David Martindale Calling Foul After Celtic Beats Him Comes As No Surprise At All.

David Martindale thought his team should have had a penalty yesterday and has been moaning about it to the media in the aftermath of the game. He’s also turned on his players.

The man who just last season was giving interviews to Ibrox fan podcasts when he should have been focussing on the job Livingston pays him to do is in real bother.

And you know what? I hope he and his club go down like the Titanic.

Even if this guy didn’t have a highly colourful personal history which should have kept him out of top flight football, he’s brought an ugliness to the game here which can’t be denied.

Of all the teams we’ve played over the last few years, his has been consistently the worst in terms of their approach to the game.

Necessity? No, because I don’t believe that playing anti-football is necessary, it’s just what some people choose. There are too many managers here just like him, managers who driven standards downwards.

I am sorry for Livingston fans, of course.

They have been grossly short-changed by what they’ve watched and by this manager who seems to be more interested in public relations than working his backside off on their behalf. He is one of the darlings of this absurd media for that very reason; he works them harder than his footballers.

I was not surprised he was bitching and moaning yesterday.

He’s under real pressure now, with his team rooted to the bottom of the table. With Levein having joined St Johnstone and McInnes at Kilmarnock he’s not the most anti-football manager in the league any longer; the important one is Levein in that regard. His St Johnstone team are one of the favourites for the drop. If he can get their act together Livingston are going to find it hard.

So, Martindale crying the blues comes as no great shock. He is worried about his job and with it his future in football, although a job in punditry is apparently his for the taking.

Ibrox TV would give him a job in two minutes, but then the BBC probably would as well. They never run out of money to hire the cream of the Scottish Football Brains Trust; see Kenny Miller as Exhibit A, the only person in the commentariat who might take the Village Idiot’s title.

What separates Martindale from the rest is that he barely has a good thing to say about us. Every time we’ve beaten his team he’s had some gripe and he’s made some excuse.

This time was never going to be the exception to the rule.

The same sentiments are not to be heard whenever they play the club at Ibrox; in fact, prior to one game last season, he was gushing with praise for them before the game, in an interview where he seemed more interested in watching them than with getting a result.

I would have been more surprised, in light of that, if he hadn’t found some excuse yesterday for why his team were well beat, and they were well beat in spite of it only being a 2-0 scoreline.

Those praising Livingston for their first half clearly watched a different game than I did, where we pegged them in their penalty box for virtually all of it and should have scored a couple.

This trait we have here of praising negativity and mediocrity sadly won’t depart the league when Martindale goes, but we’ll be one step closer to a better game.