Skipper Bartley insists cupfinal willbe different
Livingston skipper Marvin Bartley says he hopes St Johnstone feel they have the psychological edge for the Betfred Cup final later this month – because it will be a different Livi who turn up at Hampden.
The hosts saw their 14game unbeaten run ended by the Perth side at the weekend but were missing several key players ,with Jon Guthrie, Josh Mullin, Julien Serrano and Gavin Reilly all unavailable for selection.
It was the first time the Saints had beaten Livi this term with both previous encounters being won by the Lions.
Bartley said: “Hopefully St Johnstone become complacent, thinking that they’ve beaten us here and ended our run.
“Hopefully they just think they only need to turn up in the final and will do the same thing. But we’ll be a different animal.
“We suffered a few defeats at the start of the season. It’s disappointing to lose games. The one thing we have to look at is the run we’ve been on – we have to be proud of that.
“Yes, we’ve lost and you should be disappointed but a 14-game run prior to this was fantastic.”
He added: “That’s what we reminded ourselves of in the dressing room after the game. The message is just to try to start another run.
“What you don’t want to do is lose one, then lose two or three.
“We obviously knew that we were going to lose a game at some point.
“We need to make sure that we are scrapping for everything and we did that towards the end.
“I don’t think we defended our box well enough to be honest, especially at the second goal. It’s not good enough from us in front of Max and it leaves him with no chance.”