Livingston v Motherwell 07/10/2023

[Big Stall]

7 hours ago, MJC said:

Relegation is a distinct possibility this season. 

🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣

 

4 games. 3 against the top 3 teams in the league & the other with 10 men for 45 minutes away on a dodgy pitch.

Seriously, once youv wound your neck in, remember to wring yer knickers out

[couttsy]

11 hours ago, Kmcalpin said:

I have the same concerns as many on here about Bair, but he was pretty blameless today. He was stuck up front on his own, sometimes being marked by 3 defenders. He won his fair share of challenges but more often than not there was no midfielder anywhere in sight to support him.  Soul destroying for him.

I agree, a tough day for him where he was pretty isolated the whole game. Then when we went 2 up top towards the end he was (rightly) taken off. He was far from being our worst player on the day, but he seems to be the fall guy at the moment. 

[couttsy]

Terrible performance, and one of our worst this season. Thought the midfield was very poor, Paton and Spittal in particular. Although in fairness it was likely heading towards a no or low scoring draw until the red card.
 

Very surprised to hear Faddy say he thought it was a red, I’m still struggling to see enough contact for that to be deemed a foul, in fact every bit as much contact, if not more, on Wilkinson when he gets booked for diving (and I’m not saying that was a pen). 

Need a rethinking for Perth, would like to see Spencer on the right and a genuinely left footed left back come in. Also think we need to go 2 up top to be a threat, which 2 I’m not sure! Still think we’ll finish mid table.

[Kmcalpin]

16 minutes ago, couttsy said:

Terrible performance, and one of our worst this season. Thought the midfield was very poor, Paton and Spittal in particular. Although in fairness it was likely heading towards a no or low scoring draw until the red card.
 

Very surprised to hear Faddy say he thought it was a red, I’m still struggling to see enough contact for that to be deemed a foul, in fact every bit as much contact, if not more, on Wilkinson when he gets booked for diving (and I’m not saying that was a pen). 

Need a rethinking for Perth, would like to see Spencer on the right and a genuinely left footed left back come in. Also think we need to go 2 up top to be a threat, which 2 I’m not sure! Still think we’ll finish mid table.

Good post. Some of these points also made on P & B. Yesterday we suffered a systems failure. Lessons were learned after our recent losses, but unfortunately by the wrong people and for the wrong purposes. We play very narrowly and need more width and pace. Yesterday Slattery, Miller and Spittal were smothered and closed down quickly and aggressively. Too many square pegs in unnecessary round holes at the back. 

Wilkinson was very unlucky to be booked and could easily have won a penalty. As someone on P & B commented, very simliar to the one Gent was deemed to have committed on the edge of our box, and for which a penalty/free kick was awarded. That was particulalrly galling as Mackay and Anderson gave perfect performances as olympic divers all day, without a single word in their ear.

Our current set up is now a busted flush. Big changes need for Perth from back to front. The international break has come at a good time for us.     

[grizzlyg]

Watched highlights last night, miller incredibly unlucky, Spencer poor for first goal and no idea what Bevis was thinking about for the penalty.  I would be very annoyed if we went 1 up top against the team bottom of the table.    Ex players seem to enjoy scoring against us but somehow I can't see the reverse applying and Bair scoring for us.

We signed Spencer as a right wing back so would love to see him on natural side and try Gent on left side though SOD doing ok there, 

[wellfan]

43 minutes ago, couttsy said:

I agree, a tough day for him where he was pretty isolated the whole game. Then when we went 2 up top towards the end he was (rightly) taken off. He was far from being our worst player on the day, but he seems to be the fall guy at the moment. 

Bair is, unfortunately, the fall guy because he's a 'project' that is being thrown under the bus by Kettlewell as he stubbornly 'hangs his hat' on him by continually selecting him. He isn't good enough (yet?), but, as I wrote previously, it's not his fault that Kettlewell keeps starting him alone up front. He tries hard, so fair play, but a team needs their solo striker to be a goalscorer. It should also be noted that Bair isn't at fault for our continual leaky defence. That's another issue that needs to be addressed. 

37 minutes ago, couttsy said:

Need a rethinking for Perth, would like to see Spencer on the right and a genuinely left footed left back come in. Also think we need to go 2 up top to be a threat, which 2 I’m not sure! Still think we’ll finish mid table.

