Livingston boss David Martindale fears goalkeeper Shamal George suffered a broken thumb in the final moments of his side’s 4-1 home loss to Hibs.
The stopper took a knock in the lead up to Mykola Kukharevych’s goal to compound a horrible afternoon for the Lions.
After Joel Nouble had opened the scoring early on, everything went wrong for the hosts. Elie Youan broke the offside trap to level on 28 minutes before doubling his side’s lead just before the break.
However a calamitous second-half saw Livi reduced to 10 men when Jack Fitzwater clipped Matthew Hoppe before Stephane Omeonga turned a Chris Cadden pass into his own net.
The Lions then lost both Ayo Obileye and Omeonga to injury - the latter coming with no substitutions left to make - before a triple whammy in injury-time as George picked up his injury before Kukharevych netted the game’s final goal with Martindale himself then sent-off for making an offensive gesture.
The boss said: “I think everything that could go wrong did go wrong, including myself getting sent-off late on.
“It’s not been a great day all round. Ayo’s come off, Steph’s come off and Shamal’s not in a great place with his thumb either.
“We went 1-0 up and it was as if we went 1-0 down because we were still steaming forward but ended up getting picked off a couple of times.”
The gaffer admitted he had no dispute with the Fitzwater dismissal and confessed his team were poor defensively.
He commented: “With Fitzwater’s red card, I’m disappointed in their positional shape. Morgan (Boyes) has to be on the cover and the two are too wide apart.
“Our left centre-back and left-back have to be in a better shape and then there’s cover. Fitzy can’t do anything with the movement. It’s a sending-off and we need to take that on the chin.
“The first goal, Nicky (Devlin) tries to play offside and the two centre-halves step up but I don’t think that was the time to do it. We get that one wrong but the two centre-halves were maybe a bit too aggressive and it leaves Nicky a bit isolated.
“The third goal is actually something we worked on during the week because a lot of Hibs’ goals come from you having the ball in the opponent’s half and them transitioning quickly.”
It’s now just one win in seven for the Lions but he backed himself to turn things around, adding: “I’ve been here a million times before. At clubs of this size you’re going to lose games of football but what I will say is the performance levels since Inverness hasn’t been there.
“The boys have maybe lost a bit of confidence and belief but it’s up to me to get that back and I will get that back.
“We’ve hit a wee bit of a wobble but today wasn’t good enough.”
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