Livi v Falkirk - Sat 23rd Jan '16

Not holding out much hope for this, what with our poor home record

Usual home performance today = defeat

thought we were lucky to get away with a point, we sat back and let Falkirk dictate the play and Falkirk missed some great chances and McCallum had some good saves, lets hope we can pick up some points in our next games

A brilliant point today and an OK performance, certainly gives me a little confidence going into the huge game next week.

I would prefer Neill to play instead of Gordon. Gordon is erratic at best and his distribution is woeful. Gallagher recovered well from what can only be classed as a horrendous mistake which ultimately cost us a goal. The team does not score enough goals to allow us to gift goals to the opposition as we do so frequently. I liked the look of Fotheringham and Halkett today, the latter had a pretty reasonable debut against tough opposition. Stanton for me had a very quiet game although thought he looked very capable when he was given the ball and think that he may prove very useful in the remaining games this season. Contrary to other posters I think that Buchanan was good out wide and worked extremely hard throughout the game, getting just rewards with his goal. I'm not Hippo's biggest fan but I agree with Auldnick in that Hippo looked good when he came on. He held the ball up well and looked a threat when he ran at the Falkirk defence.

All in all, a reasonable performance against tough opposition with plenty of positive to draw on, I think given the chances created Falkirk can feel aggrieved not to have won the game. If we play like that every week and cut out the individual mistakes we should avoid the relegation and playoff spaces this season. I would also like to see us play a bit more attacking football, for me we sat in an awful lot and invited pressure onto us. As the team at home we should be attacking and not allowing their defenders to stroll into our half un-challenged.

Would like to see a similar team playing next week with White up top, Hippo in for Mullen and played on the left wing and Neill in for Gordon.

Not sure which Hippo you thought you were watching JS, Edinlivi summed his contribution up well. Agree on Halkett and Longridge tho.

Perhaps the most pleasing thing today was that we lasted the full 90 without fading out of it. Fozzy looks to be a good leader, like Edinlivi I thought Stanton was a little quiet but it was pointed out to me that he was doing good defensive work and sure enough he was. However, I wanted to see him taking players on and when he did he showed that he has it in him to go past players and get the ball into the box.

I thought we were set up not to lose the game and if so then job done but while Falkirk were always going to be hard to beat, I didn't think they looked like a top 3 side today and had we shown a bit more ambition we might have won. Too often we were too slow to support the lone front man (including Mullen) which didn't help. But there were some decent crosses sent into the danger area but no one gambling on a run to meet the cross. So not a great performance from us either but we showed enough commitment and energy to suggest that the same against the likes of Alloa, Dumbarton, St Mirren etc should get more positive results.

Glad of a point but I thought we were awful all over the park yesterday. Falkirk were very poor too.

McCallum, for me, is not a keeper that instills any confidence and we were lucky that Falkirk were wearing bananas for boots their shooting was so bad - high and wide or straight at McCallum.

I don't know what Gallagher was thinking about allowing the ball to bounce for Falkirks goal. Deal with it!

Why was Mullen on his own up front chasing hoofed balls from defence. He was lucky if one of them was directly to him - mostly he was chasing balls all over to little effect.

Big Jordan White hustled and bustled all day but the players seemed on different wavelengths as nothing came off for him.

I just couldn't work out our tactics at all. 11 men in our own half defending for 90 minutes surely couldn't be a deliberate choice?

A very good point, albeit a lucky one.
An improvement on what we've had to put up with recently and against a good team challenging for promotion.
Good to see a change of personnel and tactics from Hopkin, even if it didn't work perfectly.
Not a fan of White, but if you're going to play the long ball, which unfortunately I believe we have to play most of the time at the moment against better opponents, you need someone with the potential of making a challenge (and better out wide then in the centre).
Interesting comments regarding Mullen v Hippo, both are potentially good players and potentially match winners, but when it's not happening for them, they need to work as hard as Buchanan, who showed them what's required, lots of chasing and he got his reward.
I would have given Mullen 45 minutes and told him to work his socks off, closing down defenders when he doesn't have the ball (as did Buchanan & John Baird), then if there's anything left in the tank, give him a start in the second half, but bring on Hippo when Danny is done, earlier if it's not happening.
Hippo needs to be in the final third if we're going to present a threat, probably the same for Danny too.
My pet hate is attackers who allow defenders time to settle on the ball and pick out their forward pass, just puts more pressure on our midfield. However agree on this occasion against better opposition, only to defend in our own half, but we need to be ready to press and really challenge and not let opponents drive deep into our half at will.
Ideally we need a front man who can hold off his defender, bring the ball down, turn his man or bring others into play. I've seen Hippo in this role before and thought he did well, worth another go, but change to plan B if it's not working.
All in all I'm hopeful against lesser opposition, that our midfield can be more influential and we can be brave enough to play the ball out wide, take on defenders and get stuck into teams with a real belief that we can win games.
We won't always be as lucky as yesterday, but with a positive game plan, including plans B and C when required and non-stop hard work, I can take the outcome, good or bad.

In our current position any points against the top sides have to be considered a bonus, so in some respects I can understand us setting up not to lose the game and in that respect it was a job well done...however Falkirk didn't look too good yesterday so perhaps a more positive outlook would have won the match. That said, Falkirk missed a few very clear chances, so potentially we could have been on the end of a hiding. The thing is they weren't good enough to capitalise on them. And let's face it, we are long overdue a wee bit of luck.

As for McCallum v Jamieson, one is a goalkeeper, the other is a joker that can save penalties.

Great point, we need to keep grinding out results and hope Alloa continue to lose.

We were set out like that to get a point, we got a point, so on that score we were better than the last twice we played Falkirk this season.

Falkirk were poor because of how we played, funnily enough I've read this quite a lot this season when other teams fans comment on how poor their team was after playing us. At some point you'd think we'd get a bit of credit for it, or is it just a huge coincidence that teams have an off day against us?

If we'd been more attack minded Falkirk would've beaten us, then we'd have fans coming on complaining about losing another game, every point is a prisoner just now.

Gallagher was at fault for their goal but defensively we had last ditch tackles, blocks with players throwing themselves in front of shots at goal, and McCallum pulling off a fantastic save, credit where it is due, we showed a lot of fight in that game, that's the kind of commitment I want to see from our players in every game.

I think every team we've played this season has beaten us. How much credit do you think we're due?

To which you are of course entitled....and you can be wrong if you want IMO you've described DJ. Last season I believe he rose to the challenge of the other keeper being given a chance, this season he had no real challenge until McCallum arrived and to my mind has not responded as he was a complete bombscare in the games he played while McCallum was back at Dundee United. The goal conceded against Morton in the cup as an example, he should have been commanding his area and punching that cross away, instead he was in the net almost before the ball. That has been standard for him this season. He is a character but he now needs to show some character and work harder than ever to get his place back. A goalie has to be vocal and decisive, they will still make mistakes but not being vocal and being indecisive is unacceptable.