📊 Form Guide

Crusaders

WWDLLL 📉

Crusaders won’t want a repeat of their last result here following the 0-4 Premiership defeat in their last game at the hands of Portadown.

Eamon Fyfe (43'), Ben Wylie (64', 81') and Ben Quinn (85') scored for Portadown.

It has been all too rare in recent times that Crusaders have kept a clean sheet. In fact, Crusaders have failed to prevent opponents from scoring in 6 of their previous 6 clashes, giving up 11 goals on the way.

Coming into this fixture, Crusaders haven’t won at home in the past 2 matches in the league.

Cliftonville

WDWWWD 📈

In their last fixture, Cliftonville drew 2-2 in the Premiership tie with Glentoran.

For Cliftonville, the goals were scored by Tom Lavery (36') and Joe Sheridan (45'). David Fisher (72') and James Singleton (79') scored for Glentoran.

A series of reliable showings by the Cliftonville defensive unit has resulted in their ‘goals against’ tally amounting to 4 from their previous 6 fixtures combined. In that period of time, their own forwards have managed to score 9. That trend won’t necessarily follow through into this match, however.

Pre-game facts show that Cliftonville:

• are winless against Crusaders in away games against them for the last 3 league matches.
• are unbeaten in their previous 3 league matches away from home.

↔️ Head to head

Looking at their past head-to-head clashes going back to 26/12/2023 shows us that Crusaders have won 2 of them and Cliftonville 3, with the number of drawn results being 1.

A sum of 14 goals were scored between the two sides throughout the course of those matches, with 7 of them from The Hatchetmen and 7 for The Reds. The average goals per game has been 2.33.

💡 Prediction

We’re inclined to think that Crusaders will need to push hard to score goals against this Cliftonville side who should score at least once to put them ahead.

We’re therefore expecting a 0-1 advantage for Cliftonville at the end of the match.

We’ll see what happens.

Peter Guest, 19:03 09/12/2025