through the match despite having the first touch of an elephant.

Don’t know why Green was bought to the club, except to keep a seat in the dugout warm.

Now let’s see how we react to that defeat… I suspect it will be the start of our decline into also-ran obscurity.

Can’t disagree with any of that. This result had been coming for a while, performances were poor but we had all manner of luck to cover over the cracks.

It was so bad tonight I don’t even know where to start. They pressed us all over the park and we just couldn’t handle it. The ball was just being booted anywhere in a panic. Prior was constantly being put under pressure by balls fired his way with attackers bearing down on him. Clarke, Nottingham and Muirhead played like they’d never seen a ball before, a neutral would’ve assumed they were competition winners. Sole was getting no support on his wing so had nowhere to go on the few occasions the ball found its way to him, May was chasing wild punts up the park all night and Kelly was dropping so deep most of his passes were back to the goalkeeper. His set piece delivery was decent though, to be fair.

The only one I’d give pass marks to would be Brandon, although his distribution was wayward at times at least he always made himself available and looked comfortable in possession. He also harried all night and showed the fighting spirit others lacked.

Strangely enough I also didn’t think the players looked entirely comfortable playing back on grass. With the bulk of the games in this division and pretty much all the training being on the astroturf, we seem to struggle going to grass pitches. Ok, we beat Ayr away but they bombarded us second half and on another day could’ve scored a handful.

I don’t know where we go from here, realistically we’re possibly a top four club but miles off Falkirk. Based on recent performances though we’ve little chance of bouncing straight back up.

Couldn't make the game last night due to work commitments.But Couldn't believe the score coming through.Christ were we that bad?.So dissapointing to hear the various reports from all outlets.Talk about a kick up the arse and coming back down to earth with a bump!.So inevitably the unbeaten stretch has gone,but as some have suggested have we being papering up the cracks recently?Definitely a shot in the arm for Falkirk unfortunately.Will be a long wait till Saturday to get this sorted and out of our system.Cant wait to hear Martindales post match on this‍�.

Agree with most of that, personally I thought Muirhead was one of the better performers in that he tried to link up with May & Sole but the service to the forwards was almost non existent so he didn’t have much to work with. It baffles me beyond words that we never give ourselves an outball at defending corners and we are slow as a glacier moving out when defending corners and just as bad getting back out when our corners are cleared.

In the first half we had a corner, Dunfermline had almost everyone back in the box but a couple of players just outside the box. We had two sitters near the half way line to prevent a breakaway. They cleared the ball and pushed up so quickly they had 4 on 2 in their own half! If I remember correctly a foul prevented them getting through.

It also baffles me why we persist with a game plan that the opposition has nullified within a few minutes of the kick off. It was obvious Dunfermline were pressing high in numbers while we tried to play tiki-taka in our box. No one was getting free, so we barely got out our half. Dunfermline didn’t ease off on the press until it was 3-0. When we did try to go long the ball rarely stuck. When we tried to pass it out there was rarely a forward pass option. We beat them comfortably twice at our place in both games earlier in the season 1-0 and 2-0 where we were far better than them but last night they were miles better than us. McPake and his staff clearly learned in defeat and implemented what they learned. Can we do likewise? I have my doubts.

Haven’t heard Martindale’s comments yet but I suspect it will be something like “I’m angry if I’m honest. We knew it would be a difficult game, they all are in this league, that’s what makes it a good league but we didn’t find our passes, we didn’t offer an outball, our forwards have to do better, Jerome has to do better at his posts. Blah, blah, blah.”

As much as Dunfermline pressed us in our own half, we allowed it to happen by continuing to play it out from the back. Raith did the same thing keeping 4 player up to press us high, but we managed to scrape a win because they were poor at scoring. It's obv been targeted now, teams have seen us play now and know we'll keep doing it. This is Hughes level of stubborn incompetence if we keep on doing it now, it's just suicidal.

