Marvin Bartley Focused on Stenhousemuir After Livingston Split
Marvin Bartley has not spoken to David Martindale since he walked away from Livingston at the end of last season. On Friday night, the cameras roll and the silence gets a backdrop: Stenhousemuir v Livingston in the Scottish Championship, live on BBC Scotland.
No calls. No texts. No clearing of the air.
"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 split was raw. Back in May, Bartley and assistant Neil Hastings stunned Livingston by resigning after being told they had to reapply for their own jobs. They said they "had no option but to resign". For a man who had stepped up from a backroom role in January when Martindale moved upstairs into a new sporting director position, it felt like a brutal twist.
He had played for Hibernian, Livingston and Bournemouth. He knew the game’s politics. Still, this caught him off guard.
"When the situation happened, I was really, really shocked," he admits. "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 hurt lingered in those first days after he left Almondvale. But it hasn’t followed him down the road to Ochilview.
"At the time, I was definitely hurt in the days that followed - but if you're asking me now, my full focus is on Stenhousemuir," he says. "Right now, I have got no kind of feeling to it. 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 was the job that soured, Stenhousemuir is the one that has taken off.
Appointed after Gary Naysmith – the man who delivered promotion from League 1 – left for Ayr United, Bartley has turned a part-time squad into the Championship’s early shock story. Stenny are unbeaten in nine games in all competitions. Three wins and a draw from their opening four league fixtures have them looking down on the division, not up at it.
Last weekend they swatted aside Inverness Caledonian Thistle 3-1. Before that, they came through a strong League Cup group and then knocked out Premiership side Motherwell. Hearts await in a home quarter-final next Friday, another step up, another test of how far this run can stretch.
The irony? One of the most satisfying results of Bartley’s short Stenhousemuir reign came against his old club. In the League Cup group stage at Ochilview, Stenny edged Livingston on penalties. No conversation with Martindale, but a message did arrive from chairman Calvin Ford – a "lovely" note wishing him well.
That small gesture cut through the noise. The bigger picture, though, is what his new team are doing on the pitch.
Stenhousemuir operate on a fraction of the budget of their Championship rivals. They train part-time. They were widely tipped as relegation favourites. Yet here they are, matching and outplaying full-time sides, forcing people to rewrite their predictions before the leaves have even fallen.
"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," Bartley says. "We understand we are only four games into it."
The warning comes quickly.
"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."
The Championship has seen this kind of story before. Arbroath, another part-time outfit, pushed Kilmarnock all the way in a remarkable title race five years ago under Dick Campbell. The Red Lichties turned a survival budget into a promotion challenge. They proved that, in this division, logic can be bent if not broken.
So what about Stenhousemuir? Dare they dream of a second straight promotion and a shot at the top flight?
"Every club in the pyramid now dreams of one day being in the top flight," Bartley says. He knows how the question sounds. He also knows how quickly this league punishes teams who start believing their own headlines. "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."
Between the dream and the reality sits Livingston. Glenn Whelan’s side have started the league campaign with two wins and two defeats. Inconsistency, but also danger. They know Bartley. He knows them. There will be no surprises in style, only in who handles the occasion better.
What there will not be is a reunion on the touchline. No big handshake moment between Bartley and Martindale. Just two clubs at different stages of their rebuild, colliding under the lights.
For Bartley, this isn’t about settling scores. The silence with Martindale can rumble on. The noise he cares about now comes from a packed Ochilview, a part-time dressing room daring to aim higher, and a league table that, for the moment at least, has Stenhousemuir looking down instead of up.
