Win has Martindale eyeing top six finish
Livingston boss David Martindale hailed their 4-0 trouncing of Dundee as their best performance of the season.
The Lions’ fast start saw them effectively seal the three points within 21 minutes as they raced out to a three goal lead thanks in no small part to some dismal Dees defending.
AlanForrest was allowed to waltz through three static defenders before seeing his effort parried into the path of Bruce Anderson to slam home the opener after just six minutes.
Twice more the visitors would get in behind the hosts with ease as Joel Nouble’s twinkle toes saw him get to the goal-line before cutting back for Scott Pittman on 18 minutes with Nicky Devlin teeing up Anderson for his second three minutes later as Livi caught their opponents cold from a quick free-kick.
Jack Fitzwater completed the rout midway through the second
half as he was inexplicably left in acres of space inside the box from a corner-kick to casually pass the ball into the net.
A delighted Martindale said: “We’ve come away with a clean sheet and four goals, so you’ve probably got to say that was our best performance of the season.
“I’m still beating myself up about the points we’ve dropped in previous games. We could be sitting in fourth place quite comfortably.
“It’s a massive credit to the players and coaching staff at the club. I think everyone and their dog had us relegated at the start of the year. I knew what we had in the building and I trusted the process.”
He added: “I put demands on the offensive players because we’d been controlling large portions of games and not putting the ball in the back of the net and they stepped up to the plate.”
The win put the Lions into the top six for the first time all season, albeit they fell into seventh the following day after Motherwell picked up a surprise draw away to Rangers.
But Martindale insists his side are going to stay in the mix as they look for a third successive top half finish.
He commented: “Now our aim and our challenge is to stay in the top six.
“I said to them that once we get into the top six, let’s see if anyone else can get us out of it because we’ll fight and we’ll scrap and we’ll do everything that we can to stay there.”