Our record at Parkhead is very poor. Last season’s aggregate score with Celtic was 13-3 over four meetings. In those last three years when Motherwell have claimed the 'best of the rest' title we've taken nothing from the east end. Our last point came from a 0-0 in October 2009, 10 visits ago and our last win was in April 2008 when a Lappin goal delivered a 1-0 win.
But, on the bright side, we know that the team has been gradually gaining strength as our walking wounded have slowly recovered. Saturday brought the return of Ramsden, Erwin and Vigurs back to the starting eleven and O’Brien got a further 90 minutes’ game time. As the manager commented after the Ross County game, “we’ve had the strongest bench of the season available today”.
Whether the improved fitness of the squad is enough to cope with a visit to Parkhead remains to be seen. To have any chance we’ll need Ojamaa to show some of the form that made him a favourite in former times and a rock solid show from the defence. In addition we’ll need some help from our hosts.
Celtic will be pleased with their 2-2 draw in Salzburg in Thursday's Europe League tie but the fact that they conceded twice confirms that they are far from perfect in defence. They had a clean sheet on opening day against St Johnstone but in their last seven competitive games they have been breached.
Forming a game plan against them cannot be easy. Whereas McCall has a very restricted choice his opposite number has, by comparison, a huge range of players at his disposal. No doubt we'll be defending deep for long spells and hoping to cause problems from the occasional break. It'll be a long afternoon for the small away contingent squeezed into the visitor's compound.
No doubt anything short of an embarrassing horsing will be seen as a respectable defeat and we can regroup for the important double header against Hamilton next week. We could do worse than a 2-0 loss.