Livi v St Mirren - Sat 19th Mar '16

Feel a must win game, we need to catch Dumbarton otherwise by the looks of the First division it could be Peterhead in the play off assuming they beat Ayr, or it could be Ayr, either one I do not fancy especially Ayr away from home. I think St Mirren are safe and it would take them to lose all their remaining games to drop into our position. On the run in we should not fear anyone, great if we could go on a run and win all remaining games.

On the back of any play off all games I believe this season are live on TV from all divisions I read somewhere??? assuming this is the case then the reward would be some much needed income for the close season? Every cloud.....

Absolutely, and we need numbers / bums on seats supporting the club, a decent crowd to back the boys, vital we bring a decent home support...

Saints aren't safe yet, if we beat them on Sat then they are still well within our reach. In fact QoS better get their act together and beat Dumbarton or they wont be safe either, the bad run they're on all it would take is a couple of Livi wins and the odd draw and we'd be going into our game against them with the possibility of putting them into the play offs.

We've a really good last two games against QoS and Raith, i'd fancy us taking 6 points from those games if we stay on our usual end of season form.

Big game! I hope we pump them!

You can't have seen Alloa then

We've had some serious improvements in the last few weeks. We've taken more points , kept clean sheets, freshened up the squad and looked much harder to beat. We've looked much sharper and fitter too. I know that our training is much tougher now than before and when compared to some Premiership clubs, according to one of the loan players. Great to see that Pittman and Halkett have extended their deals and that the club has tied up young Liam Watt on a pre-contract agreement from Airdrie. Credit to David Hopkin for all of those points and improvements.
St Mirren have improved too since Alex Rae has taken over. But they haven't won away from home for a bit. Strangely, there has never been a home win in games between the sides. Let's hope that changes today.
I'm going for a 2-1 victory to Livi.

Absolutely appalling. Darren Cole footballer? I think he slept with a footballer!! Gave away 2 goals and the 3rd was an excellent finish from the boy.

Think that's us confirmed in the play offs, which playing like that we are going down.

Credit to White and Buchanan both played well, I'm usually first to criticise White but his work rate was brilliant today.

Your right it wasn't the whole team that was more of an annoyed rant. Got talking to my dad on the way home and we actually said the team weren't bad except Cole.

I'd personally drop Cole and play neil in the next match.

I'm totally in agreement. We simply aren't good enough at the back and lately Cole has been the main underperforming player. There is no point in scoring goals if you leak more through kamikazee defending, or simply not being good enough to do the basics. The play-offs are looking highly likely now.

Cole had a mare from start to being subbed. Can't see him being dropped though...seems to be a Hopkin favourite, I got the impression that his subbing was to protect him from the escalating level of audible panic amongst the fans whenever he got the ball.

Monkeysocks I understand your frustration but you paint a false picture; our good work in getting back into the game twice wasn't undermined by Cole's mistakes; his mistakes came first & put us in a hole that we did well to get out of twice. So credit to the lads for that.

I was also disappointed with other aspects yesterday; McCallum's kicking was off, he's usually reliable but was sending it out of play too often.
Stanton showed some excellent flashes of play but was largely on the periphery of the action rather than being influential.
Buchanan has turned into a ball hog in the box even when a team mate (White on a few occasions yesterday) was in a better scoring position.
We were causing them problems when we were running at them all match but we resorted to pumping high balls which Webster & Co started coping with easily.
Telfer was quite high up the pitch in the first half & causing problems but was dropped deeper to accommodate going with 3 strikers. We lost his threat when we did that & the aforementioned high balls ensued.

That said we were always in the game & showed fight & effort that had we shown earlier in the season would have had us in a better position now.

Finally, the ref: all game long he allowed players to take throw-ins 10 yards further forward than where they should have but on one occasion he pulled Halkett up for it & gave Saints the ball in a dangerous area. What was that all about? He allowed blatant shoves to happen all over the place (including one on White in the box) & then penalised Sheerin for a perfectly executed shoulder-shoulder challenge. His far side assistant flagged Buchanan offside when he was nowhere near the ball but the near side assistant didn't flag a Saints player who ran for the ball, almost touched it, then stopped & let his onside team mate take over; both occasions favoured Saints. He should be applauded for trying to allow advantage at times but was then consistently pulling play back up to 10 seconds later when Saints lost any advantage; surely that is too long a gap?

As JS says it ain't over yet but our run-in is not easy. We need some points from unexpected places & we need to make sure we make no mistake against the poorer sides we still have to play. I suspect it will be play-offs but where a month ago I would have said that would guarantee the drop, we are playing better & could come good when it matters (for a change!)

Good observations on the officials, couldn't understand the Buchanan offside one when he was nowhere near the ball, then allowing their offside player to actually run towards the ball, and having an influence on the game by putting off one of our players which allowed their onside player to get the ball. The push on White to stop him heading the ball was ridiculous, blatant foul on White inside the box. I actually thought pushes on players were allowed until late in the 2nd half when the ref actually gave a foul for one. White grabbed a player and pushed him down too and wasn't penalised for it, was in their box right enough so would only have been a foul.

And yes Buchanan was a bit too greedy at times when players were in far better positions to score. I'm all for a player having a dig on sight of goal but he was closed down and didn't have a hope of scoring when White was unmarked for a tap in if he'd squared it. He did the same at Alloa when Telfer and Kakay were in on goal but elected to take over and lose the ball when he was in a worse position than they were. Both worked their socks off yesterday and got a goal each but it's a team game and Buchanan needs to be a team player with White.