LIVINGSTON v DUNFERMLINE - Match Preview

"And so I said...give me the job, I'm a safe pair of hands...ha ha...suckers!!!"

In fact while the council or Jack McConnell’s boys, or whoever the hell has responsibility for the rusting old landmark (the bridge by the way…not Craig Brewster), are plowing their millions into this ‘essential maintenance’ work perhaps they could lend a spare bit of cash to another battered, ring-rusty national treasure in decline…that’s right, the Pars! You know, sometimes I think I’ll just wake up in a cold sweat and all of this season will have been a dream. We’ll still be in the UEFA Cup, the names Hay and Kirkwood will have never darkened our door, and the club will still have a bit of pride about the place. But no, since the big man upstairs hasn’t answered my prayers about Jennifer Ellison then I doubt that he’ll answer my prayers about the Pars – I’m talking about God by the way, just in case anyone thought I was referring to some sort of pimp that lived in a flat above me or something! I don’t know about construction or maintenance work but if the big-wigs in charge of the Bridge ever want someone to dismantle the thing then who better than the Kirkwood & Hay partnership – Expertly demolishing well-oiled machines since July 2004. Yes, things are bleak right now at East End Park, so bleak in fact that I was considering listening to a Radiohead album to cheer me up the other day! The strikers couldn’t score in a barrel of fannies, there’s more chance of someone eradicating poverty from Falkirk than there is of our midfield creating an opportunity, and, to top it all off, we can’t even score against a team with Darren Dods at the heart of the defence! Yes, things are very bad indeed!

And so the nightmare train continues. Next stop; Livingston. A town with more roundabouts than Glasgow has teenage mums – and that’s a helluva lot by the way! Not exactly a happy hunting ground for us Pars fans is it! In fact after October’s 2-0 loss to the ‘Livi Lions’ I was surprised not to see streams of Pars fans ready to jump off the Bridge on the way back home, such was the utter guffness of the performance. Rumours that Pars fans will be getting paid to come back to Fife rather than vice-versa if we lose this Saturday are, I’m told, not true. But there’s a damn good chance that Yorkston and his fellow suits might have to pay a load of Pars fans to turn up for the Dundee game the following week if we do come away from Livingston with nothing more than sod all – having said that I’m sure Yorkston would refuse to except that the Pars are in trouble, “You can’t blame Davie at all”, he’ll say, “In fact I still think we can make the top six if we get a bit of luck and put a run together.” I’d laugh if it wasn’t so believable! Ironic isn’t it? With only four games left in the campaign, Davie Hay takes his ‘new club’ to his old stamping ground to face his ‘old club’ in the most crucial of games. It must be like taking your current burd to meet your ex, only for your ex to discover that you’re new burd is an absolute state, with nothing to offer up-front and a failure to perform on the big occasion – the only difference in reality being that if you were to take your new burd to meet your ex you wouldn’t normally end up being royally humped by your ex!

I’m could swear that someone once said that Jesper Christiansen and Georgi Hristov were footballers. £1.5million you say! You can just imagine Hristov’s agent phoning up managers offering his players services and getting through to Sir Alex at Old Trafford, “How much for the boy?”, “One and a half million wouldn’t buy him!”, replied the agent, “Aye and I’m one of them!!”, says Fergie. Maybe it’s trying to settle into the Scottish game, maybe it’s the talent (or lack of it) up the town that is putting Hristov of but for some reason the Macedonian hit man, when in a Pars strip, looks about as likely to score as he would in a Barnsley nightclub! And the less said about Shrek’s sidekick the better. You would have to think that with the Pars needing goals Donnelly, Hunt and Mehmet will be given a chance, considering that the trio has amassed a blistering total of nine goals between the three of them this season. Then again, the tactical genius that is Davie Hay – responsible for such wonder signings as Guy Ipoua remember – may think differently…I’m thinking Tod up front with the long ball hoofed up to him all day.

I won’t bother describing this game as a ‘must-win’ because I must have said that phrase about 3million times this season already! I’ll just say that this is a ‘for f**k sake just get a win’ match – copyright to Billy ‘F**king’ Kirkwood. Anything less than three points will be unacceptable but not unexpected. This Pars team under the stewardship of this Pars management have let me down and broken my heart more times than any woman ever could do so I’m not exactly raising my hopes ahead of this Saturday. Will we see fight? Will see commitment? I doubt it! The only thing I’ll be seeing come Saturday night will no doubt be the bottom of another sorrowful pint glass after another day of depression and heartache.