QP v Livi

Think this could be a tough game but one we can still end up winning by 3 or 4 goals. We're pretty clinical just now and if that keeps up we'll still score plenty of goals in tough games, Pittman is high in confidence taking long range shots and Buchanan will be bursting to score to catch up with Mullen, who is also riding high in confidence. Think Cadden is due a goal too and Mullin & Watt are always looking to score, absolutely brilliant having all these players looking to get a goal.

Honestly think we're going to give a team an 8 goal tanking soon, seems strange not seeing 4 and 5 goals as being big wins but we've not scored as many as we could've in any of our games and are still capable of getting more.


I'll let myself get carried away and predict QP 1-5 Livi, fg 7 mins.


Can we win 4 league games in a row. make it happen Livi.

3-1 Livi, FG 9 mins

I too am thinking 3-1 for Livi; fg 22 mins

I think QP will be stuffy opponents

Is there a more pointless club in this country than Queens Park? It saddens me that we're on the same level as them.

I hope we absolutely pump them.

And yet Lexi, they've won more titles than we ever will. We're just all diddies in the grand scheme of things.

Always enjoy trips to Hampden and I expect tomorrow to be no different. By all accounts QP have had an alright start to the season, and gave Airdrie a really good game a few weeks back. I don't think they'll be the whipping boys of the league, but we should be winning this with something to spare I think.

3-0 Livi, FG 17 mins.

1-1. FG 16 mins.

Massive tailback on M8; I was heading thru but turned back at A73 junction as it took 20 minutes to go 2 miles.

Don't think club was affected but their brains must still be in transit, 1-0 to QP inside 25 minutes

Judging by the Twitter commentary on the OCS, it sounds like it has been a poor game, there are about 4 or 5 tweets for the first half.

So, let's see if Hoppy can get them going in the second half... We are notorious for coming out as if we have been drinking horlicks at half time, Hoppy needs to ensure that is not he case today.

And Alloa take the lead.... Are we finally coming back to earth with a resounding bump??

Looks like we'll be off the top tonight, Alloa 2 up and still no sign of an equaliser

Yup, Alloa running riot in the second half, 3-0 at Albuon Rovers

Alloa now 4-0

Well, that was back to the Livi we know and hate. Absolutely nothing offered.

I feel Hampden must be a difficult place to go, nae atmosphere, and the ref was as bad as I have seen in a couple of years.

Halkett is surely near a bench place now? Rotten.

Yeah, hard to disagree with that assessment sunderland. Halkett is our best defender on paper but his recent showings have belied his true talent. Big call from Hopkin now if he is to drop him, and move Miller to RB. I'm not sure Byrne has enough aggression about him to play holding midfield on his own, it would certainly be a waste to move Pittman back too.

Not enough pace today, too lax in many areas and not enough quality, at the end of the day. I didn't think Mullin was off from where I was, reading on Twitter it seems he wasn't either; if it had counted we wouldn't have deserved it in all honesty. Bizarre that Mullen came off too, and Buchanan stayed on. You would've thought too that the wide pitch would've suited both Cadden and Mullin on; a waste of a game in all honestly.

Need to scud the Tims' U20s next week to give us a bit of a boost before Alloa. Anything less and I'll be shitting it.

Would hate for us to move Miller to RB think hes one of the only thing holding us together. I think we need to sign a RB, or if not, Halkett needs a rocket.

I think Alloa will schoosh this league, we willl come an easy second, but that still aint good enough.

I'm not sure why but I don't think the wide pitch did us any favours today. However, there were other factors that contributed to the defeat. We just couldn't get going because Queens were so effective in closing us down. It's murder to watch but fair play to them because it worked well with neither goalie having much to do.
It was one those days when nothing went our way from the bounce of the ball to the inept officials. I'd like to see again the goal that was chalked off.
It would have been nice to go into the Alloa game with both teams on the same points but instead of that we now have an extra bit of pressure on us to take the points. Such is football.

