Livi v St Mirren

Looking forward to this game, might be because of yet another break between games in the top flight, but also to see what formation and team we put out.

We've some decent options up front for a change, Hardie may be out with a foot injury (hopefully the 2 weeks break has been enough for him to recover from it) but we could go with Robbo and Dolly up front, or maybe even Raffa & Robbo, and Dolly on the wing. Hoping we go with 2 in attack anyway and not just the one in a 4-5-1. We should be going for the jugular in a home game against St Mirren, so 3-5-2 would be my preference, giving Lawless and Dolly a run out on the wings, or even Raffa and Lawless with Dolly and Robbo spearheading our attack.

Something like this would be good.

…………………..…………….Kelly


…....Gallagher...………Halkett………….Lithgow


Lawless...Lawson..…...Pittman...….Sibbald…….Raffa


...............Dolly/Hardie......Robbo



Tough leaving Byrne and Keaghan out but i'd like to see us playing with a few flair players in midfield for this one to see how we get on.

I agree with your sentiments, we’re safe, let’s throw caution to the wind and see what happens.

Of all the post split games this is the one I’d least mind losing as it would push Dundee closer to the drop. That said, I’d much rather we finish with 5 swashbuckling wins

Unfortunately i wont be at this game as i leave early tommorow morning to take in both the Sunderland game and Newcastle games respectevly over the weekend.Istill feel that we do have something to play for be it financial benefits or the prestige of going for that seventh place.Personally i couldnt give a toss who goes down although i understand the desire to seal the fate of Dundee.Im just glad that we will have a big say in what transpires in what is going to be an excruciating time for those involved at the bottom.We can play now with a freedom for the remainder of the season and im sure the players whoever is selected will want to finish the season with a flourish.Enjoy watching that team as it wont be long before we dont see some of them again in a Livi top.Good luck for Saturday and il speak when i return from Geordieland.Cmon Livi lets do it!!!

I’m the opposite... this will be my last home game as me & Mrs BB are heading for the Country Abroad Not Allowed Direct Announcement of its name; where is Durnford these days?

Might go to the season finale at Motherwell though.

Dunno if it was a red card but it looked dubious & Collun couldn’t wait to get his card out.

Brilliant play for our goal.

Wrong sub though; Lawless was instrumental in the goal and should have stayed on. Sibbald should have been sacrificed if we wanted another defender on.
Proof of that at the equaliser.

We are sitting too far off them; Hardie is being marked by 2 defenders so they are not using the man advantage - so no reason why the rest can’t just get stuck in.

More of the same second half; why did we stand off them so much when they weren’t utilising their extra man? That let Mullen turn & get his shot away for the winner & the other lad get his shot away for Kelly to fumble & Jackson to get the “insurance” goal.

Can’t help feeling the management team made the wrong call today with the first sub & deciding to give St M the ball.

That said I didn’t think we deserved to lose the game because until Mullen’s goal they were bang average at best.

Not bothered about the loss in the grand scheme of things & coupled with Dundee losing it pushes them closer to the edge.

Just saw the red card on Sky TV - what an absolute farce of a decision, my view from the stand was that it was a clean tackle & the Sky TV video seems to bear that out. Halkett makes contact with the ball cleanly & if there was any contact between him & the St M lad it was minimal.

Bertie Bassett wrote:Dunno if it was a red card but it looked dubious & Collun couldn’t wait to get his card out.

Brilliant play for our goal.

Wrong sub though; Lawless was instrumental in the goal and should have stayed on. Sibbald should have been sacrificed if we wanted another defender on.
Proof of that at the equaliser.

We are sitting too far off them; Hardie is being marked by 2 defenders so they are not using the man advantage - so no reason why the rest can’t just get stuck in.

Yep, suppose hindsight and all that but our goal came before the change and afterwards we were giving up our usual game of pressing players and just sat deep inviting them onto us, allowing them to comfortably play it out from the back and use their wide players. If we'd pressed them more and got our wide players up it would've stopped them pushing their FB's down our flanks at will. I think we could've got ourselves 2 or 3 goals up in the first half before changing our tactics to sit in to hit them on the counter.

Also in the 2nd half we had completely given up trying to attack, and I thought Hardie should've stayed on and Menga for Robinson should've been the substitution we made. Menga would've given them plenty of problems with his pace and direct play for Hardie to get room to get into a goal scoring position.


All comes down to the sending off though, just as it did against Dundee, completely changes the game in the oppositions favour with us leaving Hardie up front against 2 CB's and firing long balls up to him. Only consolation was seeing Dundee being left adrift at the bottom 6 points behind with only 4 games left to play. Looking pretty good for us being the team to officially relegate them AGAIN, hopefully we get to keep 11 players on the pitch this time.

Wasn’t hindsight, we said it as they made the substitution. We looked at each other and said “they’re
sacrificing the wrong player, Lawless has just helped rip them apart & has played at full/wing back before. Sibbald has done nothing so far & isn’t a defender.”

And why did we sit off them when everyone could see two men on Hardie? We therefore had 8 v 8 outfield players over the rest of the park, and as it was mainly getting played in our half we actually outnumbered them in the area where the game was being played.

