Livi v Alloa

Big game for us, hopefully the players will rise to the occasion of playing the League One favourites and give us a much needed lift and win the game. After the events on Friday and the defeat on Saturday we're all on a bit of a downer, we all need a win to raise our spirits.

Alloa aren't having a great run of form just now either so they're still nothing to fear, they're another team that looked uncomfortable defending corners and free kicks, that was a weakness when we first played them. Mon Livi, get right up for this and turn them over.


Livi 3-1 Alloa, fg 34 mins.

I've only made it to 2 games this season and we haven't been great in either.

Can't make it to this one, so comfortable home win.

2-1 Livi, FG 23 mins.

De Vita's last Livi goal came against Alloa. His next one will be against them.

2-1 Livi, FG 37 mins.

Thought I was maybe being a bit too optimistic with my 3-1 prediction but after signing Rafa I think we'll win by more now. Buchanan will score against his old team, he usually does and I think Rafa will too, might be 4  now.

Just what we've been needing, a player that will score goals and freshens up our squad. Wonder if he'll come on as an impact sub for this game for Buchanan when he tires, that's going to be worrying for opposition teams.

Go 433 and get stuck into these Clackmannanshire upstarts.

Halkett Lithgow Crighton Longridge
Mullin Pittman Cadden
De Vita Buchanan Mullen

Front three swarm all over the place creating havoc with Alloa's back line, wingers ripping up the flanks, Pittman dictating the middle of the park, with the back four keeping it all tight at the back and Kelly turning in the type of performance that useless keepers usually reserve for us. (NB not suggesting Kelly is useless btw); once we've gone 5-0 up we can take off the wingers and put Miller and Byrne on to tighten things up. I can see it all now....

Liv 1 Alloa 2 fg 11 mins

Will there be a bonus point for guessing when we'll hear the first 'Rafa De Vita' chant from Livi fans?

I don't think he should but I've got a feeling Hopkin is going to take a gamble with De Vita and start him.


3-2 Livi. FG 19 mins.

What makes you think he'll start Sinclair?

I think DeVita and Mullin will be on the bench and come on to win the game for us in the 2nd half, Mullin is a great impact sub and has done great for us whenever I've seen him as a sub.

Prob be                                     Kelly

             Halkett          Lithgow             Crighton            Longridge


                            Miller                   Byrne                 Cadden


                                         Buchanan              Pittman


                                                        Mullen

Bertie Bassett wrote:What makes you think he'll start Sinclair?

He started against Alloa the last time and he had a fairly good game and although I thought Byrne was one of the better players last week, there will be a need to change the team and he won't drop Miller. Our defence picks itself as do the forwards so the midfield is the only position that Hopkin can change.

Whilst i sincerely hope that a Rafa inspired Livi can deliver 3 valueable points tommorow ,Ifeel that a share of the spoils may have to suffice for this game.The reason being that niether side can ill afford to lose this one albeit we have already beaten them on their own patch this season.Ifeel we most importantly must be rock tight at the back and concentrate for the whole 90 mins.Defence shores up and the rest will do the buisness up front.Albion who? forget, that this is the big one Livi.Do it!!!

That was more like it. Decent game, nothing much between the sides in the first half and if anything, Kelly made a couple of very decent saves before any goals were scored. Second half and we seemed to start slowly (yet again) but once we got our noses in front I was fairly confident we'd win. Lucky deflection for the opener but two superb strikes from Buchanan for the 2nd and 3rd; with an exquisite De Vita pass to set up the 2nd for good measure. Ridiculous penalty award to steal the shut out from Kelly right at the end. Both players had their eyes on the ball, looking over their shoulders so no way Halkett could see where the guy was and no one claimed it...but as soon as it happened I said penalty because I knew the ref would give it.

Prefer to see Pittman in a more advanced role but he did a good job again today. Decent from De Vita, Mullen did well and was given precisely nothing by the inept ref, Buchanan possibly had his best 45 mins for us in the second half.

Tended to by-pass midfield too much for my liking but we got the result in the end.

Wasps well beaten by the Lions again in our 2nd 3-1 win over them, we'll get to stick them on the mantelpiece if we make it 3 wins against them.