Poor first half from us, slow build ups and Mullen was far too isolated up front by himself, when he got the ball he held it up well but we took too long getting players up the pitch for him to pass to. QP played a compact defence hitting us on the break and we just didn't use the width of Hampden to get in behind them. Think it was a mistake not having both Mullin and Cadden on at the same time to spread the play about swapping wings, we were just too easy to defend against.

2nd half was a bit better but our shooting deserted us, anything from close range went over the bar, though we didn't really create that many chances. I think if that goal had counted we'd have gone on to win it but it didn't and QP finished the game quite comfortably taking the 3 points.

Not sure what our substitutions were about, think we needed 2 up front and two wingers, but what we got was a winger and striker taken off. Think Watt should've been on earlier too, he takes players on and is direct, we weren't doing enough of that and were making it easy for QP to mark our players and leave us nobody to pass to. Have to give them credit for their defensive work right enough, they aren't easy to play against. Don't think they look good in attack but if they defend as well in every game they wont need to score many to get points from games.

This result may just give us a bit more fire in our bellies for the Alloa game, hope so anyway.

Judging by these match reports, QP were indeed the stuffy opponents I predicted but unfortunately my new found optimism was sent packing... Given Airdrie had beaten them I thought we'd have too much fire power. Ah well.

LF, if we were to go with 2 wingers and 2 up front we'd either have to sacrifice Pittman, Byrne or Miller or we'd have to go to a back 3. I'm not saying your wrong, I thought our balance and general play against St Mirren on opening day was very good, despite losing the match. But Byrne didn't play that day, Sinclair started and we only had Mullen up front on his own from the start.

Yesterday IMO the game plan should have been to have two wide men stretching the play and runners from deep supporting the front man when the crosses came in. But from what I am reading here, it sounds like the same old failing of being unable to break down stuffy opponents. To be fair we hadn't really faced that in the league this season as our early goals drew the opposition out, but we can't rely on always being the first to score and need to work out how to come from behind... Which of course we did against St Mirren but then failed to hold on to it.

Dissapointing result from the National Stadium yesterday.I spoke about us a couple of weeks ago not to get to complacent,well yesterdays result for me confirms its not going to be the stroll in the park a lot of people had us down for.Yes i know its early days and its hard to critizize the team after the start weve made.Id hopefully put it down as a bad day at the office which hopefully learn from and rectify the mistakes from yesterday.I reckon what we have done is give Alloa a huge moral boost ahead of our encounter in a couple of weeks time.The season has just really started and theres a long way to go and surely with squad that weve got we should expect as a lot of others have suggestd that we are at the right end of the table come April.Need to get the confidence back up after yesterdays blimp.Over to you Livi!!!

Bertie Bassett wrote:Judging by these match reports, QP were indeed the stuffy opponents I predicted but unfortunately my new found optimism was sent packing... Given Airdrie had beaten them I thought we'd have too much fire power. Ah well.

LF, if we were to go with 2 wingers and 2 up front we'd either have to sacrifice Pittman, Byrne or Miller or we'd have to go to a back 3. I'm not saying your wrong, I thought our balance and general play against St Mirren on opening day was very good, despite losing the match. But Byrne didn't play that day, Sinclair started and we only had Mullen up front on his own from the start.

Yesterday IMO the game plan should have been to have two wide men stretching the play and runners from deep supporting the front man when the crosses came in. But from what I am reading here, it sounds like the same old failing of being unable to break down stuffy opponents. To be fair we hadn't really faced that in the league this season as our early goals drew the opposition out, but we can't rely on always being the first to score and need to work out how to come from behind... Which of course we did against St Mirren but then failed to hold on to it.

