Livingston take no delight from Dundee Utd’s recent struggles – David Martindale

Livingston manager David Martindale is adamant he will take no encouragement from Dundee United’s recent struggles as he prepares to welcome the cinch Premiership’s bottom team on Wednesday.

After Jim Goodwin replaced Liam Fox as United boss last week, the Tayside outfit slumped to a seventh-straight defeat on Saturday evening despite producing a spirited display against Aberdeen.

Martindale – whose side were knocked out of the Viaplay Cup by the Terrors in August – has seen enough from United to believe they will be a tough opponent at the Tony Macaroni Arena.

“I thought Dundee United were unfortunate on Saturday but when you’re down the bottom end of the table – I’ve been there myself and we’re going through a wee blip ourselves just now – everything seems to go against you,” he said.

“I genuinely believe even when Foxy was there, I don’t think it was horrendous. When you’re down the bottom, it’s quite easy for things to go against you and you feel the world is against you.

“They’ve had a wee lift from Jim going in. Jim’s a very good manager and they’ve got very capable players so I’m not going into this game thinking about Dundee United’s league position.

“Dundee United will win a game of football at some point so I don’t really look too much at the stats. They might lose eight in a row, they might lose nine, but the run might stop at seven.

“When the stats are getting a bit higher in terms of the games they’ve lost, the one thing for sure is that that’s going to stop at some point. For us, as long as it doesn’t stop on seven defeats in a row. It’s my job to make it eight in a row.”

Livingston are also on a losing run after suffering defeats in each of their last four games.

Defender Morgan Boyes admits they have left themselves with little margin for error if they are to climb back into the top six in the six remaining matches before the Premiership split.

“It has been a tough few weeks with the results we’ve been getting,” he said. “We’ve not really been ourselves in the past four games, we’ve been losing easy goals.

“Even though we’ve had some poor results, we just have to get round each other, stick together and keep morale high and the results will come.

“We’ve shown we can do it in the games before this rough period so we just need to believe we can get back to winning ways.”