Livingston kept their unlikely cinch Premiership survival bid alive for another week with a spirited 2-0 home victory over second-bottom Ross County.
The Lions would have been officially relegated if they had lost to the Staggies, but they dug deep to secure only their second win in 26 league games through an early goal from Bruce Anderson and a second-half penalty from Sean Kelly.
David Martindale’s side closed to within nine points of County and 10 of 10th-placed St Johnstone with four games remaining.
Livi made just one enforced alteration to the side that lost 4-2 at Hearts in their previous outing as Anderson replaced the suspended Tete Yengi in attack.
County boss Don Cowie also kept changes to a minimum as he sent out the same XI that started the 3-2 victory at home to Rangers.
However, the Staggies were unable to replicate the intensity and quality of that performance as they were brought back down to earth in West Lothian.
Livi started much the brighter of the two sides and went close in the eighth minute when captain Michael Devlin headed just wide from Kelly’s corner.
The hosts made the breakthrough four minutes later when Ryan Leak was slack with an attempt to head the ball back to Ross Laidlaw and Anderson nipped in to lob the exposed goalkeeper from just inside the box.
There was a similar error at the other end in the 35th minute when Livi defender Ayo Obileye’s poor back-header allowed Josh Sims to get himself clear, but the attacker’s attempt to guide a shot home from 15 yards out was superbly saved by Shamal George.
The Lions had a good chance to double their lead three minutes before the break when Anderson’s cutback from the right broke to Dan MacKay, but the on-loan Hibernian winger’s shot from 10 yards out lacked the power to trouble Laidlaw.
County boss Cowie responded to his side’s limp first-half display by making a double substitution for the start of the second period as attackers Eamonn Brophy and Jordan White replaced Sims and Victor Loturi.
The changes did not have the desired effect, however, as the Lions went further ahead in the 53rd minute when Kelly slotted home a penalty after Michee Efete was deemed to have handled MacKay’s shot in the box.
County had most of the ball thereafter but rarely looked like finding a way back into the game as they missed the chance to climb out of the bottom two.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereLast Updated:
Report this comment Cancel