Celtic's Dominance: O’Neill's Perfect Record vs St. Mirren
Celtic’s ruthless edge under Martin O’Neill shows no sign of softening, and two names sit right at the heart of it: Camilo Durán and Benjamin Nygren.
Durán has exploded into the season. Six goals in seven appearances in all competitions, three of them in his last two Scottish Premiership outings. He’s scoring at a rate of a goal every 97 minutes for Celtic. That isn’t form, that’s a habit.
Nygren, operating around him, has become the other half of a growing double act. Five goal involvements in just four league matches – three goals, two assists – underline how quickly he has tuned himself to the rhythm of this team. His record in the Premiership is striking for another reason: he has scored or assisted against 10 of the 11 sides he has faced in the competition. The only club to keep him quiet so far? St. Mirren, across three games.
They know what’s coming. They’ve seen it before.
O’Neill’s perfect record
Under Martin O’Neill, Celtic have treated meetings with St. Mirren as non-negotiable. Seven games, seven wins, a combined scoreline of 16-2. It’s the kind of dominance that rarely lasts this long at the top level.
In the club’s history, only three Celtic managers have a longer flawless run against a single opponent: Jock Stein, who went 11 from 11 against Raith Rovers; Brendan Rodgers, perfect in nine against Hamilton Academical; and Ange Postecoglou, eight wins from eight against Ross County. O’Neill’s 7/7 over St. Mirren now sits alongside those names in a very select column.
The numbers across his league tenure are just as unforgiving. Celtic have won each of their last 11 league games, sweeping all four so far this season. Since the start of last season, O’Neill has taken 23 wins from 27 Premiership matches, with just two draws and two defeats. That works out at 2.63 points per game – title-winning pace, sustained.
This is what St. Mirren are walking into.
St. Mirren’s rise – and the top-two test
The story is not all one-way traffic, though. St. Mirren arrive with a backbone they didn’t always have.
They have won four of their last six league fixtures, drawing the other two. That’s more victories than in their previous 20 league games combined, a stretch that yielded only three wins, four draws and 13 defeats. The shift is stark. This is a side that has learned how to edge tight matches instead of merely surviving them.
History at the top end of the table offers them a sliver of encouragement too. When the team starting the day in second place has hosted the league leaders in the Scottish Premiership, the side in second has taken three wins from the last five such encounters, drawing one and losing just once. That’s a better return than the previous nine meetings of this kind, which produced only two wins, three draws and four defeats for the home chasers.
So the pattern is clear. The team looking up at the summit has started to bite back.
The question now is simple: can St. Mirren finally shut down Nygren, blunt Durán, and break O’Neill’s perfect record – or are they just the next name on Celtic’s growing list of victims?
