The Rise and Rise of Livi FC

Good article by Callum Carson, interviewing Gary Holt.

https://www.dailyrecord.co.uk/sport/local-sport/you-take-step-back-say-18985138

Totally spot on with this bit too.

“When you reel the list off of what we did last year, you do have to take a take a step back and say ‘wow’ and to be honest I don’t think we get any praise for it.
“Don’t get me wrong we’re not out here looking for it but sometimes it would be nice to get praise for what the players and the club have achieved and feel properly respected rather than folk going ‘it’s just Livi’ or ‘it’s because of the pitch’.

It was an incredible job by Hoppy, Martindale et al, getting us promoted to the Premiership, and Holt has carried that on by achieving all the accomplishments mentioned in that article, but apart from Callum Carson, nobody gives us an ounce of praise for it. If it was a team of our small stature and playing budget down in England they'd be getting recognised for an incredible job, up here all the pundits and journalists care about is 2 teams in Glasgow, sad really. Scottish football just wont grow and be healthy in this environment.


Anyway, feckem, lets keep this going and break more records.

Salford City are a small club who are cash rich with millionaire backers and are playing inflated wages yet to the media the are the darlings with their Rags-to riches fairy-tale.

Durnford wrote:Salford City are a small club who are cash rich with millionaire backers and are playing inflated wages yet to the media the are the darlings with their Rags-to riches fairy-tale.

Gretna 'living the dream'.

We actually got more attention the first time we came up into the Premiership, not as much as Gretna but still, we finished 3rd in the league and played in Europe. This time around though our budget makes this absolutely a dream, teams just shouldn't be able to do what we did and most of us (if not all) could hardly take it in, even after the Premiership had started last season.


Ross County are also subsidized by a wealthy owner, I read their budget in the Championship was 2M quid, compared to ours the season we came up, reported to be 250K.

Will read the article shortly but you are spot on with your comments.

Scottish Football has become a backwater & those who think it will improve when the Govan mob are challenging the Eastenders the same way their predecessors did are living in cloud cuckoo land.

The last thing we need is the same two teams fighting out the title every year with mediocre players in their sides.

The so called Big 5 nations are all heading the same way (2 dominant teams) but their teams are filled with top quality players, so they are getting away with it.

Just watching the Fri night Championship game between Morton and Partick, and heard the commentator using my rise and rise of Livi thread title in his wee filler in between the action, talking about Hoppy.

Some Livi connection in this game, Morton have Hoppy as manager, Cadden, Ky Jacobs, Blues. Thistle have Gerry Britton still at the club, and Raffa, Penrice, Saunders, Miller. Good comeback by Morton too, all seemed too familiar seeing a team go 2 nil up and blowing it after HT.

Wouldn't mind seeing Penrice back at Livi, he's a very good LB/LWB.

Raffa scoring a good goal too, hopefully we'll bring him back in January.

Cadden is also thriving in the Championship with Morton, just didn't seem to have any consistency with us the last 2 seasons though, might just be he needed a move for a fresh start.

Blues isn't popular with the Morton fans, reading their comments about him, i think they'd be happy getting shot of him back to us.

On our way to another record, today's 4-1 win has equalled our best season record of first 8 straight games undefeated, next week's home game against St Mirren would see us breaking that and making it 9 games undefeated. Mon the Lions.

Arguably the worst team we could face at home given the most common result in this fixture is an away win.

Always looking on the positives Bertie.

I think that trend went out the window in the Championship season, when we slaughtered them at home. Last season we won home and away, then lost home and away against them, so honours even there, the away defeat was like the accies one, terrible conditions and a sucker punch at the end of the game with naïve defending, leaving ourselves open to the counter attack. The home defeat was when we had our slippers and pipe mode on, with nothing to play for. Oh and the ref also helped them out a bit red carding Craig Halkett.

Can see us sticking at least 3 past St Mirren if we continue to play with the same intensity, and take our chances.

Liviforever wrote:Always looking on the positives Bertie.

I think that trend went out the window in the Championship season, when we slaughtered them at home. Last season we won home and away, then lost home and away against them, so honours even there, the away defeat was like the accies one, terrible conditions and a sucker punch at the end of the game with naïve defending, leaving ourselves open to the counter attack. The home defeat was when we had our slippers and pipe mode on, with nothing to play for. Oh and the ref also helped them out a bit red carding Craig Halkett.

Can see us sticking at least 3 past St Mirren if we continue to play with the same intensity, and take our chances.

And we helped them out with a lack lustre Ryan Hardie in his "I'm a big rangers player" mentality

Oh I know recent games have bucked the trend but the fact remains that the away team tends to win.
That said, I’d be sorely disappointed if we lost to them.

Cant be bothered starting a new thread so I'll hijack this one....

Was pretty impressed to see that every single first team player with exception of Blues; Menga and Pignatiello (who are on loan to other teams) have their home AND away shirts sponsored. Even Jack Hamilton, whose on loan to QoS, has been sponsored both home and away.

I don't think this has ever happened before. There's always been a few gaps.

Noticed a link to a fans facebook page and went on it for a wee look, they've set up a lottery type idea for this, folk put in a fiver a ticket (so you can buy as many tickets as you want) then once they have double the amount for sponsoring a player they give half to Livi for the shirt sponsor, and the other half goes to one of the folk who bought a ticket when their number is drawn.

