Motherwell head into Motherwell Vs Celtic with a rare recent edge at home, after their 2-0 win in December ended a run of 21 home games against Celtic in all competitions without victory. Before that result, Motherwell had drawn four and lost 16 of those meetings, and they had not beaten Celtic at home in successive games since February and April 2013.
The scale of the turnaround is what gives this fixture its bite today. Celtic have lost only one of their last 37 meetings with Motherwell in all competitions, winning 31 and drawing five, and they have failed to score only once in the last 27 matches between the teams. That record makes Motherwell’s December win look less like a shift in the balance of power and more like a much-needed interruption to a pattern that had held for years.
Motherwell also arrive with a strong late-season habit of their own. Including the curtailed 2019-20 campaign, they have won their final home league game in seven of the last nine seasons. Last year they beat Kilmarnock 3-0 in that fixture, a result that fit a broader trend of finishing strongly at home. For Motherwell, the challenge now is to turn that pattern into another statement against a side that has usually controlled this rivalry.
Celtic’s recent away record adds another layer. They won their final away league game in 2023-24 by 5-0 against Kilmarnock and repeated the feat in 2024-25 with a 5-1 win at Aberdeen. Even so, they have not won their final away league game in three successive seasons since 1994-95 to 1996-97, which gives this match a small but telling piece of history in the background.
Motherwell’s attacking reference point at home is Tawanda Maswanhise, who has scored nine home goals in the Scottish Premiership this season. He is close to a mark not reached by a Motherwell player at home since Kevin van Veen scored 10 in 2022-23. Before that, David Turnbull was the last to go beyond that, with 12 home league goals in 2018-19. Those numbers matter because they show how much Motherwell have relied on one player to turn home pressure into goals.
That is the tension in today’s contest. Motherwell have the recent home form, the crowd memory of December’s win and a forward close to double figures. Celtic have the deeper body of evidence, the stronger head-to-head record and a history of leaving this match with goals. If Motherwell are to make another dent in a rivalry that has usually gone one way, they will need Maswanhise and the rest to match the discipline that carried them past Celtic in December.
