Mpumalanga Black Aces moved up into third place in the Premiership standings yesterday with a well-worked 2-0 away victory over Bloemfontein Celtic, who lost for a second time at their new stadium.

The knives at the "Slaughter House" remain blunt as Celtic have now gone five league games without victory and lost both matches at the refurbished Dr Molemela Stadium.

Goals from Lebogang Manyama and Zamuxolo Ngalo settled the issue as Aces serve notice of their potential for the upcoming second half of the season with the experienced Muhsin Ertugral in charge.

Aces looked like the home team as they took the game to their hosts, proving more enterprising and restricting Celtic to chances on the counter-attack. But it was the Phunya Sele Sele team who should have been ahead inside the opening five minutes when they had a double chance right in front of goal but saw brave defending from Ngalo deny them.

Aces were delivering a lot of balls into the Celtic box but not finding their target, with Judas Moseamedi having several chances but either heading wide or straight at the Celtic goalkeeper.

It took a moment of enterprise from Mpho Matsi to steal the ball away from tardy Musa Nyatama and set up Manyama for an easy tap-in that ended the deadlock just past the half-hour mark.

Celtic could have been back level by half-time with two separate chances, but Dumisani Zuma was denied by Limbikani Mzava's fine block and Geoffrey Massa's free kick went sailing over the Aces goal. Straight after half-time Aces went 2-0 up when Tshidiso Tukane's free kick was partially saved by Patrick Tignyemb, only for Ngalo to stick the rebound into the net as he was unmarked at the back post. Celtic went on the all-out attack afterwards, but for all their buzzing around they were poor with their shooting and never looked as if they would come back into the game.