Late post again guys due to being down south over the weekend so can only base my comments on what i saw on the Sportscene highlights.On the sending off we will never know if Lithgow would have intercepted the guy as he was coming through although would agreee Colum couldnt get that red card out of his pocket any quicker.General concensus elsewhere seems to suggest that he got it right and by the look on Craigs face it looks like he knew he had miisstimed his challenge.Obviously it changed the game and as Gary said afterwards would have been interesting if we still had eleven on the pitch during the duration of the match.Well taken goal from Livi although i felt two of theirs could have been avoided especially Mullin getting the freedom to get that shot away although to be fair to him he took it well and Liams fumble was just one of these to forget.From the highlights it looked like Ryan was left isolated for most off the game but i could be wrong.All in All a bad day at the office for us but a massive result for St Midden and the next few weeks are going to be very interesting for all concerned.Chins up lads.We move on.

Saw a worse challenge than Halkett's not even given a card, and a much more cynical one too, Halkett went for the ball but fouled their player, Lithgow was close enough to put doubt on the ref's mind as to whether it was last man or not but Collum doesn't need an excuse to get his red card out. Imo it was a yellow but what can you do, that's twice we've played the bottom 2 team's and had a sending off affect the result, the Dundee game was far worse with the penalty incident also screwing us. Oh and don't even get me started on the Motherwell away game when Lamie's goal was chopped off for their keeper pushing Menga into one of their defenders. I'm just glad these clowns in black aren't costing us our place in the top flight, but they've cost us quite a bit of money in placings.


Anyway, that aside Holt and Martindale still got it all wrong with their tactics and subs, worse still I don't think they realise they got it wrong going by Holt's post match comments. It wasn't Celtic we were playing, it was the team down the bottom fighting for their survival and we sat off them allowing them to casually bring the ball up the pitch for three quarters of the game.

Same at Corners, we didn't have a man on the halfway line, which would've taken 2 of their players up the pitch too, leaving us with the 9 Livi players (incl Kelly) v 8 St Mirren player in our box, and more importantly giving us an out ball.

One more thing bugged me, mentioned it in my last post, but Dolly should've been on a bit sooner and Hardie should've stayed on to partner him up front, Dolly is a wrecking ball that causes havoc, Hardie is the player you want running in on goal with a clear shot at beating the keeper, I've every confidence we'd have outscored them with those two playing up front.

And breath...……………….feeling much better now.

Liviforever wrote:Saw a worse challenge than Halkett's not even given a card, and a much more cynical one too, Halkett went for the ball but fouled their player, Lithgow was close enough to put doubt on the ref's mind as to whether it was last man or not but Collum doesn't need an excuse to get his red card out. Imo it was a yellow but what can you do, that's twice we've played the bottom 2 team's and had a sending off affect the result, the Dundee game was far worse with the penalty incident also screwing us. Oh and don't even get me started on the Motherwell away game when Lamie's goal was chopped off for their keeper pushing Menga into one of their defenders. I'm just glad these clowns in black aren't costing us our place in the top flight, but they've cost us quite a bit of money in placings.


Anyway, that aside Holt and Martindale still got it all wrong with their tactics and subs, worse still I don't think they realise they got it wrong going by Holt's post match comments. It wasn't Celtic we were playing, it was the team down the bottom fighting for their survival and we sat off them allowing them to casually bring the ball up the pitch for three quarters of the game.

Same at Corners, we didn't have a man on the halfway line, which would've taken 2 of their players up the pitch too, leaving us with the 9 Livi players (incl Kelly) v 8 St Mirren player in our box, and more importantly giving us an out ball.

One more thing bugged me, mentioned it in my last post, but Dolly should've been on a bit sooner and Hardie should've stayed on to partner him up front, Dolly is a wrecking ball that causes havoc, Hardie is the player you want running in on goal with a clear shot at beating the keeper, I've every confidence we'd have outscored them with those two playing up front.

And breath...……………….feeling much better now.

Yip, got to agree with all of this.

Not sure what you have all seen that I didn’t for the Halkett incident. I haven’t seen it in slow motion, only at game pace on Sky Sports News & in “flesh” on the day & I saw nothing that even merited a foul never mind a card. So please explain what the BBC highlights showed as I am perplexed by all three of you suggesting it was a foul.

Edit: After my paragraph above - I’ve just looked at the SPFL YouTube video & I stand by my original view. I played it back at a quarter of the normal speed & Halkett’s blue boot quite clearly plays the ball, any contact made at all is because of how close they are to each other as they run & stretch for the ball; there is simply no foul there at all.

BBC highlights clearly showed no contact on the ball by Halkett Bertie, you got a really good view of it from a camera behind our goal. No danger Collum would've been able to tell that from his view behind play though because even from a side view it looked like Halkett got the ball, so how can he give out a red unless he is positive about seeing it, c*** just loves handing out red cards*. And as I said, I think it's a yellow at worst.

*The amount of reds he has had rescinded proves he takes guesses with these decisions, and luckily for him he got it right about there being no contact with the ball this time, though I still think he got the card colour wrong.

Don't see us appealing it though, but i'd argue Collum couldn't possibly tell it was a foul from his position and Lithgow was also close enough to cover it.

Can’t comment on the BBC footage, not seen it. But in the SPFL video, you can see him flick his foot towards the ball which then goes in the direction expected from him making contact. It is conceivable that he didn’t connect with the ball but there is still no obvious foul either, unless his trailing leg catches the lad but even if it did it is folded beneath his tackling leg, any contact would be accidental & incidental.

I still say Collum got the basic decision wrong & made it worse by straight redding him so I think we should appeal.

We've not appealed the card so Halkett will be suspended against Accies, good news is he'll be back for the Dundee game.

He'll be back for the St Johnstone game. It's a one match suspension.