On Tuesday, Celtic travel back to the seaside to face Whitby Town. Whitby have had a great start to the campaign with seven wins and one draw from their opening nine matches leaving them third in the table.

Whitby’s only loss this season has come away from home at Gainsborough Trinity at the end of August, giving them four straight league wins since. The only points they have dropped at home was in their opening home match against Radcliffe when they had a goalless draw. Since then, they have beaten Nantwich, Morpeth and Hyde at home. In last season’s brief foray, Whitby won all three of their home games, though they only beat Witton on the road, losing 3 and drawing 2. In the initial curtailed season, though they lost four times at home, the last time they lost was January in 2020, when FC United of Manchester beat them 2-1, putting them on a twelve game streak unbeaten at home.

The difference appears to be Jacob Hazel, who scored 5 last season and is already on 7 league goals, putting him just behind the 8 scored by Ewan Bange (Bamber Bridge) and Sam Fishburn (Lancaster) in the league’s golden boot chart. Out of Whitby’s 12 goals, Hazel has scored 7, with Marcus Giles on 3 and the other 2 coming from Josh MacDonald and Liam Cooke. Whitby have gone on to win every game they have scored in, with the two games they have failed to score being their goalless draw with Radcliffe and the away loss to Gainsborough.

We have only played Whitby once in the two truncated seasons, when they visited in December 2019. Celtic won that match 2-1 with a consolation goal unable to cancel out two from Chris Smalley and Darius Osei. Whitby beat us home and away in the 18/19 season, and you have to go back to 2008 when Celtic last won in Whitby, when we knocked them out of the FA Trophy with 3 unanswered goals from Danny Wood, Ashley Wooliscroft and Nathan Joynes sending us through at Whitby’s expense. The last time we won there in the league was even further back in 2003 when goals from Kenny Mayers and Colin Potts gave Celtic the three points. In the past 40 years, we have visited 9 times, won 5 and lost 4 with no draws.

Whitby’s last match was a 1-0 home win over Hyde in which Whitby lined up as:
1. Shane Bland
2. Jameel Ible
3. Jassem Sukar
4. Adam Gell
5. Daniel Rowe
6. Lewis Ritson
7. Josh MacDonald
8. Lewis Hawkins
9. Jacob Hazel
10. Bradley Fewster
11. Liam Cooke

Celtic’s last match was the sensational 5-2 home win over FC United of Manchester, in which we lined up as:
1. Liam Isherwood
2. Douglas Nyaupembe
3. Ashley Smith-Brown
4. Sam Wedgbury
5. Connor O’Grady
6. Keenan Quansah
7. Jay Fitzmartin
8. Callum Harris
9. Marcus Dackers
10. Charley Doyle
11. Justin Johnson

Celtic were missing quite a few players through injury, with Shane Killock and Scott Bakkor the latest to add to that list.