Livi v Killie

Wonder why Mullin isn't in the squad, thought he'd be starting but isn't even on the bench, is he injured?

Not sure about their first,have to see it again.But agree with the commentators. Aitken was conned for the penalty,was a certainty he was going to give it.Still poor defencivly. Dont know about this Covid thing,they look alright to me.Big second half needed.

Never a penalty, clear dive. Kilmarnock are looking up for it though, will need to go out all guns blazing in second half to pick up all 3 points!

Mcrorie showing why he should be dropped.No confidence in him whatsoever, especially when we were still in the game.Pathetic.

100% Troy, hopefully stryjek can keep a clean sheet next weekend and show the gaffer he should be number 1. Mcrorie has let in to many at home for a seadon already!

Despite such a promising start we went on to shoot ourselves in the foot.Aitken once again prooving to be our nemesis with his decisions.The least said about Mcrorie the better.Theres got to be a clause in his loan deal that makes him a virtual starter in every game.Thank god hes ineligable for next weeks game.You just felt it wasnt going to be our day.Hit the bar 3 times but doesnt detract from a poor performance at home from the Lions.Making no excuses,but the Covid situation doesnt seem to have affected the Killie players that some were suggesting pre match.All in all a mostly deppressing day.Only plus for me,the stream was good,but doesnt detract from a bad day at the office for the Lions. Onwards to castle Greyskull next week.Help ma boab.

F'king hell, where to start with this game, defence was all over the place at times, McCrorie was a complete bombscare, and Aitken is a fecking useless diddy.

Brilliant start again with Pitts scoring, then we seemed to step off the gas and Killie took control, the Accies game was in my mind even before they scored. Looked offside but still rubbish defending, and their 2nd was never a penalty, Devlin gets booked for a dive when he was fouled in the box in our last game, and Killie get a pen when they dived, pretty much sums our luck just now with refereeing decisions.

Regrouped 2nd half and as expected Killie faded a bit and it was all Livi, then McCrorie fumbles what should've been an easy take and it's 3-1, game over. Made it so much more easy for Killie even if they were tired, to just clear their lines and see the game out.
Just wasn't going to fall for us either, hitting the woodwork 3 times, sometimes it just isn't your day.

Disappointing cause we had a great opportunity to get 5th place and open a gap on the bottom teams, now we'll prob be dragged back into it with us away to Sevco next weekend. If Holt doesn't drop McCrorie now, and let Stryjek keep the jersey after the Sevco game, then he too will be getting criticism for any mistake McCrorie makes, it will equally fall on Holt for continuing to play him. I'm actually a bit angry at this cause i feel it would've been a different game had we played Stryjek.

I believe Mullin has an ankle injury.

We started well & when Pitts scored I could only see us winning but for some reason we fell away badly with the malaise setting in about 5 mins before the equaliser & it was no surprise when it came.

The equaliser was not offside, scorer ran past our defenders with their arms in the air (collective idiots) to pounce on the rebound... granted McCrorie did well to make the initial save BUT he is so weak wristed he didn’t push it to safety just back into the danger area, so not really a good save at all. That gave Killie confidence & they were in control for the rest of the half.

I said penalty as soon as the lad went down so wasn’t surprised it was given but when I saw the replay and how close Aitken was to it I couldn’t believe how bad a decision it was & frankly I can only conclude that Aitken is either bent or incompetent, maybe both. It was a disgraceful decision & we must now demand that this man is never appointed to ref our matches. In fact we should demand he is sacked & lay out all the evidence. He shouldn’t be allowed within 100 yards of a whistle never mind a match.

The third goal should be the last word in the goalie debate & as far as I’m concerned we should send McCrorie back to Govan & demand that they play him every week. The defence lack confidence when he is behind them.

I didn’t think Killie were that much better than us as a team & as far as I’m concerned 2 keeper errors (and I’d blame the management for picking him) & an abysmal refereeing decision has cost us the match.

Second half I though we were on top when they scored but the 3rd killed us off. We needed a quick goal to get back in it but didn’t look like scoring even when hitting the “woodwork”. Other results went against us too.

I also think the lack of continuity in team selection didn’t help, even though we won both cup games, changing the team broke the momentum gained in the previous 2 league games.