Some goal by Buchanan for his 2nd and our 3rd, absolute peach, he and Miller love scoring against Alloa. Thought we started well and should've been a goal or two up, Cadden's shot got knocked out towards Mullen for an open goal tap in but he didn't manage to get it on target. We had a defensive lapse or two and got away with them, Kelly got our quick to make a good block to stop them for Longridge's pass back and offside saved us for the first one.

2nd half we showed our quality in attack and cruised it after Miller's shot went in, great pass from Rafa to set up Buchanan and well put away, as I said earlier, superb goal by Buchanan to go 3 nil up. Kinda feel guilty for us conceding late on as I said to my mate I need Alloa to score now to get my prediction spot on and even said they'd get a penalty a few seconds before they got it.

Important win for us though, gets us back above Alloa and sets us up for a top of the table match against Brechin next week.

How much better are Sundays after a massive three points the day before?!

Great win, wasn't pretty at times but just what we needed to after the poor showing last weekend. Good shift by Rafa, he looks so much more intelligent and hard working than he did before. Great piece of business by the look of things!

Decent performance from the lions yesterday i thought.Started a wee bit slow against a dogged Alloa side.Slippy conditions didnt help either side with players loosing their footing on many occasions.Rafa showed glimpses of his old self and should be happy with his showing yesterday.All in All a competent display from the team and praise where its due to Hoppy for getting the lads up for this.On a footnote i partook in the freebie hospitality package from the club yesterday and i have to say was extremely dissapointed with the experience as were many of my friends.Poor service all day and the beer was either off taste wise.The organizing could have been a lot better as well in my opinion.Hopefully the club will take note and ensure a better day than we had for future recipiants of this scheme.Nevertheless a great result made up for dissapointment of earlier in the day so once again well done Livi,lets keep it going.

I have already used my hospitality freebie and had a great day. Wasn't expecting the normal standard as it was a freebie but it was top notch. Neil Rankine being there was the only downside, running his mouth off loudly about being a big shot and running football clubs for decades blah blah blah. He was also giving instructions to staff members. He's clearly still involved with the running of the club, which is risky considering the bother we got into before.

Noticed that Apple taste from the draught beer the last couple of times I've been down at the ground, both in the bar and the AS, wish they'd get some bottled Ales in as all they stock is Peroni and Budweiser. Some IPA's such as Brewdog wouldn't go amiss down there.

We seem to have Alloa's number, their attacking style of football suits us fine, but we need to be able to adapt to teams like QP and AR who wont come and have a go at us and will sit in to hit us on the counter.

It is kinda freaky when you look back on the SPFL website's archives of us playing in this Div under Bollan, game 11 has us almost identical to where we are now, Brechin top on 22 points, Livi 2nd on 21 points, and Alloa 3rd on 18 points. Even on week 10 our league positions are exactly as they are now.

Hopefully next week (week 10) we'll be beat Brechin and go top of the league though.

Surely next week is game 11?

Bertie Bassett wrote:Surely next week is game 11?

It surely is yep, had it right in my previous line dunno why I put 10 in brackets. .

Great effort from the team yesterday. That's all I ask for.

Much better performance this week than last. The outcome in the end was just about right but how the penalty at the end was awarded I have no idea. I totally agree with Bertie's comments about both players having their eyes on the ball. Even the Alloa player didn't claim for it. Alloa were less of a force than I expected them to be particularly in the 2nd half. Yesterday once again shows how good the team can be when team's come to play rather than to shut up shop. Hopefully De Vita can be the key to unpicking the lock on the next team the opposition try to shut up shop.

Look at the goals we scored too though, all hit from a bit of distance rather than trying to play/pass it into the 6 yard box to score, beggered if I know why we weren't doing that last week against a team that tried to make it difficult for us getting inside their box to score. We've got 5 or 6 players that can score goals from distance.

Yeh, but it's harder to score from a distance when there are 9 or 10 players spread out between you and the goals.

Took the words right out of my mouth, Orco....maybe I should change the pseudonym to Meat Loaf.... Starting to resemble him in size these days anyway

orco wrote:Yeh, but it's harder to score from a distance when there are 9 or 10 players spread out between you and the goals.

I don't think it is Orco, their keeper was dodgy and Mullen is excellent at following in on spilled balls from the keeper, can also get deflection going anywhere. Both against QP and Rovers we need to take a few distance shots as their keepers are suspect holding onto balls.