They've successfully sponsored 5 players shirts doing this, so well done them.

Great effort from everyone else that has sponsored a player too, 28 Home & 28 Away shirts £8,400 is fantastic.

Think you need to look at the spelling of the word "Shirts" Livi4Ever.

Yeah I've had a few home and away games where I've been shirting it.

This fantastical Livi era just keeps on going and going, breaking one record after another and doing things we just didn't think we'd see following Livi.

Apart from winning the top tier there is only one thing we've not done, and i'd absolutely love seeing us lifting the Scottish cup. The semi final is the best we've done in that cup comp, but with this current Livi team I really think we are capable of doing it, they've already shown there is no team we have to fear, a bit of luck and a bad refereeing decision was all there was in the Sevco cup defeat, and we've just beaten Celtic.

It would be the best season ever if we lifted that cup and got a top 6 finish. I dare to dream.

Liviforever wrote:This fantastical Livi era just keeps on going and going, breaking one record after another and doing things we just didn't think we'd see following Livi.

Apart from winning the top tier there is only one thing we've not done, and i'd absolutely love seeing us lifting the Scottish cup. The semi final is the best we've done in that cup comp, but with this current Livi team I really think we are capable of doing it, they've already shown there is no team we have to fear, a bit of luck and a bad refereeing decision was all there was in the Sevco cup defeat, and we've just beaten Celtic.

It would be the best season ever if we lifted that cup and got a top 3 finish. I dare to dream.

FIFY

I was attempting to have some kind of realism there.

Liviforever wrote:I was attempting to have some kind of realism there.

I lost all grasp on reality at about 13:03 on Sunday.......

Durnford wrote:

Liviforever wrote:I was attempting to have some kind of realism there.

I lost all grasp on reality at about 13:03 on Sunday.......

Why, what happened on Sunday, did some team beat Celtic?

I know it was mentioned last season, comparing this team to the legends of 2001-02, and i doubt very much we're going to finish 3rd, but i think this season we're even better than last season's team, and there is no reason we couldn't go for a top 6 finish and a Scottish cup final, obv need the rub of the green in the cup with keeping the best players fit and suspension free, and having no bad refereeing decisions going against us, but in one off games we're a match for anyone.

As good a start as we had last season, we had a big dip in results after Jan, and only narrowly missed out on a top 6 place at the split, there is a lot of room for us to improve on last season.

My biggest concern is Dykes - he's a strong physical boy but he comes in for a lot of punishment; sooner or later hes going to be out for a month and then we really struggle to score goals. As good as it was to see Miller back finally he's not really the answer.

That aside I found this piece that was posted on P&B really interesting:

Our players will be wanting pay rises after bossing those Celtic high rollers. Just wish more folk would turn up to watch them so we could pay them what they deserve. Where are all those folk that turned out for the play offs two seasons ago, we filled 2 stands against Thistle, and had to open the South stand against Utd too. We didn't even fill the West stand on Sunday against Celtic, what does it take to attract the people of West Lothian to come along and watch this magnificent group of players!!!

I know what you mean- apparently we took 2000 to Firhill in the playoffs.

I think our first season in the SPL we sold somewhere between 3000 and 4000 season tickets including about 90% of the West Stand. No doubt the downturn in the economy will have had some effect but even so....

Think it was Durnford that brought up the question last season, if this Livi team was as good as our 2001/02 season legends, that finished 3rd and played in Europe. Well I genuinely think we have an even better team/squad this season and they could be right up there as the best we've ever had.

We've coped so well with injuries in defence and midfield, we've had about 15 changes in defensive positions this season, with only Guthrie being a constant. 3 different keepers in league games too, shows what a brilliant job the management team have done in recruitment and training, for us to maintain our brilliant home form with so many changes, and sitting 5th in the league.

Liviforever wrote:Think it was Durnford that brought up the question last season, if this Livi team was as good as our 2001/02 season legends, that finished 3rd and played in Europe. Well I genuinely think we have an even better team/squad this season and they could be right up there as the best we've ever had.

We've coped so well with injuries in defence and midfield, we've had about 15 changes in defensive positions this season, with only Guthrie being a constant. 3 different keepers in league games too, shows what a brilliant job the management team have done in recruitment and training, for us to maintain our brilliant home form with so many changes, and sitting 5th in the league.

Interesting fact - Scotty Pittman actually has a (marginally) better scoring record in the Premiership than David Fernandez. Now if only we had someone settled to outshine Broto.

Durnford wrote:

Liviforever wrote:Think it was Durnford that brought up the question last season, if this Livi team was as good as our 2001/02 season legends, that finished 3rd and played in Europe. Well I genuinely think we have an even better team/squad this season and they could be right up there as the best we've ever had.

We've coped so well with injuries in defence and midfield, we've had about 15 changes in defensive positions this season, with only Guthrie being a constant. 3 different keepers in league games too, shows what a brilliant job the management team have done in recruitment and training, for us to maintain our brilliant home form with so many changes, and sitting 5th in the league.

Interesting fact - Scotty Pittman actually has a (marginally) better scoring record in the Premiership than David Fernandez. Now if only we had someone settled to outshine Broto.

I think Derek Lilley was our top goal scorer in the Premiership with 15 or 16 goals too, and Dykes could beat that this season. Lawless is on the way to double figures too.