\n<\/p>\n
A 6-2 loss at Aberdeen in January was Livingston’s worst performance by a distance.<\/p>\n
Eight days later, David Martindale took on a new role as sporting director, with Bartley replacing him as manager.<\/p>\n
The former assistant has a record of one win, six draws and four defeats, picking up more points than St Mirren over that time, so should the switch have been made earlier?<\/p>\n
Martindale had been at the helm for close to six years and has been at the club since 2014. As manager he was seen fixing broken goalposts, painting lines on the Astroturf and clearing snow off the pitch.<\/p>\n
But were Livingston too loyal to a great servant? Or was Martindale too loyal to the players that secured an immediate return to the top flight?<\/p>\n
Nine of the 15 who featured in the second leg of the promotion play-off win over Ross County last year were involved on the opening day of the Premiership season.<\/p>\n
Summer recruitment was also questionable. With Stevie May and Macaulay Tait returning, the only new face to start more than 20 league games has been Mo Sylla.<\/p>\n
Aidan Denholm, Cammy Kerr, Adam Montgomery and Shane Blaney suffered long-term injuries, while Jannik Wanner, Joshua Brenet and Junior Robinson came and went without leaving much of a trace.<\/p>\n
Forwards Alex Tamm and Joshua Zimmerman arrived in January and have barely been seen. <\/p>\n
Scoring has not been a big problem, though. Livingston have more goals than Aberdeen, St Mirren and Dundee.<\/p>\n
Despite the best efforts of ever-present goalkeeper Jerome Prior, arguably the club’s best performer, it has been a different story at the other end, shipping a league high of 68 goals.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
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A 6-2 loss at Aberdeen in January was Livingston’s worst performance by a distance. Eight days later, David Martindale took on a new role as sporting director, with Bartley replacing him as manager. The former assistant has a record of one win, six draws and four defeats, picking up more points than St Mirren over<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":14513,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-14512","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-football"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/outdoorthrill.cfd\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14512","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/outdoorthrill.cfd\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/outdoorthrill.cfd\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/outdoorthrill.cfd\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/outdoorthrill.cfd\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=14512"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/outdoorthrill.cfd\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14512\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/outdoorthrill.cfd\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/14513"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/outdoorthrill.cfd\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=14512"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/outdoorthrill.cfd\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=14512"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/outdoorthrill.cfd\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=14512"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}