Menga Bus

We need Stephen Kelly back in the starting 11, and preferably in the 10 role behind the striker. Can’t really understand why he’s been bombed out as of late. I love Pitts and he’s a livi legend but he doesn’t have any attacking output whatsoever in that position anymore. Will pass sideways and backwards all day long, and will certainly get stuck into a tackle, but 1 assist in 28 games (rolling the ball 2 yards to Devlin against United) isn’t good enough.

I get that individual errors lead to two goals but deary me that first half was 3-0 going on 5 or 6. There was constant pressure and more errors waiting to happen. An offside goal, Curtis main thinking he’s some silky striker when he should’ve smashed it past shamal. Think people are lying to themselves if they say it wasn’t actually that bad. We barely got out our own half, humped the ball long at every opportunity, misplaced a ridiculous amount of passes. At 2-0 everyone in the stands could see it was going to get worse, something the manager was clearly blind to. People saying Nouble was unlucky with his chances, he’s not a striker so why on earth are we playing him there, he has some of the worst finishing from any forward in the squad, missed 2 of the best chances in the full match. Could rant about any player yesterday, but it’s really down to the manager and his system that was wrong. If anyone thinks it’s just about being unlucky, 0 wins from our last 18 games against st mirren and motherwell, here we go again next week.

Martindale’s post match interview almost avoids taking responsibility for his decision making today which is the most worrying thing. Think everyone in the stadium was expecting changes after the 2nd goal, it was only ever getting worse from that point. The fact we finished with a back 5 is astonishing, 3 out of our best 4 attacking threats all on the bench until the 60th minute was mental. His full reasoning behind the change in shape to nullify st mirren is unbelievably negative, obviously we can’t do their own shape better than them. Playing players simply for height, and leaving ourselves with no attacking system is worryingly short sighted

Can’t imagine we’ll see Fitzwater play too many more times, unless De Lucas has a disaster against County or through injury/suspension. Think De Lucas showed enough last night that will make Martindale want to persist with him and Boyes as a pairing to prepare for next season. He has a history of dropping players out when they won’t resign.

Think Guthrie’s first season was the last time we imposed any real threat from set pieces and that was really through him alone. Fitzwater is a soft cb and doesn’t win many headers in the opposition box, Obileye wins a fair share but never gets any sense of direction or control onto the ball. Defensively De Lucas looked to place his headers reasonably well but didn’t see enough in the opposition box to judge him there.

Noticed someone saying that due to Fitzwater already having a straight red this season, this will result in a 3 game ban this time? Any clarification on that would be nice, but looks like we’ll be stuck with De Lucas and Boyes for the rest of the month.

Don’t get me wrong I’ll whole heartedly agree that Livi for pubs is absolutely awful, and I’m not trying to argue we should be any further up the list. There is a pub at the Livi north station (greene king chain albeit), and another a 10 minute walk closer to the stadium from this station too. My main point from what you’ve said is the car parking is utterly dreadful? It’s probably the easiest stadium in the top flight to park at. Multiple multi story car parks within a 5 minute walk, and if you don’t fancy paying in the other side of the stadium there’s a huge set of school and office parking that lies empty on weekends, and then a lot of free residential parking too. Obviously a lot of the information you need comes from living here.

Think next season Pittman will be forced into a deeper midfield role, not quite holding midfield but slightly less box to box than he currently is. His G/A for an attacking midfielder is non existent. Stephen Kelly should play in that “10” role, while we have a base of Sean Kelly and Pitts. Obviously we will need to add to that for depth but it’s not a horrendous outlook. Would be ideal if we could manage to keep one of Holt or omeonga though. Losing Holt, Fitz, Shinnie, omeonga and Devlin would be a very large amount of prem experience disappearing at once.

No complaints about the result, not sure if it’s been mentioned but a group of 20 or so aberdeen fans assaulting multiple livi fans really soured this day (even further). Multiple instances of young teens and adults on their own or just in pairs jumped approaching the stadium by a big group of dons “hard men”, was even seen by stewards who did nothing to stop it. Assuming it’ll just be a group of teens thinking their hard. Hoping aberdeen will come out and condemn this, I know the livi SLO is preparing a report for aberdeen. We’ve already got a small enough away support which wouldn’t cause trouble, and threat of being jumped for simply walking to the away end certainly won’t help our numbers.

Martindale pre-match for rangers game saying Anderson would train today (or Thursday not sure when interview was recorded), and might be okay for the game. Sounds promising though that’s it’s not long term, typically start nouble in these kind of games so would be tempted to rest Bruce for the week

Anyone seen any updates regarding Anderson’s injury on Saturday? Would be nice to know what’s going on with him, badly needed for the run in

I might be wrong but I think Hamilton got poty for Morton last year? While we’re yet to see it, and I’ve been very doubtful of his ability based on his time when I’ve seen him at other clubs, there must be a decent enough keeper in there somewhere. Shamal has really stepped it up since his return with more big saves I feel. Prior to the World Cup break he was a decent keeper but not pulling off the “big money” saves, where I’d say he is now.

Mullin for akinyemi, you can have akinyemi back on loan till the end of the season, get it done Davie

Not sure if any other livi fans have commented but the red today was very similar to both Holt and Pittman’s last month for us. Both won the ball and naturally followed thru, and an opposition player arriving late to the challenge ended up being “fouled”. We appealed both and lost, not worth the time or money for st J to try appeal, sfa won’t budge.

2/9 penalties scored this season is a decent record

Afaik originally var used the term clear and obvious error for every decision, how Scottish football is interpreting it, I’m not completely sure.

What’s awkward here is the way you’ve screenshotted a blurry image to paint the challenge a certain way. He isn’t out of control, and connects just above the boot with Baccus’ left ankle, not the right like this picture makes out, hence the contact is lower than this picture makes out. The real issue for me is the pish camera quality, the fact we’ve all seen countless replays and there’s still a very large majority of folk saying it’s not a red leans me towards saying a yellow isn’t a clear and obvious error so var shouldn’t be used.

Think fitzwater is just injured, picked up a knock towards end of the hibs game

The championship while it can be exciting and close, also has the ability to incredibly repetitive and tedious. I think the season we got promoted we played Falkirk 7 times because of cup games and replays. A 10 team league is not the right structure for the top flight.

As I will be at the game suffering, I’ll spread my optimism by telling you there should be a stream on BuffStreams, you’re welcome!

It was very weird, the ref at tynecastle yesterday seemed so heavily reliant on reassurance from VAR. Every time the crowd appealed he would pause the game at the next dead ball and wait for confirmation. As far as I was aware the ref on VAR will alert the on pitch ref when he needs to pause the game, which perhaps he was doing. Overall though it looked like the ref on the pitch had no confidence in any decisions he was making.

Leaving your best striker on the bench and struggling to score goals, I am incredibly shocked

Yeah fitzwater is back. Think we will line up 5-4-1. George Devlin Obileye Fitzwater Kelly Montano Omeonga Pittman Holt Penrice Nouble

I’m not sure how fit Boyes is considering he hasn’t played in 3 months, but I think he has to be played over Kelly and Cancar

Fair play to United we were truly woeful in that first half. Surprisingly when we brought some attackers on we actually looked a bit more threatening. Still in absolute shock that we barely tested a keeper who conceded 9 at the weekend, he didn’t even have a shot to save and still looked unbelievably shaky.