I agree, and I think we could all agree that that change should've happened for the Livi game. The St J game will be time for Kettlewell to show us what he's made of now that he's under justified scrutiny. 

[wellfan]

4 minutes ago, grizzlyg said:

We signed Spencer as a right wing back so would love to see him on natural side and try Gent on left side though SOD doing ok there, 

Motherwell love to sign a player and play them out of position.

In all seriousness, I agree. It's time to play Spencer on the right and SOD on the left unless Souare/Gent are any better there?!

[MJC]

10 hours ago, Big Stall said:

🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣

 

4 games. 3 against the top 3 teams in the league & the other with 10 men for 45 minutes away on a dodgy pitch.

Seriously, once youv wound your neck in, remember to wring yer knickers out

And we have scored only seven goals all season and can’t keep clean sheets. Unless we start doing both then we will absolutely be in danger of relegation this season.

Fortunately it’s still early days yet and we have players to come back from injury but losing becomes a hard habit to shake off.

[mfc]

34 minutes ago, MJC said:

And we have scored only seven goals all season and can’t keep clean sheets. Unless we start doing both then we will absolutely be in danger of relegation this season.

Fortunately it’s still early days yet and we have players to come back from injury but losing becomes a hard habit to shake off.

For the most part we have been decent defensively under kettlewell but our lack of goals and options up front are putting extra pressure on us keeping clean sheets,before yesterday we lost three on the trot by a goal to nil,if we had a decent striker we could have taking points from those games, especially st mirren.our forward options are pretty poor to begin with but then we're relying on those coming back and staying injury free.i said it a couple of weeks ago that I think we're only a decent striker away from being in with a shout of top six this season,that could make a big difference in a league that is tight as ours.

[grizzlyg]

1 hour ago, wellfan said:

Motherwell love to sign a player and play them out of position.

In all seriousness, I agree. It's time to play Spencer on the right and SOD on the left unless Souare/Gent are any better there?!

Just my own view but I don't rate Soaure at all. Been culpable for a few goals . Happy to be proved wrong but not convinced with him

[wellsince75]

After a very positive start to the season , things are beginning to even out. Suspect at the end of 11 games games we'll be somewhere between 6-8th. 

Performances pre yesterday have been very decent so don't need to throw the baby out with the bathwater but it annoys me when we refer to losing to the top 3.  Come on folks let's not include StMirren as a top 3 club. 

Assuming we get everyone fit I suspect we'll have a mix of 3-5-2 , 5-3-2 or 4-4-2.  We need 2 up front and best guess is our 2 loanees will be our best 2 forwards. 

From new summer signings not seen anything from Soare, Wilkinson, Bair to make me think they're good enough.  Jury out on Davor as he's not had any real game time. 

The opposite can be said for our loanees . All 3 look valuable and would crack on using them. 

[bobbybingo]

1 hour ago, MJC said:

And we have scored only seven goals all season and can’t keep clean sheets. Unless we start doing both then we will absolutely be in danger of relegation this season.

There are at least 4 or 5 other teams who have/will have less points than us and an inferior goal difference, once they've all played 8 games.  We absolutely need to sort our own deficiencies out, but we don't exist in isolation, and I don't see much that has me panicking.

As far as relegation, that's a possibilty for clubs like us every single season.

[steelboy]

St Johnstone look by far the weakest team but do have some fight about them which we generally struggle against. 

We need to make sure we don't give another easy 3 points. 

[Spit_It_Out]

I don't even blame the players for yesterday this is all on SK when we are playing one up front in a game that's so winnable i knew it wasn't going to happen Livi basically nulled our frontline before a ball was kicked so a horror show from Kettlewell still puzzled what he was think with yesterdays line up.

 

[stv]

Team was out of puff after all the increased efforts required to run the best two teams ,probably three,  in the league very very close . With injurys meaning not much room for squad rotation or respite for regular team members.                                                                                                             
  
That with a marginal sending off of a key player and an abomination of a shitty pitch ,which we have never played well on . Outcome in second half , with 10 men was inevitable . Two weeks rest then back with no excuses , to judge were we really are.

The atmosphere of the posts here really are as changeable as the weather from week to week.

[steelboy]

St Mirren will run out of gas like every other Robinson team. He's never managed to make that physical style of play successful over a full season.

