Ya Bezzer!

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.

We are on 16 points after 19 matches. So we are going to need 24 points in the second half of the season to get to the 40 points which is generally considered the safe spot. That's a fairly big improvement just to get over the line. My view is that we couldn't attract a good quality manager after Alexander left and we had the whole season ahead of us. Again after Hammell was fired, it was an internal appointment with a spotty record, so presumably we couldn't realistically attract a good quality replacement. If we fire Kettlewell now, who are we going to attract to come in and do a job in this situation when we couldn't do it on the last two occasions? I think that is a very valid argument. However you cannot go 17 league matches and not win. If that happens, Kettlewell should be fired. There is also another point that I sort of alluded to earlier in the week. We have 14 first team players out of contract at the end of the season including most of the first pick type players and I think that is a VERY dangerous situation when you are in a relegation fight because there comes a time when players just think "Well, I'm out of here I'm not going to have to deal with the consequences of this".

Better second half but let's be honest it was probably more due to Rangers going down the gears and just seeing the game out. That said Spencer should have scored. Overall view coming away from that match is that we just don't have enough quality on the pitch to avoid anything other than a relegation scramble. I've supported Kettlewell and said he should get till the winter break. So the winter break is almost upon us and we have two matches left and we absolutely must beat Livingston. Otherwise is must surely be curtains for Kettlewell.

I was expecting us to not concede an easily preventable goal 3 mins into the match.

Here's the rub, Rangers will always have technically better players than we do but off the ball where it's more about work rate, concentration etc Rangers are also much better. They press in three and fours. Our players are like 'someone else is doing it, I don't need to'. Also Georgie Gent has the first touch of a lamp post.

It's who we can get rather than what do we need.

Does anyone seriously think every referee in charge of a Rangers match is a Union Bear member who jeopardises his career in front of the assembled media by awarding dodgy penalties? Out of all the penalties Rangers have had this season only one has actually effected the score line in a meaningful way, the 90th min penalty against Hearts. Otherwise it's a rather bizarre conspiracy that awards penalties when you are already 4-0 up at home to Dundee. Incidentally the last time we beat Rangers at Fir Park we were awarded a penalty, the last time we beat Rangers in the league we were awarded a penalty and the last time we should have beat Rangers we missed a penalty in injury time. What school did Jim O'Brien go to? Eh? Eh? Oh....

Currently we have 7 players that are contracted for season 24-25. And you've named two of them.

I'm pro Kettlewell, in the sense that I think constantly firing managers is one of the factors that's taking the club backwards. However, let's be honest about this, we have to beat Livingston. We can't go 17 without a win and then fail to beat Livingston at home.

Obviously I've made my feelings clear on the quality of Scottish football for a while now. I think it's worth noting though that the number of Scottish players in our league is now less than 40%. About 38% the last time I looked which is an absolute disgrace. Secondly the number of U21 Scottish players that are getting even semi regular football was something like 4. 4 in the whole league. We need to stop importing garbage and start actually focusing on youth development. It's not like the standard of the league prohibits it.