Livingston vs Ayr Predictions

Ayr United will travel to West Lothian on Tuesday where they’ll be hosted by Livingston at the Tony Macaroni Arena. Can Livi continue their good form?

After getting their competitive season underway over the weekend, Livingston will want to get started in the Premiership in the hope of replicating their performance from their previous campaign. The West Lothian side were lucky to fall into the hands of Gary Holt, who guaranteed the club’s safety very early on in the season thanks to a 7-game unbeaten run, allowing them to pull away from the rest of the pack, whilst also achieving a respectable 44 points.

Craig Halkett and Liam Kelly, who were instrumental in Livingston’s survival, have left the club to join Hearts and QPR, respectively. Their departure also means a significant drop in the squad’s quality, especially in defence. This has been evident for much of Livi’s pre-season, as they lost to Paksi SE- although they did turn things around by beating Tranmere Rovers, Alloa Atheltic and draw 1-1 with East Fife on Saturday in the League Cup, winning the penalty shoot-out to take an extra point too.

Ayr United will be eager to get the Championship season underway, as the club now fully believes it can reach the promotion play-offs after managing to do so last season. Last season was also the Honest Men’s first back in the division after achieving promotion from League One.

Ian McCall’s side started off extremely strongly and led in the table, but they quickly dropped off. However, the club was still able to make to the play-offs as they finished 4^th but were soon knocked out by Inverness CT in the first tie.

Despite participating in no pre-season friendlies and losing their main strike Lawrence Shankland- who racked up an impressive 26 goals- the Ayrshire club was still able to thrash Lowland League team Berwick Rangers 7-0, thanks to a goal from McGuffie and doubles from Moffat, Doolan and McCowan.

Ayr United will go into this tie full of confidence after their most recent result, whereas Livingston will more than likely be focused on the league, even though it starts up again next month. Livi have also done well in their last 3 outings, failing to lose any of them whilst only conceding twice. The Honest Men will also want to prove that they don’t need Shankland’s goals, so we’re going to back them to win here, with a final score of 2-0.