David Martindale hails ‘brilliant’ Livingston defending after red card

Livingston manager David Martindale hailed his sides togetherness as they overcame a red card to beat Aberdeen 2-1 and move 10 points clear of the relegation play-off spot.

The home side stormed ahead inside eight minutes through Ayo Obileye’s intelligent finish, with Alan Forrest firing home the second shortly after the restart.

Christian Ramirez pulled one back for Aberdeen with just under half-an-hour to play and the Lions were reduced to 10 men after Christian Montano was shown a second yellow card by referee Kevin Clancy.

Martindale said: “Fair play to all my players, I thought they were brilliant.”

“They were all in the changing room after the final whistle enjoying themselves. The music was on full blast and they thoroughly deserved it.

“We defended our final defensive third extremely well when we were down to 10 men.

“I put big Morgan Boyes in at centre-half and probably played a 5-4-0 at the end. Morgan got one of the goal-line clearances and headed a couple away.”

Martindale was able to tweak Livingston’s tactics after Aberdeen dominated the opening period.

“I thought for the first 15 minutes Aberdeen were far superior to us and we struggled to get to grips with the game at times.

“I got them in after 15/20 minutes and spoke to them and, when we managed to get our press done correctly, we looked after the ball much better in the final third.

“Last Tuesday night they were a bit unlucky against St Johnstone in losing a goal in the last couple of minutes. We had to lift the players and if it had happened again, it would have been a massive blow to them.”

Aberdeen manager Stephen Glass admitted his side were not good enough for large spells of the game and understood the travelling Dons’ fans frustrations as they