On Saturday, Celtic are home to Radcliffe. Radcliffe are currently nineteenth, three points and six places below Celtic, one point above the bottom three. Tickets are available on the gate or online.
Radcliffe have won once away from home in 2022, when they beat Grantham 2-1 at the start of January. October to December saw their best run of form, with six wins from seven, including their other three away wins of the season. Their last match saw them hold Matlock to a goalless draw in Matlock, turning around three straight defeats. Their last win was a 3-0 home win over Basford five games ago. Only Hyde and Gainsborough have won fewer away games this season.
This season, they’ve struggled with scoring, with four teams scoring fewer goals than their seventeen goals on the road. On average, they are scoring 0.9 goals per game away from home, from 1.2 overall, having failed to score in seven matches. They concede roughly equally between home and away, conceding thirty-one of their sixty-three goals this season on the road at a rate of 1.7 goals per game. Two of their clean sheets have come away, most recently in their last game. A third of all their forty-six goals, have come from Robert Grant, whose sixteen goals put him joint second in the league’s goal scoring chart, four behind Whitby’s Jacob Hazel and level with Warrington’s Jordan Buckley and Buxton’s Diego De Girolamo.
Our visit to Radcliffe earlier in the season came during their best spell of the season, and they beat us 2-1, racing into a two goal lead and spending the next eighty minutes frustrating Celtic, but for Hayden Campbell’s goal. In the last thirty years league, we have never beaten Radcliffe, though we beat them in the Manchester County Cup in 2016, winning 3-1 at Bower Fold thanks to goals from Alex Johnson, Dale Wright and Aidan Chippendale. They have only visited Bower Fold twice in the league in the past thirty years, winning both. Most recently in 2019, when they won 3-1, Ross Dent’s first half goal cancelled out after scoring two in the second half and one right before half time. Going further back: between 1971 and 1988 we played them 28 times in various leagues. Our record for those games was won 17, drawn 7, lost 4
Radcliffe’s last match, the 0-0 away draw with Matlock, saw Radcliffe line up as:
1. Jack McIntyre
2. Ben Rydel
3. John Pritchard
4. Oliver Thornley
5. Jo Cummings
6. Simon Lenighan
7. Luca Navarro
8. Matthew Crothers
9. Jack Hindle
10. Callum Gribbin
11. Tom Miller
In Celtic’s last match, the 2-1 home win over Whitby, Celtic lined up as:
1. Grant Shenton
2. Douglas Nyaupembe
3. Stephen Brogan
4. Sam Wedgbury
5. Keenan Quansah
6. Derek Ubah
7. Jake Burton
8. Charley Doyle
9. Raul Correia
10. Ethan Padden
11. Sam McLintock
Although Celtic are in a much better place after two wins, we are unlikely to be able to climb much higher. We are four points behind Ashton and nine behind Stafford. A loss on Saturday would probably undo the good work of the last two wins, allowing Radcliffe to go level on points with us, though our superior goal difference (eleven goals over Radcliffe) to keep us ahead, unless we lose by six goals. The same would be true of Gainsborough (at home to South Shields). Additionally, with Atherton (away at FC United), Mickleover (away at Warrington), Nantwich (at home to Scarborough) and Hyde (away at Ashton) all within striking distance of overtaking us, we could fall four places, though you’d expect at least some of those teams below us to lose, but football is a funny old game and Celtic should concentrate on adding to our own points tally.