Irony is, Prior is the best kicker of the ball, but we're giving it to the CB's, and Notts in particular is very poor with the ball at his feet making passes, we're actually throwing him under the bus making him look foolish by deliberately putting pressure on his weakness.

Another thing, by not telling everyone to get up the pitch when kicking a goal kick, we're giving the opposition an advantage of having players staying up around our box, so when they press us and we inevitably get forced into hitting it long, they win the ball around the halfway line and already have players in our final 3rd to pass it to, and are quickly able to get a shot, or a pass into our box.

We hardly laid a glove on them because our own attackers had to come deep to get involved, with us not being able to get out our half, all this was created by our stubborn refusal to just kick it out at goal kicks and move the play up the pitch. All the goals came from them being able to press us and force mistakes from CB's not good enough to play the way Martindale wanted when being pressed.

I feared Falkirk would do this to us with the way they press, but i take it we didn't play out from the back all game or they would've done. Like when Hughes did it, we need to mix it up so opposition players aren't mugging us all game, the next game is going to tell us if Martindale can change tactics when he's been sussed out, or if he thinks he can just keep playing the same way and it'll somehow not happen again to us.

Listening to Martindale's post match interview, it's worrying he doesn't recognise the problems the high press is causing us. He says we haven't started the last 2 games very well, and knew Dunfermline would press us, they're the best team in the league at doing so, then when we're struggling to deal with it, why keep doing it!!!

He also says he wants teams to press us, that's why we bring it out, to get past them and open up an attack, yeah that's fine when we're able to do it, but we weren't last night, and also struggled against Raith, so teams are bound to see that and target it as a weakness. Some will be better than others at it, but for the ones like last night, we need to adapt to that and have a plan B, because Nottingham is like a rabbit caught in the headlights when pressed like that, and can't deal with it.

Spot on, there’s a blueprint now on how to beat Livi and any opposition manager worth his salt will pick up on it. Possibly when Wilson and Montano return we’ll improve on the ball if this madness is to continue. No one is showing for the ball to help the man in possession so things just either get lumped long or shuttled back to the keeper, putting him under pressure. We were an accident waiting to happen last night and so it unfolded.

The other thing keeping us pinned back is having everyone in our box defending corners with no out ball. Even their keeper was in our half! I don’t care what stats Davie points to, this definitely isn’t the optimum way to set up at corners. Ironically enough, even though we had everyone back, they still scored with headers from two of them.

I think we’ve been found out as being overrated based on the good fortune we’ve had this season. Falkirk should walk this league, they’re by far the best team.

Yeah, we are all seeing and saying the same or similar things.

The other thing we struggled to deal with was the pace of the wee winger and even Kane.

How many times do we hear him say “we were too passive” “we knew they would play that way” “we talked about how to deal with it” “we didn’t tell them to do that” - really? Then there is a problem with communicating between management and players.

Kelly is a shadow of the player that arrived a few years ago…has it been coached out of him? Olly Green showed the best range of passing with accuracy of any of our players this season and all he’s done since is keep a seat warm. Clarke & Finlayson have regressed since the early part of the season, so what is going on in the coaching sessions to have such a negative impact on player performance?

Yeah Montano is decent at running with the ball and driving forward, but he's far too injury prone for us to rely on him.

The game on Sat will tell us whether we can challenge Falkirk or not, seeing how we react to our first league defeat. QP were pretty good when we played them earlier too, it'll be a tough game. Still think we have the players to win most of our games, but it depends a lot on how Martindale sets them up.

Agree regarding Kelly, he’s got good set piece delivery but has contributed little from open play. To be fair he doesn’t often have many options available but his passing has been haphazard this season.

It’s another tough game this weekend against Queens Park, they appear to be about a similar level to us so hopefully we can make home advantage count. If they’ve any sense they’ll play a high press and force us into all manner of mistakes. No doubt Davie will be expecting that though so he’ll have a plan, eh!