Motherwell travel to Livingston on Wednesday hoping to extend their ten point lead over the bottom club.
Both sides lost to goals in added time at the weekend. Motherwell passed the 90 minute mark still level with Celtic at Fir Park on Sunday. A wonderful Blair Spittal strike opened the scoring for the home side but an equaliser early in the second half set up a nail biting climax as Motherwell fought to keep the visiting attacks at bay. For the second time this season Celtic snatched a win in front of the South Stand deep into injury time.
On Saturday Livingston thought they had engineered an impressive revival when two second half goals from Bruce Anderson matched the early strikes from Eamonn Brophy to level the game with four minutes remaining. Josh Sims ended the contest two minutes into added time to send David Martindale on the lone journey south pointless.
This season’s meeting between Motherwell and Livingston have gone with home advantage. In October Anderson and Sean Kelly scored to give the West Lothian side a win against a Motherwell side that had to play for 50 minutes without red carded Lennon Miller. Motherwell finished the old year with a 3-1 win at Fir Park, all the goals came in the first half.
Stuart Kettlewell used all five substitutes in Sunday and not all changes were tactical. The short time for recovery may force a change or two in personnel for Wednesday’s 8pm kick off.
Martindale is keen to focus only on this next game rather than the grim propects for his club and he will take some comfort for the second half fightback in Dingwall. His team was strengthened in the January window by the signing of Tete Yengi a 23 year old Australian striker. The three goals he has delivered will be noted by the ‘Well defence.
John Beaton will be in charge for this game on the artificial surface but he and the TV audience may witness a stalemate after a 1-1 draw.