Martindale taking things one game at a time for Livingston

David Martindale did not feel that Livingston gained revenge on St Johnstone for last season’s Betfred Cup final defeat despite running out emphatic 3-0 winners at McDiarmid Park on Saturday.

First-half goals from Odin Bailey and Bruce Anderson and another midway through the second half from Scott Pittman helped Livingston record their first away goals and win of the season.

He said: “There’s not really any revenge, that result got dropped two hours after the full-time whistle as they are the kind of results you want to try and forget about.”

Livingston’s sole success before the weekend victory was a surprising 1-0 win against Celtic last month. Many would look at the result as a turning point, but Martindale does not believe in results kickstarting seasons and said that his side prefer to take it game by game.

He continued: “I don’t really believe in turning points and all that to be honest, does that mean we’re going to go on and win eight games? I don’t think you’re going to do that in the Premier League this season as it’s a tough, tough league.

“I think that Hearts, Hibs and Dundee United have really improved and kicked on, so probably with the teams who’re spending between 40 and 55 million it’s going to be difficult for anyone to say the season’s turned around.

“We try and take every game in isolation. I’ve spoken about it before, but we had a fantastic season last season where we won 12 games of football in the Premier League and that really puts it into perspective for me.

“You’re going to lose more games than you win, so it’s probably better to deal with every game as it comes.

“The boys can take fantastic credit from their performance today, though.”

The West Lothian side have had bad luck with injuries so far this term and Martindale is pleased to be welcoming more players back into his matchday squad.

“I don’t think it’s any surprise that we had a couple of players returning from injury this afternoon,” said Martindale.

“It was pleasing to see Scott Pittman return, as he’s been absent for the vast majority of the league campaign and he made a fantastic third-man run to score the third goal.

“I think that now we can get a wee bit more continuity in the starting 11, hopefully that’ll make the squad more competitive as we actually have more than 18 players to pick from.

“James Penrice is probably going to go down to London this week to get a hernia operation, that’s why he came off at half-time. He’s been playing with a slight injury because we badly needed him to play.”