St Mirren v Livi (League & Season Opener)

Mixed feeling for this season, buzzing to get going and see how we get on, but it feels weird not being able to go to the game, and having to watch it played in an empty stadium. You could hear the ball being kicked in those pre season games, never heard it sound like that before with the fans there, not even when we're sitting quiet, a right slapping noise.

Anyway, was quite impressed with how we knocked the ball around and pushed forward, Efe was bombing up the wing and looking good too, Forrest looked excellent, reckon with nearly all the players from last season still here we've a settled team that knows one another and can push on and do even better this season.

Just need to get a few away wins, starting with this one on Sat, it would really be a big statement if we started the season with an away win, mon Livi, lets get those 3 points.

Yeah, very hard to predict what will happen... you would think that teams who usually play to smaller crowds would benefit but then the guys who play to bigger crowds may feel less pressure than normal.

Some cracking games were played down south but there were a few damp squibs as well.

A win would be great, a draw would be okay.

BBC reporting St Mirren have missed 4 days training because of their positive covid test, hopefully a wee advantage for Livi going into this game tomorrow. Dare say Bertie will see this as them being able to rest up well and be raring to go against us.


In other news, the 5 subs rule was voted through, 9 on the bench, and you can have 3 sub breaks during the game to bring on your 5 players. I know Holt wasn't in favour of this, being abe to change half your team, but suppose it gives us the opportunity to shore up the defence to hang onto a 1 goal lead for the last 10 mins, just imagine bringing on ATS, McMillan and Crawford for our last 3 subs, moving Brown from LWB to CB, McMillan into CB, ATS to LB, and Crawford helping Marv out as a defensive midfielder in front of our 5 CB's.


………………………………………..        McCrorie


Devlin      Efe        Guthrie      Fitzwater       Brown     McMillan      ATS    


……………….. …..         Marv                      Crawford



………………………………………..     SAL/Dykes*


In a 7-2-1, good luck breaking that defence down in the last 10 mins, our away form is sorted.


* One from those two, keeping a striker for an out ball, and both are good in the air for defending set pieces and corners.

Hard to call this one,yeh not a bad shout above though cant see Pitts being left out.Im sure Goodwin will have them ready for this but if we are going to fulfill the asperations of some suggesting top six then these are the games we have to do well in especially away from home.Im reasonably confident without going overboard. Good luck to Gary and the lads tommorow, We're right behind yous.

LF you know me too well!!

That's me bought a pass for the game tomorrow £12.50, up and running at 2.30pm tomorrow with a 3pm ko.

Just go on the below link and register to log into St Mirren TV, then go into the PPV and buy your pass.

https://ppv.stmirren.com

St. Mirren v Livingston
1st August 2020 - 15:00 KO
Aug 1st 2020, 2:30 pm

You Have Purchased A Game Pass For This Event

This event will be live in
17 Hours, 4 Minutes, 2 Seconds

I’m hearing some folk are having problems with it but if it isn’t accessible until 2.30pm that might explain the issues.

Plenty of endevour today without the finished product. The high ball obviously didnt work for me today.Overall we were the better team,but credit St Mirrens defence.Stood up to everything we threw at them.Sore one and our away days woe continues.Early days and shows more work required. Its gonna be tough!

Got all psyched up for this game & bought the pass.... shouldn’t have bothered, what a shambles.

No way are we making top 6 based on that performance, the only reason we’d get top 12 is because that’s how many teams there are in the league.

I blame the woeful new kit.

Sorry Troy, can’t agree, we were rank rotten against a poor side.

Bertie,i only saw the second half due to technical difficulties.But from other accounts the buddies defence were the winners today.By our standards we were poor but would agree so were St Mirren.

Yes, Saints defended solidly but they didn’t have to work too hard.

The one time Forrest actually got a chance to have a go at them he got through easily enough & won a corner, presumably from a save but we didn’t give him the ball enough for him to have any real impact.
Sibbald had one decent shot that hit the outside of the post, so it wasn’t close to going in. Pitts had two decent strikes but both were blocked from threatening the target. The rest of the time it was a whole lot of nothing.

In the first half we were constantly exposed by a diagonal to their wide left man & Tait got in on that side to score the goal. We had nothing connecting back to front & Dykes couldn’t hold anything up & looked like someone who isn’t going to be with us very long. His performance today wouldn’t raise a bid of 6 figures never mind 7. When he did get on the end of a ball there was no one near him to pick up the scraps.

We were probably slightly better than them before they scored but once they were in front we could have played until next Saturday & wouldn’t have scored.

Both teams pretty much made it a scrappy affair, but St Mirren nicked a goal out of nothing and were happy to keep it scrappy. Our set piece deliveries were rubbish, our long throws minus Brown were a waste of time, just had no quality to open them up. Pitts and Sibbs had good long range efforts, one hit the post, and the other was blocked a couple of times, and Forrest got in behind their defence with a good bit of skill, but nae aunt made the effort to get in at the back post for his cross.

