CITY analysts are expecting Morrisons to unveil the worst Christmas trading sales figures of the leading supermarkets when boss Dalton Philips updates the market today.

According to reports, the Bradford-based grocer - which has been among the hardest hit by the surge of German discounters Aldi and Lidl - will announce a drop in festive like-for-like sales in the six weeks to January 4 of nearly four per cent.

This would be worse than the 0.3 per cent fall reported by troubled market leader Tesco and the 1.7 per cent Christmas sales fall revealed by Sainsbury’s.

If the figures are in line with expectations it would mean Morrisons would have lagged behind the grocery sector at Christmas for the second successive year. In 2013 its festive sales fell by 5.6 per cent.

This helped lead to under pressure chief executive Dalton Philips launching a major overhaul of its operations, including a cull of store management layers and new IT systems.

Morrisons also led the head-on challenge to the discounters with a three-year £1 billion price cutting and matching programme and the recent launch of its Match & More loyalty card, which pledges to match the price of products sold in Aldi and Lidl.

The firm has also rolled out its online grocery business and continued opening more convenience stores in a bid to shore up its declining market share.

Meanwhile, family-run supermarket Booths, which has an Ilkley store, said it had a ‘reasonable’ Christmas trading period with overall sales rising by 0.6 per cent in the six weeks to January 3. Like for like sales fell by 0.8 per cent.

Booths said Christmas home delivery and collect in-store orders boosted sales, with online orders soaring by 34 per cent.

Edwin Booth, chairman, said: “Against the backdrop of a challenging retail market coupled with food deflation, sales at Booths held up reasonably well. As a comparison our performance in Christmas 2013 was the best ever with sales up by over six per cent, so we had a big sales target to hit in an increasingly volatile grocery market.

“The sharp increase in click and collect orders did really stretch us, as it did our competitors. Our staff put in some pretty heroic efforts to get orders out, and I’d like to pay tribute to the supreme efforts made by everyone at Booths. We’ve learned a great deal from this Christmas, and have taken tremendous encouragement from the affection our customers have for Booths.”