WITH each passing week, game and three points, obstacles standing in the way of this Celtic team and remaining unbeaten domestically this season continue to dwindle.

Awkward trips to Ibrox, Tynecastle, Pittodrie, Fir Park and McDiarmid Park have all proven to be tricky, but not enough to have caused a shake to send this juggernaut ploughing through all that stands in its way. Potential hurdles have been overcome, potential pot holes due to crowded fixtures well navigated.

As the weeks go by and the wins continue to roll in for Brendan Rodgers’ team, it has become clear that it will take more than two obvious variables to bring this surging sequence of results to a shuddering stop. There have been occasions this season when Celtic have not been at their best. There have also been occasions when their opponents have had a bit of a worldy. On the odd day, namely on December 3 away to Motherwell and in Perth on February 5, those two factors both came to pass. But even then Rodgers’ players found it within them to come back from two goals down at Fir Park and a strike behind at McDiarmid Park to keep on going.

The truth is it will take the influence of external forces to help out the 11 teams that are fading ever further into the distance to get the scalp they crave. It is a fact that the Celtic manager himself even eluded to after Saturday’s 2-0 win at Motherwell, a game that was a lot more straightforward compared to the last meeting of the two back in December.

Celtic Park’s natural surface looked far its best over the weekend, leading the Celtic manager to call for it to be replaced with a type of hybrid – a mixture of real and synthetic grass – pitch known as a Desso Grassmaster for a figure around £2million. Either that or the club could go to the same place Leigh Griffiths went to last year for his new thatch.

The odd bald patch or bobbly divot may sound trivial, but it is a factor that did halt the hosts being as free-flowing as what they perhaps have been.

"We are coping well with the pitch. We are doing well. But it's not in the best condition it has been. Hopefully it can get better,” said the 19-year-old.

"Would it be worth paying the money for a new one? Yeah. It helps you play football and move the ball faster. If that happened, there would only be benefits.”

As pressure mounts week on week as teams try and beat Celtic – who have not lost in all of their 25 Premiership matches – the last thing they need is a leveller. “No,” Tierney acknowledged. “We just want the best conditions possible and I'm sure the groundsmen are working hard to do that for us.

"It's just one game at a time as I always say. We take it day by day and work hard in training. I don't think you can think about the unbeaten run too much. It would just add pressure to your game and that's the one thing we don't want just now - extra pressure.

"We will just keep doing what we have been each week and hopefully we keep winning every game. We have a full week of training now to work towards the next game.”

As already mentioned, there wasn’t a great deal for Celtic to get too flustered over as the notched up their 24th league win of the campaign, a victory that keeps them 24 points ahead of Aberdeen in second and 30 in front of Rangers. Motherwell’s best chance fell to Stephen Pearson in the first half, but a bad bounce on the tricky surface didn’t help his shot which Craig Gordon parried with relative ease. Given the Fir Park club were gubbed 7-2 at Pittodrie on Wednesday night and lost Stevie Hammell and Stephen McManus within a few minutes either side of kick off to injury, getting out with pride was possibly a job well done for Mark McGhee’s team.

In truth, they probably should also have gone without Ryan Bowman for the latter stages of the game, too, again that pesky pitch playing its part. The former Gateshead striker escaped with just a yellow card for a high lunge that caught Tierney on the knee. Rodgers said afterwards the bad bounce of the grass underfoot contributed to the incident, although his left-back was more concerned with the impending throbbing leg the following morning.

"Straight away I thought something bad had happened,” said Tierney, who has only just come back from a two-month lay-off due to ankle ligament damage. "He caught me on the kneecap. It was a horrible challenge.

"It was sore. You kinda know sometimes when you have done something and I thought it was bad. He caught me high and my knee is all cut. I feared the worst. Thankfully it was okay. I got lucky.

"Having just come back from injury, the last thing I wanted was another one. The pitch has a bobble on it but there are no excuses. It was a bad tackle.”