'Brilliant' Cristian Montano is best Livi player right now, says David Martindale

Livingston boss David Martindale expressed his joy at Cristian Montano’s form after the Colombian scored his side’s winning goal for the second successive match.

The 30-year-old, who scored the only goal against Hearts in early September, headed home Sean Kelly’s corner to secure a 1-0 victory over Kilmarnock on Saturday.

A difficult first season in West Lothian saw Montano make just 19 appearances for the Lions but Martindale has been thrilled with the defender’s attitude after a summer of talks over his future.

After watching Montano score his third goal of the season, the Livi boss said: “He has been brilliant over the course of the season.

“I had a conversation with Cristian at the end of the year, saying, ‘look, if you want to go back down the road I’m not going to stand in your way but if you want to come in here, I need X, Y and Z’.

“He’s given us that and a little bit more. Arguably, he’s been our best player this season. I’m delighted with him.”

Meanwhile, Kilmarnock manager Derek McInnes was left frustrated by another narrow loss on the road.

Defeat at the Tony Macaroni Arena is the third time in four away cinch Premiership encounters in which the newly promoted outfit have gone down by a single goal.

With a trip to McInnes’ old stomping ground of Aberdeen next on the horizon, the Killie boss says his team must continue to learn from their disappointments.

First league appearances for Jordan Jones and Zach Hemming provided the Rugby Park manager with some source of comfort.

He added: “The subs helped us for a spell in trying to get an equaliser but we don’t want to get used to losing games.

“We want to be a winning team and if we can’t be a winning team then we need to get something for our work rate.

“We don’t feel great about ourselves after a defeat and it’s not ideal that we now have to wait for another game due to the international break.

“We need to make sure next time out that we are learning as we go along. I do feel that we are not far away and even if we are losing games we are not being mugged off and nobody is murdering us.”