However, the stay on Wearside was to be but a season before he came North once more to Parkhead, where he almost capped. He was in the team for the Ibrox disaster match against England that was stopped and erased from the record, if not from the memory. He would then have to wait for another four years for international recognition, during which he had, after a single stay with the Celts, it was a move to Liverpool, one campaign again only, before he found homes of sorts. In 1903 he joined the blue half of Manchester, with it in 1904 won the FA Cup, and settled in the then village of Northenden in Cheshire. 

Yet there was to be a problem. In 1905 club players were involved in a match-fixing bribery scandal. Captain, Billy Meredith, was suspended for four months. Livingston got out and came North to Glasgow once more, this time to Ibrox, staying for three years, during which he was selected, against England once more, and then in 1907 against Wales. But by 1909 he was thirty-three. He might have been expected to be stepping back. But not so. Whilst he left Govan in fact it was to return to Manchester, this time to United, and to Northenden also, and even at thirty-five in his last on-field campaign played a part in the winning of the 1911 League title before turning his attentions until the war mainly to coaching.

And he also married, his bride a local girl, Bertha Dawson, albeit they would be together for just four years and much of that time, called up and serving in Palestine and Egypt. She would pass away in 1916 at the age of just forty-five, and he on being demobbed would come back to The Rock, both town and club, at the latter taking charge for a single season. That was before in 1920 Bill Struth took him back as a trainer to Rangers, remaining there for seven seasons and in 1923 in Govan remarrying. She was Janet Maxwell from Dumbarton. They would move to Bradford, where from 1928 to 1935 he went on to train the town's team before it was back to Dumbarton, a new trade and eventually his final years.