Livingston skipper Marvin Bartley says he hopes St Johnstone feel they have the edge for the Betfred Cup final later this month after beating the Lions on Saturday - because it will be a different Livi who turn up at Hampden.
The Perth outfit brought an end of Livingston's remarkable 14 game unbeaten run at the weekend with a 2-1 victory at the Tony Macaroni Arena. Scott Tanser opened the scoring just before half-time with a free-kick before Shaun Rooney flicked a David Wotherspoon free-kick beyond Max Stryjek early in the second half.
Scott Pittman pulled one back for the Lions but it wasn't enough to keep their streak alive.
The hosts, though, were without several key players as Jon Guthrie, Josh Mullin, Julien Serrano and Gavin Reilly were all unavailable while it was the first home clash since Ciaron Brown's return to Cardiff.
Bartley said: "Hopefully St Johnstone become complacent, thinking that they’ve beaten us here and ended our run.
“Hopefully they just think they only need to turn up in the final and will do the same thing. But we’ll be a different animal.
“We suffered a few defeats at the start of the season. It’s disappointing to lose games.
“The one thing we have to look at is the run we’ve been on – we have to be proud of that.
“Yes, we’ve lost and you should be disappointed. But a 14-game run prior to this was fantastic.
“That’s what we reminded ourselves of in the dressing room. The message is just to try to start another run.
“What you don’t want to do is lose one, then lose two or three.”
He added: "We knew we were going to lose a game at some point.
“We need to make sure we are scrapping for everything and we did that towards the end.
“I don’t think we defended our box well enough, especially at the second goal. It’s not good enough from us in front of Max and it leaves him with no chance.”
