Jens Berthel Askou: Celtic win small part of what Motherwell aiming to achieve

Motherwell manager Jens Berthel Askou stressed the long-awaited victory over Celtic was only a small part of what they are aiming to achieve this season.

The Steelmen secured their first win over Celtic for 10 years and their first at Fir Park since 2013 when they beat the William Hill Premiership champions 2-0 on Tuesday.

The well-deserved win put Askou’s side eight points off the top of the table ahead of Saturday’s visit of St Mirren.

Motherwell have now kept seven clean sheets in eight matches and the nature of their performance was further evidence of their improvement.

And that is the part their manager aims to focus on rather than wallowing in the triumph.

“I’ve had the question before, do we need to get a signature win? Well, we’re in it for a signature season.

“That’s important for us because if we just say ‘we’re fantastic now, we’ve beaten Celtic’ and then we mess around for 10 games…

“I’m sure that the fans and the supporters will remember Tuesday night for a long time. For us, we’ll look at it, look what we need to improve, what we did well, and then we’ll cross it off the list and move on to the next one.

“It’s three points and a clean sheet, like the 1-0 win against Dundee, just as important as that and just as big. We also had to fight really, really hard for that. That felt amazing that night when we scored at the end, and obviously it felt good on Tuesday.

“We have to distil all that positive attention we get now from everywhere, because that’s not going to make us better. It feels good, but it’s not going to make us better.

“We’ll use that positive energy to work forward, because obviously we’ve had a tight programme and we have an extremely important game on Saturday.

“The good thing is we have good people in the dressing room, we have fantastic people in the staff, and this club is based on humility, both in our approach to football and how we drive the club from a financial point of view, how we analyse our results over time, and how we treat both our people inside the club and outside the club. And I think we’ll keep doing that.”

Meanwhile, Eseosa Sule’s loan spell with Motherwell has been terminated.

The 19-year-old West Brom striker made three appearances in the Premier Sports Cup group stage before suffering a serious thigh injury.

“We were very hopeful that when Eseosa came to us, we could nurture his talent with us,” Askou said.

“Unfortunately, he had a setback with his injury that has robbed us and him of the opportunity to thrive here. We know there is talent there with Eseosa, and he is a lovely young man who is full of positivity and optimism.

“I wish him the best for moving forward and strongly believe the future is bright for him.”