Byrne and Miller in midfield has worked well but we needed something different yesterday, when plan A isn't working try another tactic. We were playing everything straight through the centre and QP had two lines of 4 mopping everything up, we needed width with 2 wingers, getting in behind them. Their attacks came from breaking up the pitch, I don't think we needed 2 holding midfielders to deal with that, our midfield was just bogged down not really doing anything. In fact Pittman was dropping just as deep as Buchanan and Mullen was left up all by himself, so we ended up having no midfield supporting Mullen and hitting long balls to him.

QP weren't great either but they got a lucky goal from a corner and were quite happy seeing out the game like that, they're a defensive team but the onus was on us to break them down and we weren't doing that the way we were set up.

Yeah; so your post match assessment matches my pre-match thinking in how QP would approach it & how we should have approached it... its this type of failing that raises the doubt in my mind the Hoppy really knows what he's doing; credit to him for the opening 3 wins but he has to take it on the chin for the wrong tactics in this one; which to my mind was match we should have been winning a lot easier than the win over Airdrie in our other away game.

I kinda expected Stenny to play like that against us too but they didn't, we'll maybe find more teams will set up to nullify our attacking style after playing us though. We really need to be able to get in behind defensively set up teams by using the flanks. The likes of Airdrie, Alloa and Brechin will prob suit us better as I can't see them being too defensive and will most prob come at us, which will suit us better.

Yeah it is a worry if Hopkin can adapt to a game when it isn't working, that was a problem last season. He's got a good style of football that is seeing lots of goals so as you say, credit to him for that, when it isn't working though, will he make the necessary changes?

Tbf we did look a bit better 2nd half and should've got a draw with the goal standing (according to Hoppy the video evidence showed it was onside), but it may have papered over the cracks of our frailties so maybe losing will have taught him something, hope so anyway.

One of the worst TEAM performances I've seen in a long time. Some people have complained that QP stifled us but we made it easy for them with very little movement off the ball; if a team of presumably lower fitness than you (assuming the label of full time professional counts for anything) tries to close mark you then you move around all the time; run into space avoid allowing a defender so close that he can grab a handful of shirt etc. Our defence often allowed all the options to be closed so that the only remaining one was to pass it back to Kelly who either booted it straight down the centre to their tall defenders or out for an oposition throw in.

Jackson Longridge continued his record of being unable to play against a team with any of his mates in it; he actually ended up making Ross Millen look good.

I know others think that Miller and Byrne make a good central defensive midfield but I've seen very little evidence to that; Miller is good in patches but pretty inconstant; Byrne seems to hide for large parts of the game and sometimes you almost think you must be playing with 10 men.

Another frustration was that in the first half both Danny Mullen and Scott Pittman independently had good bursts down the wing but got cut out by 2 or three QP defenders/midfielders. At no time did any of our players make a sprint down to try and help them out; it was almost as if some of our guys simply though QP were beneath them, skill wise, and they shouldn't need to make an effort to win which they evidently believed was rightfully theirs.

Sitting where we were it is difficult to comment on whether or not our disallowed goal was indeed off-side but it is relevant to remember that that was actually the only shot we had on target for the whole 90 minutes.

As far as tactics are concerned let me just say in the second half with a goal down and Byrne going off; Pittman appeared to be moved into a role of defensive midfield - I mean WTF; it was such an effective strategy last season wasnt it.

As previously stated the failure to make use of the size of the pitch with two effective wingers (Mullin/Cadden) and indeed in the second half swapping one for another instead of giving Longridge a rocket up the a### to start supporting him.

The boys that came on did okay; and both Danny Mullen and Buchanan put in a shift but the rest need to be dragged in for double training on the basics. Hopefully that will include a wake-up that winning is not our god-give right.

Other than that there was nightmare traffic to and from the stadium; some inventively priced catering BUT I got charge £2 to get in as the guy obviously thought I was over 65. I don't know whether to be pleased or insulted - it did however take the sting out of the cost of the catering.

Also it seemed that on several occasions our guys seemed to pass the ball to the guys in the dark strip rather than to our own players

So all in all you had a pleasant day out D.