Yeh would agree with most of your assesment Bertie.But so many high balls when we couldnt compete with them winning most that came their way was dissapointing. Surely the management must have seen this.For a good part of the game we had no hieght up front.Which made it easy for them to mop up.Thankfully Gary doesnt have a selection problem between the sticks for next week.So in summerising,were we unlucky today or werent incapable of adding to a very good start.Also the calibre of opposition today was obviously a step up regardless of Covid etc that made this with all the pre match shennanigans a tough for us to deal with.We had chances which we didnt take,they did.Dissapointig.Cant wait to hear Garys assesment on that performance

Yesterday was one of those days when the Gods were against us. I suppose we knew it would be hard as soon as Grieg Aitken was announced as the referee.
As soon as we got that early goal my mind involuntarily went back to the Hamilton game, but I dismissed it and told myself nah, not again.
I couldn't fault the guys for effort but Killie were in a rather defensive mode most of the game. A draw was about right until the ridiculously awarded penalty. There is an excuse for commentators in the stand thinking there might have been some contact but Aitken was 2 yards from the incident. He couldn't wait to point to the spot. The psychological impact of an incident like that can have an effect on players. Killie get a lift and can sit back and invite us to get back into the game while our confidence takes a knock.
I would have been quite happy with a draw but because of the penalty and the howler by McCrorie the 3-1 score flattered Killie.
My heart sinks every time I see Greig Aitken appointed to our games. It's long past being coincidence that he "makes mistakes" in our games. Cast your mind back to Livi v Hearts last season when Souda was sent off for an overhead kick that brushed the side of Christophe Berra's cheek. Our indignation at that incident was compounded by the fact that the Hearts goalie had flattened Robbo seconds before.
Finally I have to talk about McCrorie. I am desperate for the lad to do well but he hasn't done it for me. Granted he has made a couple of good reflex saves on occasion but his overall goalkeeping is not up to SPL standard. His positioning sense is suspect and he just does not command his area. I am willing to accept he is still learning and developing but it shouldn't be done in this division. He is not ready and it is costing us. I wonder how much our often slack defending this season is due to lack of confidence in him by our defenders. We will have Styjek next week. I hope he takes the opportunity to give Gary a headache for the next game. He'll certainly get plenty of chances to make saves.
The end.

Bertie Bassett wrote:I believe Mullin has an ankle injury.

We started well & when Pitts scored I could only see us winning but for some reason we fell away badly with the malaise setting in about 5 mins before the equaliser & it was no surprise when it came.

The equaliser was not offside, scorer ran past our defenders with their arms in the air (collective idiots) to pounce on the rebound... granted McCrorie did well to make the initial save BUT he is so weak wristed he didn’t push it to safety just back into the danger area, so not really a good save at all. That gave Killie confidence & they were in control for the rest of the half.

I said penalty as soon as the lad went down so wasn’t surprised it was given but when I saw the replay and how close Aitken was to it I couldn’t believe how bad a decision it was & frankly I can only conclude that Aitken is either bent or incompetent, maybe both. It was a disgraceful decision & we must now demand that this man is never appointed to ref our matches. In fact we should demand he is sacked & lay out all the evidence. He shouldn’t be allowed within 100 yards of a whistle never mind a match.

The third goal should be the last word in the goalie debate & as far as I’m concerned we should send McCrorie back to Govan & demand that they play him every week. The defence lack confidence when he is behind them.

I didn’t think Killie were that much better than us as a team & as far as I’m concerned 2 keeper errors (and I’d blame the management for picking him) & an abysmal refereeing decision has cost us the match.

Second half I though we were on top when they scored but the 3rd killed us off. We needed a quick goal to get back in it but didn’t look like scoring even when hitting the “woodwork”. Other results went against us too.

I also think the lack of continuity in team selection didn’t help, even though we won both cup games, changing the team broke the momentum gained in the previous 2 league games.

The equaliser was equally our defenders fault in the build up to it, all of them ran in a line towards the 6 yard box leaving a Killie player free space behind them for the pass along our 18 yard line, and them having to hit the brakes to double back to the cut back pass. Same thing happened a couple of times in the Hibs game, and Motherwell too if i mind right, when will we learn to have one defender hang back to cover a cut back. Then McCrorie saving it only to put it back in the danger zone.

