The Professionals

Saturday 18th February - Celtic 2 Motherwell 0

Celtic made it 31 domestic games without defeat with an easy enough victory over Motherwell, in a game watched by former Celtic manager Wim Jansen. There was no third hat-trick in a row for Moussa Dembele, as he only managed one goal with the second scored by man of the match James Forrest.

There was one change from the team which beat Inverness 6-0 last week, Jozo Simunovic in for Erik Sviatchenko who dropped to the bench, alongside the returning Stuart Armstrong. Patrick Roberts and Leigh Griffths were both still out injured.

The game began quite slowly, with Motherwell obviously out to concede as few goals as possible after letting in 7 on Wednesday, and as a result Celtic found it initially quite hard to break them down, the first chance not coming until after 20 minutes when a Forrest shot was saved by Samson and Henderson was unable to finish the rebound.

The opening goal finally arrived after 34 minutes, Jules needlessly bringing down Dembele from behind in the box, Dembele took the resulting penalty and sent Samson the wrong way for his 27th goal of the season (1-0).

The second goal arrived seven minutes later, a great Dembele pass setting up James Forrest, and he gave Joe Chalmers twisted blood as he finished with a shot in off the post, continuing his recent great form (2-0).

Stuart Armstrong came on at half-time in a largely uneventful second half, the main talking points being Scott Sinclair missing a great chance and a terrible high tackle by Bowman on Kieran Tierney who thankfully wasn't injured, Bowman was yellow carded when arguably he should have received a red card.

Not every performance can be as emphatic as last week's, but Brendan Rodgers will be happy that Celtic haven't allowed our standards to slip and continue to keep winning games. James Forrest was by far the man of the match, his form this season has been a revelation. Not long now until the title is sealed.