On Saturday, Celtic have a crucial league match when Belper Town visit Bower Fold. Belper are currently the bottom club on twenty-two points, four places and thirteen points behind Celtic. Kick-off is 3pm. Tickets are available online or on the gate.

Belper may have only won five games all season, with seven draws and had twenty losses, but one of the four teams they have beaten this season is us, when we visited Belper earlier this season. In their last ten away games, they have won two, beating Morpeth 2-0 and Liversedge 3-1, and lost seven, drawing once in their last away game at Gainsborough. Their last win was the Liversedge away match and in their last ten overall, Belper have won two, drawn two and lost six.

With six goals, Brodie Litchfield is their top scorer, with Luke Mangham right behind on five. Although they have the third worst overall attack in the league with thirty-three goals scored at a rate of 0.9 goals per game, away, they are slightly better, with the fourth worst attack, scoring eighteen goals at a rate of 1.1 goals per game. Defensively, overall they have the worst defence in the league, conceding seventy goals in total at a rate of 2.2 goals per game, and have the second worst away defence, conceding thirty-four goals at a rate of 2.2 goals per game. They have kept one of their two clean sheets on the road, when they beat Morpeth in November, and their clean sheet at home was against us back in September and have conceded in their last twelve matches. They have failed to score four times on the road from eight in total, their last match seeing them lose 1-0 at home to South Shields. Their last blank on the road was Matlock, losing 4-0, on Boxing Day and have scored in all their last four away matches.

We’ve only met them once competitively, back in September when we lost 2-0 and in 2020, they came to Bower Fold for a friendly, which was a 2-2 draw.

In Belper’s last match, the 1-0 home defeat to South Shields, Belper lined up as:
1. Tom Jackson
2. Ben Middleton
3. Ben Algar
4. Harry Middleton
5. Tom Wilson
6. Todd Jordan
7. Ben Rhodes
8. Curtis Burrows
9. Jerome Greaves
10. Rio Molyneaux
11. Brodie Litchfield

In Celtic’s last league match, the 2-0 home loss to Stafford, Celtic lined up as:
1. Greg Hall
2. Ciaran Summers
3. Luke Barlow
4. Kyle Harrison
5. Danny Burns
6. Tom Miller
7. Theo Bailey-Jones
8. Godwin Abadaki
9. DJ Pedro
10. Chris Dagnall
11. Harry Benns

It is impossible to overstate how vital a win is in this match. Whilst a win could lift us to sixteenth above Morpeth (away at Lancaster) and Ashton (away at Matlock) a loss would leave us level on points with Nantwich, should they beat Hyde in Nantwich. This is desperately close to the drop zone of the bottom four. With a whole series of tough matches coming, Celtic need to take points where – on paper at least – we can.