Livingston v the rangers

Durnford wrote:

Finally what was Gerrard going on about with the line "Livingston always try to bully us?" He used it more than once and frankly the thought of any team with Morelos; Kent and Jacks in the side being bullied is surely laughable.

Anyway bring on Aberdeen.

Pre match and post match, AND the week leading up to a game against us, all you read is Gerrard going on and on about how physical we are, wanting refs to watch us closely etc. All mind games and dirty tricks from him. As much as Lennon was an in your face player that wound everyone up, he's never once used the pitch, or the agricultural tag on Livi, trying to make excuses for not beating us at the TMA, both as Hibs and Celtic manager, in that respect he's miles ahead of Gerrard in class.

Lamie being away to Motherwell was prob the most physical player we had, him and Dec at Motherwell, another big player that barges and nudges players, wonder if he moans all the time about Motherwell being physical. Ironically Robinson always goes on about having to match us in a physical battle too, and even without Dec and Lamie, I've always thought Motherwell were the most physical team we've played, remember one of their players went flying in elbow first and split Dec's head a couple of seasons back.

One booking in the game yesterday (apart from Martindale getting a yellow card for berating the 4th official when McMillan got kicked in the head as he was on the ground), and guess who the player was that got booked, yep, Morelos. Their card count is always higher than Livi's, esp red cards with the petulant Morelos going about kicking players in frustration.

Our card count this season after 4 games is 4 yellows, 2 against St Mirren-Ambrose and Sal, 1 against Hibs-Bartley, 1 against Motherwell-Sibbald, and 0 against Sevco. Yeah shows how physical we are going about bullying players, those giants in midfield.

...And we lost two players yesterday through injury

I really have lost any respect I had for Gerrard following his antics over the past couple of years. Was being media talked into the job at Bournemouth but that's obviously too big for him. I mean you really dont need to be much of a manager to come second to Celtic given the huge gulf in budget between the erse cheeks and the rest of the league. Frankly he's made Ally McCoist look successful.

I wouldn't go that far D, McCoist was on 800K a year and had millions more than Championship teams to spend on squads, and failed to get them out of there the first attempt.

I think Gerrard has improved them, just not enough to break Celtic's dominance, doesn't look like they have the mental toughness to win the league either. This'll be Gerrards last season at Ibrox, he'll be hoping the pandemic stops football (and Celtic's 10 iar) sooner than it did last season so the league just gets null and void written over it.

Thing is, if the season was to get voided & Celtic won the first season completed afterwards, then I would argue they are still on a consecutive run of titles.

I think Gerrard may stick around until he wins something or gets sacked... if he wins something, especially if it stops Celtic’s unprecedented domination of all major domestic trophies, then he is potentially lined up as Klopp’s replacement when he leaves for Real (he won’t get Barce, he’s not Dutch or a Barce old boy, you read it hear first ).... if he gets sacked... he might land a number 2 job somewhere.

That's what I mean, he'll get sacked. The fans are already against him at a drop of a hat when they didn't win their game against us yesterday, he wont last the season.

Sometimes I just love being wrong.

Yeah as I said just before the game, the team just can't be written off, they just keep on surprising us with results like this. Massive improvement in our defending, Fitzwater in particular looked a different player from the prev three games, and Devlin was getting some stick too and really put in a good performance, as did everyone.

What I will say though, is I still don't understand why Holt & Martindale experimented with the formation, messing about with Fitzwater, Brown and Ambrose playing them in strange positions that just didn't work. All good now though, just hope they stick to a back 4 all season now.