Livingston boss David Martindale admits a ‘fear of failure’ stops him from enjoying the club’s success - even as they sit fourth in the Premiership.
As the Lions look to continue their bid for European football at home to Hearts on Sunday, Martindale confessed he doesn’t take the club’s top-flight status for granted.
He said: “I don’t look back at what we have achieved really. I am that worried about the failure and it can be taken away in a heartbeat.
“I could lose the next six games and we could be relegated. I am driven by the fear of failure in football so I don’t focus on the positives. It is just me but I only take it one game at a time and see what happens.
“Maybe my past has something to do with that, but that fear of failure is hard to escape from.
“I enjoy the 15 or 20 minutes after we win but then I fully focus on the next game and how to win it. Then I think ‘what will happen if we don’t win it?’. That’s how I work. I don’t enjoy the moments as much as I probably should.”
Despite that, he believes his side have what it takes to mount a serious push for the club’s first European trip in two decades.
He commented; “We are a lot more competitive this year than previous years. The way we are set up, we are better suited to the league. When we first came up I looked at 90 per cent of the opponents and thought ‘how are we going to win this game?’
“As the years have gone it has gotten easier. Going home or away, outside of the Old Firm, we think we can get points.
“Even at home against the Old Firm we have shown we can take something from them but where we are now, we look to take points off everyone and look to win every game.
“We are fourth in the league for a reason and we deserve to be in that position. Not many Livingston teams over the history of the club can say that, so we are in a good place.”
That they’ve clinched three consecutive seasons in the top seven places in the Premiership is a far cry from where the club was just six years ago.
At that time they were playing in League One on their way to what would be consecutive promotions.
Martindale confessed that it didn’t even cross his mind that the Lions might be playing top flight football until the final moments of their memorable Premiership play-off final against Partick Thistle.
He said: “If someone had said to me in the first-half at Firhill that we would have been playing Premiership football the next season I wouldn’t have believed them.
“David Hopkin and I never spoke about us being in the Premiership. We took one game at a time and we ended up in the play-offs. We beat Dundee United and then played Partick and we won 2-1 at home. At no point though did I think we were going to the top flight.
“It was only when Keaghan Jacobs scored that I turned to Hoppy and said: ‘We might be going to the Premiership here’.
“It brought a new headache to the club as we were a million miles away from being a Premiership club in terms of finances and infrastructure. That was the most difficult summer I have ever had to get the stadium up to scratch and make us a Premiership team.”
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