Marvin Bartley Faces Livingston Again in Championship Clash

Marvin Bartley will walk out at Ochilview on Friday night chasing points, not closure.

The Stenhousemuir manager has not spoken to Livingston sporting director David Martindale since he resigned from the West Lothian club at the end of last season. The cameras, the narrative, the subplots – they all swirl around him. He insists he has moved on.

“No, I've not seen or spoken to Davie since leaving the football club,” Bartley says. “He's busy, I'm busy so I've not spoken to Davie since leaving the football club.”

The two men meet again only in a professional sense when Livingston visit in the Scottish Championship, live on BBC Scotland. It is the first time Bartley has faced his old club in the league since a messy parting of ways in May.

Back then, Bartley and his assistant Neil Hastings said they “had no option but to resign” after being told to reapply for their jobs. Bartley had stepped up from the backroom team in January when Martindale moved upstairs into a new role. A familiar club, a promotion, then a jolt.

“At the time, I was definitely hurt in the days that followed,” he admits. “When the situation happened, I was really, really shocked.

“But the more people I spoke to about it – and the more people that found out about it who weren't shocked – probably made me realise that I was maybe a little bit naive and green. That's probably just me as a person. I take everything at face value.”

The sting has faded. The story has moved on.

“Right now, I have got no kind of feeling to it,” he says. “It's just another chapter in my book and I'm just continuing to try to do the best I possibly can for Stenhousemuir.”

If Livingston shaped him, Stenhousemuir are energising him. The part-time Warriors have exploded out of the blocks. Nine games in all competitions, no defeats. Three wins and a draw in the league. Top of the Championship, looking down at full-time rivals with far bigger budgets.

Their latest statement came with a 3-1 victory over Inverness Caledonian Thistle last weekend, a result that underlined they are not just passing through this division.

Bartley took the job when Gary Naysmith, the man who delivered promotion from League 1, left for Ayr United. It could have been a tricky handover. Instead, Stenny have doubled down.

They negotiated a strong League Cup group campaign and knocked out Premiership side Motherwell. Hearts await in a home quarter-final next Friday, another night under the lights, another test of how far this group can stretch.

Before that comes Livingston and Glenn Whelan’s side, who have started the league campaign with two wins and two defeats. For Bartley, the emotional hooks are obvious. Yet the most pointed contact since he left Almondvale has not come from Martindale at all.

Since his departure, it has been Livingston chairman Calvin Ford who has reached out, sending what Bartley describes as a “lovely message” after Stenhousemuir edged Livi on penalties in the League Cup at Ochilview earlier this season.

That shootout win felt like a neat piece of symmetry. The former club, the new team, the same technical area. Now the stakes are higher, the context different. This is about league points and long-term positioning, not just a cup twist.

Around the Championship, memories of Arbroath’s improbable surge under Dick Campbell still linger. A part-time side pushing Kilmarnock all the way for the title five years ago reset the boundaries of what is deemed possible at this level.

So the question hangs in the air. Can Stenhousemuir dare to think that big? Could this be the start of a double promotion story that ends in the top flight?

“Every club in the pyramid now dreams of one day being in the top flight,” Bartley says. He knows how that sounds. He also knows how quickly this league can punish loose talk.

“There's still so long to go and it's a boring answer for you all, but when I came into the job we spoke about what we hope to achieve and that's not changed.

“We've got that target and it doesn't take a rocket scientist to work out what that target is because everyone had us as favourites to go down in this league and we understand we are only four games into it.

“We can't get carried away with thinking about promotion or play-offs or anything like that because this league is unforgiving.

“We're thinking about achieving our goals and if we do that, that's a minor miracle in itself when you look at the financial constraints we have compared to every other club in this league.”

For now, that miracle chase runs straight through a familiar badge and an old employer. The past will be in the opposite dugout on Friday night. Bartley’s eyes, firmly, are on the table.