Ya Bezzer!

Livingston looked absolutely gubbed, the club is a shambles behind the scenes. Hard to see them finishing anywhere outside of bottom place. Dundee and Kilmarnock will be fine. St. Mirren will probably be fine, their recent form isn't great so they might get dragged into things but I think they have enough points on the board. That leaves us, St Johnstone and Ross County fighting to stay out the play off spot. Honestly all three are much of a muchness. Under Levein St Johnstone have shored up at the back but they still struggle to score. On the other hand we've scored goals but are absolutely shocking at the back. And Ross County are probably somewhere in the middle, not great at either but not desperate. They also have basically a new team and it remains to be seen how that turns out. No one is really posting great form out all these teams, so it's hard to really pick one out that's looking like they might improve. Personally I think the 2nd bottom spot might go to St Johnstone as you just can't win games without scoring. Probably going to be a bit of a nail bitter though.

Even if we could match Killie and St Mirren it doesn't mean we should. Making the smart decision doesn't necessarily mean throwing cash at players. Seems to me paying the wages for Van Veen would have been a big gamble and probably not worth it. By the way Steven Robinson was on the radio on Saturday saying St Mirren had no money. Turns out they didn't bring anyone in last night which might well confirm that.

The clubs on a 'fire the manager cycle' - Aberdeen, Hibs, ourselves haven't really solved any of their issues. It's almost as if it's done to appease the fans rather than address the real issues.

Looks like we scouted Jack Vale but looking at his height on Wikipedia. 🤣

Our transfer policy has been a shambles going back to the Robinson era. I've said it before but it seems to be 'who can we get' rather than 'what do we need'. It's been youth development that has consistently saved our ass whether it be Turnbull, Campbell, Scott, Johnston and hopefully Miller.

Not including signings since the weekend we've had 37 first team players on our books to Kilmarnock's 28. Obviously a lot of ours have been moved on but still.

Kilmarnock have had over 27,000 more fans through their turnstiles this season than we have. At 25 quid a head that's well over half a million pounds and more than enough to pay twice our wage cap.

3 defeats in 11 with draws away to Celtic, St. Mirren, Hibs, St Johnstone twice. If we win our next two home games we are on a pretty good run. Of course we have to win them but now is hardly the time to get rid of the manager.

I think what need to do is realise season long loans are not a viable option when players can be called back on the whim of their parent club. In future we should only have 6 month loans with contingency plans for the second half of the season, whether that is a re-negotiation or bringing someone else in/promoting a youth player or whatever. But it's obvious ourselves and other clubs in Scotland had deals that were not met and have not expected to lose players when they did.

They are literally the form team in that division right now. They put 3 past Dundee Utd at Tannadice a couple of weeks ago. Definitely a potential banana skin.

The reason Nouble was being played out of position the last 5 or 6 matches is because he played all the rest up top and didn't score a goal all season. Nouble is obviously a skilled footballer but he rarely if ever scores. Bruce Anderson on the other hand. His confidence is a bit down right now, poor team creating few chances, not getting starts etc, but I think he is actually one of the better finishers in this league, at least outside the city clubs and I think it tells you something that he's still Livingston's top goal scorer this season by a distance with 6 goals.

Anyone miss VAR today? Didn't think so! 🤣

My main memory of Gent this season is him having an absolute shocker against Celtic but he was our best player today. By no means the finished article but showed some quality today.

No coincidence we looked about 100% better after Lennon Miller came on the field. He has been missed. Outside of scoring in however many seconds the first half was very, very poor. These cups ties can be tricky coming off the winter break when lower league teams have been playing regularly but even so our passing was atrocious and we just looked so, so sluggish. OK, our options are limited right now but the team set up, basically 5-4-1, at home to Alloa, just wasn't good enough. Things improved as I said when we went 4 at the back and Lennon Miller came on and showed what we've lacked during his injury. Couple of good quality goals in the second half, and created more chances but still a few question marks in key positions against better quality opposition.

Yeah but he at Fir Park he was usually high and right!

I grew up, football wise, in the Rangers-Souness era. So it seems natural to dislike Rangers more than Celtic. Indeed we had Celtic in our back pocket for long spells in the 80's and 90's. There is also the fact that Rangers were a bigoted club. Some of the younger fans probably wouldn't believe the fuss that happened when Rangers signed Mo Johnston and broke with tradition. Whether you like it or not Celtic were not a bigoted club in the same sense. I mean I don't like Celtic and the current Celtic support is really very high up on the list of the most irritatingly entitled supporter bases of all time but when you you take everything into account I think the 'culture' around Rangers to me it's quite a bit uglier. Manchester and George Square being two fairly recent examples of depravity.

Celtic fans already wrecked seats in the South Stand. Can we really afford to replace more with his shooting?

It's bloody hard running a professional football club with 5,000 supporters. Supporters don't take into consideration non football related expenses (50% of our total budget). The club isn't in financial difficulty but there are massive variables in income depending on unknowns. (league position/cup runs/transfers). Club has to make difficult budget decisions and new investment would be helpful. Explained the difficulties of appointing a new CEO. 4 targets approached but none of them came to fruition. Explained reasons behind important players leaving the club. Club has decided to put less money into communications. Pyro issue is a potential problem for the club. The managerial team is here for the long term. I generally don't get involved with behind the scenes stuff, I'm a football guy, I buy a season ticket every season, put some more money in via merchandise etc leave it to the guys in charge. I thought it was a good interview. Derek Weir seemed honest and forthright and gave a decent insight into the finances of the club and the difficulties of allotting a budget in a period of increasing costs. Think he also allayed fears that the club is in financial trouble while also explaining that it's no easy task for a club our size to invest in every area that we'd like and any additional investment would help a lot. I think you could take issue with some of the things he said. I am still to be convinced that our youth system is really linked up to our first team operation and seems rather ad hoc rather than there being a strategy in place. He also said our player in/out count wasn't anything unusual in the league but that doesn't mean it's not dysfunctional. Overall though, decent listen.

Makes sense since they are looking for a left back after Beck got recalled.

The first goal was the sort of goal you'd expect Bair to score, running on to a long ball and scaring the goalkeeper. Second goal was the kind of goal you don't expect Bair to score. Fair play to the guy, MotM today.

We are better when Slattery doesn't play. First off, well done to Livingston for respecting the O'Donnell applause and not taking the throw in, that was a nice touch. Now the game. We have started so many matches poorly this season but today we could have and maybe should have scored inside 20 seconds and that clearly rattled Livingston right from the start of the match. For the first 20 minutes Livingston were all over the place and we could have scored 5, 6, 7. When the game settled down there wasn't a lot between the teams but if you exert that pressure right from the start it gives you a level of control over the match.

Right now it should be OK. It's eased off but it is still going. EDIT - And it's stopped now. Wrap up warm folks cos it's going to be baltic!

I'm minutes from Fir Park and it just started snowing pretty heavily....

You could point to all sort of statistics on our side but here's the crucial one for me. Excluding penalties Livingston have scored 2 goals in 14 matches. So they are averaging a goal from open play every 7 matches. If we can't win this one......

The problem is guys like Kelly, McGinn or Spittal know they will get at least as good a contract somewhere else. And other guys know they aren't good enough for this level.