St Mirren defended well, but agree with Bertie, we didn't exactly make it hard for them, Dykes was marshalled out the game with the service he was getting, very frustrating to watch.

On a plus side, didn't have any problems with the stream picture, couldn't get on the away commentary, but first half I could hardly hear it anyway, which was fine, if I had the option i'd mute commentators anyway, and just have the sound of the game being played.

St Mirren were decent defensively at home last season too, so wasn't expecting a goal fest, if we'd got a goal it would maybe have forced them to open up a bit, didn't happen though and everything went according to Goodwin's plan. Should be better against Hibs, far more open with them likely to come at us.

After a day to get the disappointment out of my system and look at things more rationally, it would've been great getting off to a positive start and a point or three on the board but it's only the start of the season, and there will be plenty ups and downs to come.

Also will take a few games to get everyone sharp and working in sync, as the defending for their goal showed, but was typical of last season's away form, scrappy away game that should have been a draw, ending up with the opposition taking the points due to an avoidable mistake from us in defence.
We really don't want this to run into this season and be repeated in away games, hopefully it's just down to us getting going and we'll be fine after a few games are played.

That's why I liked the Betfred games, most were against opposition from lower leagues, and we maybe got away with these mistakes, or had better opportunities to dig ourselves out of them, till we got up to speed, but it's straight into the league campaign after a short pre season build up only playing 3 games.

Some positives were Forrest looking decent, and Pitts getting a few good shots on target, Efe also looks good going forward, and Devlin had a couple of decent chances, particularly the one Dykes laid off to him.

Anyway, lets hope we beat Hibs at home and all of this will be forgotten about.

It's been a while but here I am.
It was disappointing not to take anything from the game. I think Goodwin won the tactical battle. They were set up not to lose and got lucky with the goal although I must admit it was well taken. I guess it's a measure of how well we've done these last few seasons that teams will set up defensively even at home against us. It's always frustrating trying to attack against teams doing that. We do better when it's the other way round.
Dykes was well marshalled and it's something he'll have to get used to while he's still here. Forrest looked promising. Jury is still out on Fitzwater and Kouider-Aissa. It's too early to tell. There were a couple of moments when I remembered how Ambrose could often be a bombscare at Celtic when he tried dribbling out of defence. No good for my blood pressure. McCrorie didn't have a lot to do. I'm still not sure about him either.
Ah well, back down to earth. I was worried at a lot of Livi fans getting beyond themselves talking about top six again. Tenth will do me fine and even better if another couple of teams detach themselves from the rest early on.
Hibs will be hard. I'll settle for a draw just to get our first point on the board. A win would be delightful.

Yeh,would tend to agree Orco.Wasnt pretty to watch. Hopefully the guys will get it out of their system for Saturday.Devlin saying our pitch wont save us this year and i tend to agree.We can't afford to rely on home form this season again.Its gonna be tougher this season,but hopefully the lads will rise to the challenge. Good to have you back and hope you are both Well.Lol.Troy.

If Devlin said that then it's prob something Holt has told them, sounds like something Holt would say, he likes to impress on them they aren't good enough to play teams off the pitch, they have to graft first and their hard work is as much a leveller as anything. Prob Holt trying to get them focussing more on winning those elusive away points.

I'd say it was home advantage, knowing how your pitch runs, how the ball plays on it, if there is any dips, bumps, hills etc, which also goes for grass pitches, or just plain being used to playing on it. The crowd advantage wont be there for a few bigger teams though, and refs being swayed by that big crowd. But if it was purely down to the material then Accies and Killie would've been top 6 too, Killie's form dipped when they lost their manager, the pitch didn't help them then. Their fans said nobody mentioned their pitch before Clarke took charge, because they weren't winning on it all the time, so it wasn't the pitch.

Anyway, what i'd say is we can't rely on home form being so good, not to keep us up though that's a bit dramatic, because our home form has got us a 5th place and 9th place, that was comfortable positions, but we need to get better away form if we're going to push on and keep improving, and it stands to reason our home form will drop sometime, it was the best home form outside the erse cheeks, that's an incredibly high standard to keep up.

Drawing and losing most of our away games gives us plenty room for improvement there though, winning 6 away games isn't a big target, and it would give us the luxury of being able to lose  4 or 5 home games and still be comfortably above 10th place.

What last season highlighted, is you can have an absolute mare of a start to the season and make the top 6, St Johnstone proved that, but fans tend to panic at not winning their first game and getting a win under their belts, it's a long season (Coronavirus permitting).

Motherwell losing to County shows these kind of results happen at the start of the season, we'll both be fine once we're 5 or 6 games in.