David Martindale believes Livingston have a huge incentive to beat cinch Premiership bottom side St Johnstone on Tuesday night.
The Lions are coming off the back of an impressive 3-2 win over Hibernian at Easter Road on Saturday which took them on to 26 points in eighth place.
Last season’s double cup winners are 11 points further back and have gone 12 games in all competitions without a win.
Ahead of the match at the Tony Macaroni arena, Martindale revealed to PA media his thoughts on a successful evening against Callum Davidson’s side.
He said: “Relegation is still there and I spoke to the boys about that.
“I think if you can manage to avoid defeat tomorrow – I don’t want to tempt fate – but there is a very good chance you are not finishing 12th in the league.
“If you can go out and get a win, it would take an astronomical effort from other teams and a massive implosion from us to finish 12th.
“I am not saying it guarantees survival. Obviously, you still have 11th place to worry about but there is a very good chance we will not be the team finishing 12th.
“You would be 14 points ahead of St Johnstone and they have a game in hand but it is a massive swing in games.
“You would be nine games away from the split and a 14-point swing would be huge.
“You are talking about teams at the bottom end of the league going on a five to six-game winning streak and ourselves maybe losing three, four, five, six games while they are winning. Is that going to happen? Probably not.
“I genuinely think St Johnstone are in a false position in the league and I am not going to sit here and say who I think will be relegated but I don’t think it will be St Johnstone.
“They have a fantastic manager and I think they will get it together, it is going to take Callum a wee bit of time with the new players coming in the building.
“But the game tomorrow is an absolutely a huge game from a Livingston perspective.”