We don't have enough in the final third to get top 6 unless Beireth comes back with KVV level goalscoring. Really we just need to avoid 11th and 12th and try and get someone into the club who can actually assess our transfer targets because Kettlewell clearly hasn't got it in him. 

 

[wellsince75]

33 minutes ago, steelboy said:

St Mirren will run out of gas like every other Robinson team. He's never managed to make that physical style of play successful over a full season.

We don't have enough in the final third to get top 6 unless Beireth comes back with KVV level goalscoring. Really we just need to avoid 11th and 12th and try and get someone into the club who can actually assess our transfer targets because Kettlewell clearly hasn't got it in him. 

 

Big difference between quality of loanee vs perm players . 

id be happy enough with 3 -4 high quality loaners each year whilst focussing on bringing through our youngsters 

perm signings have been brutal 

[stv]

1 hour ago, wellsince75 said:

Big difference between quality of loanee vs perm players . 

id be happy enough with 3 -4 high quality loaners each year whilst focussing on bringing through our youngsters 

perm signings have been brutal 

They are about all we can afford unfortunately 

[texanwellfan]

Well, still in 5th after 4 defeats in a row. SK needs to find a way to get us scoring goals the we can start to pick up points again and stop the downturn before confidence starts to erode. 2 week “break” to work on things, recover from tough schedule and get some injured players back in contention. 

[GazzyB]

Read somewhere online the sending off wasn't checked because the ref had some issues with the equipment or something, any truth in that?

Looks a very, very soft red card from the limited footage I've seen.

[Kmcalpin]

Was Wilkinson's penalty claim checked by VAR?

[Coatsy]

10 minutes ago, Kmcalpin said:

Was Wilkinson's penalty claim checked by VAR?

If Miller was a sending off which i dont think it was them Wilkinson was definatly a Penality. 

VAR has bitten us back today they should be brought to book but who's going to do that it should be a replayed match until these baloons get things right and there is some pain for the SPFL then nothing will change why have a half arsed system that doesn't get basic calls right.

 

 

[joewarkfanclub]

Wasnt at the game yesterday, so wanted to see the highlights before I commented.

From the little there was to see it looked like a fairly turgid game on a bad pitch in poor weather, with neither side really offering anything.

The sending off clearly has a huge impact on the game and Im still struggling to see the justification for it. For me Miller doesnt make any challenge for the ball and appears to try and pul himself back to avoid any contact which, if there was any, was minimal. He clearly wasnt trying to bring the man down, so any contact was accidental. I appreciate that if there was, its still a foul, but is it an immediate red card? 

The disappointing thing for me is that neither of the goals we conceded were caused as a result of having a man less. We have plenty bodies in the box for the first and just dont defend it properly. Thats a few we have conceded like that this season and it needs addressed. As for Bevis and the penalty, least said about that the better.

The Wilkinson incident looks a penalty to me. Im not sure how he can be booked for simulation when there is clear contact from behind. I doubt at that stage whether it would have made a difference to the result, but it is annoying.

Finally, thats the first time this season I think that criticism of SK and the team has been fully justified. It was good to see that SK himself didnt sugar coat it or shy away from saying it how it was.

With a 2 week break now and players coming back into fitness, the team has given him every justification to change things against St Johnstone and none of them can complain now if they are dropped.

Gonna be interesting to see how we shape up for that game.

[wellsince75]

Miller was unfortunate , there was no intention to foul.   it's likely that he made contact, albeit not obvious and given he was last min I can see why he was red carded. 

Versus their penalty (Jesus wept), Mugabi's timing of challenge was awful and took everything infront of him. I was stunned he wasn't booked .  He's been solid this season but he has it in him for these moments.  He must have conceded more pens than any player in recent history.   The sooner Butcher is back the better for everyone. 

Agree with @Coatsy Wilkinson should never have been booked.  Suspect his slow pace made it look a like he had taken a dive.  Don't think it warranted a pen but equally never a yellow. 

 

[santheman]

A combination of a pitch that we've never really been comfortable on for as long as I can remember, a midfield that looked jaded and a lone striker? with no support that meant the ball inevitably ended up at a Livi players feet and put us back under immediate pressure.

I thought if any of the 2 teams were going to score it would have been from a set piece such was the poor build up from both.

Interesting that the Livi wide man started targeting Spencer on the outside forcing him onto his left foot.

Millers ordering off certainly swung the game Livi's way.

Bad day at the office.