St Mirren squeezed past fellow top-flight strugglers Livingston on penalty kicks to earn their first win in six matches and progress to the last 16 of the Scottish Cup.<\/p>\n
Malik Dijksteel netted the decisive spot kick for Stephen Robinson’s men – who have been on an abject run since being crowned League Cup winners just over a month ago – as Livi’s winless run extends to 21 games.<\/p>\n
The two embattled sides will meet again in the Premiership on Tuesday in a relegation showdown (19:45 GMT).<\/p>\n
Roland Idowu opened the scoring for St Mirren after just four minutes, when he finished a sweeping move with a smart finish to turn in Jayden Richardson’s cross. <\/p>\n
However, Livingston responded seven minutes later with a team goal of equal – if not better – quality. <\/p>\n
Hometown hero Scott Arfield scored his first goal for the club at the age of 37 after cleverly dummying a pass before latching onto Joshua Brenet’s inventive flick and poking the ball beyond Shamal George.<\/p>\n
The game did not slow from there. Declan John and Killian Phillips came close before half-time as both sides exchanged blows in a breathless first period.<\/p>\n
The second half initially followed a similar pattern; counter-attack after counter-attack, but with deteriorating quality as the players tired. <\/p>\n
The hosts wrestled control as the game wore on, with Mahamadou Susoho and Robbie Muirhead coming close before Stevie May failed to convert a one-on-one.<\/p>\n
Yet despite that period of dominance, Dan Nlundulu passed up two big opportunities to retake the lead for St Mirren before the end of regulation time.<\/p>\n
Substitute Nlundulu then missed a third opportunity in the second half of extra time when his scuffed effort on the six-yard line was blocked and cleared.<\/p>\n
The match was eventually decided by penalties, with former Livingston goalkeeper George haunting his old club with an important stop before Dijksteel’s winner.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"St Mirren squeezed past fellow top-flight strugglers Livingston on penalty kicks to earn their first win in six…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":111210,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[61,60,112],"class_list":{"0":"post-249921","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-sports","8":"tag-ie","9":"tag-ireland","10":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/249921","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=249921"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/249921\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/111210"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=249921"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=249921"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=249921"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}