Penalty was a joke, wouldn't be so bad if Aitken was like Collum, and incompetent to both sides, but his bad decisions only seem to go one way in our games, and it's never for us. Not giving us stonewaller pens, giving opposition dodgy pens, booking our players for the same things he lets opposition players away with, although 2 of our booking yesterday was for dissent, Marv and Guthrie telling him how shite he was. I can remember 2 def yellows Killie got away with, a deliberate block on Marv as he was charging forward with the ball, and studs up into Robbo's leg on the edge of their box (that one might even have been a red), both were ignored, and there were a few more. 4 cards to us, none to Killie, same against Hearts in our 2nd game against them, the first game against them i covered earlier and Orco has also just highlighted. The amount of reds he's given us is enough to throw suspicion on his honesty, and his ability to be impartial, for whatever reason he seems to hold some resentment towards Livi.

Agree on confidence from the keeper breeds better play all round in our defence, and McCrorie just doesn't give us any, so got to wonder how much that has cost us with defensive mistakes too, the minute Stryjek comes for a ball you have total confidence in him getting it, or clearing it out of danger, not so with McCrorie, you tense up waiting for a blunder, and sigh with relief if he doesn't make one. That has to be the same with our defenders, just how much did it deflate the team when he fluffed getting the ball for their 3rd goal, it killed the game off for us.

BIB.

You could have a point there Bertie, i mentioned watching it with my family how it looked like it was us that had been in isolation for a fortnight, the way we looked disjointed, passing in the final third kept missing players. At the time though i thought it was right to give fringe players game time, esp Mullin and JET being new signings to get them better up to speed. It did seem to have had a detrimental effect on our play yesterday though.

We never do well coming back from an international break & with the changed team in the cup games it was tantamount to the same thing.

For all his gaffs I'm starting to wonder if we'd even be better with Stewart rather than McCrorie. Leastway's he's a Livi player.

Particularly concerned to see Holt leaping to the defence of McCrorie; surely he would have been better to let things die down a bit; after all with Stryjeck in goal for the sevco game he's got a wee break before being back in the firing line and I can virtually guarantee that McCrorie will be back in goal against Motherwell - irrespective of how Stryjek does against the huns.

Wont bother commenting on Aitken's display - still just too angry to think about it but we didnt help ourselves.

No I will say something about Aitken - with these clowns in charge (and severe penalties for anyone who even implies that they aren't rock solid) what's even the point of watching football?

I've been watching live football for almost 50 years now and have seen some pretty bizarre situations but they've generally been the exception rather than the rule and they were honest mistakes - somebody screwed up and they'd be lucky to be officiating on reserve football for the rest of the season.

Now they're so over protected and immune to any scrutiny that the game is getting poorer every week.

Stewart and McCrorie are much if a muchness to me. Poor decision making, poor positional sense and don't command the area. I have nostalgics memories of high balls coming into the box and Neil Alexander rising above everyone to clutch them.

Interesting stats from Callum Carson:

Callum Carson wrote:Livi's disciplinary record since the start of 2017/18:

In games not refereed by Greg Aitken - 131 games, 4 reds.
In games refereed by Greg Aitken - 11 games, 5 reds.

3 very dubious penalty decisions against Livi in Aitken games during that time, too.

Big Marv is the 2nd most fouled player in the Premiership according to this list in the DR. That surprised the hell out of me, he didn't even make their top 20 dirtiest players, Marv needs to step up his game.

https://www.dailyrecord.co.uk/sport/football/football-news/scottish-premierships-dirtiest-most-fouled-22870520

What also stick out, is Killie having 2 players in the top 20 dirtiest, that commit fouls on average every 33 & 41 mins, and Killie didn't receive a single yellow card from Aitken.

Durnford wrote:Interesting stats from Callum Carson:

Callum Carson wrote:Livi's disciplinary record since the start of 2017/18:

In games not refereed by Greg Aitken - 131 games, 4 reds.
In games refereed by Greg Aitken - 11 games, 5 reds.

3 very dubious penalty decisions against Livi in Aitken games during that time, too.

Would be interesting to see the booking stats in his games officiating Livi too, how many cards he's given us v the opposition, it's 8 yellows to us v 0 cards in his last 2 against Hearts and Killie.

I'm not sad enough, or that desperate to find out, to do it myself though.