PREPARES WINS

Motherwell ace Shields insists the extra hours in training paid off against Jambos

their own half and it was a brilliant performance.

“I think that’s because we prepared so well. We worked hard last week; with there being no game due to the internationals we worked on a lot of stuff that we put into today and you could see that, because we played brilliantly right from the first whistle.

“I think we thoroughly deserved to win. We had a good result against Aberdeen and obviously we were on a bad run before that, but that was a good time for the gaffer to get everybody in, work really hard on a lot of stuff that we had to improve on, and I think that showed.”

Hearts had a couple of early flurries in the game, and were almost gifted the opener in seven minutes when Lamie’s slack passback nearly let in Josh Ginnelly but keeper Liam Kelly neatly sidestepped him to clear the danger.

Three minutes later Barrie McKay’s deft through-ball should have released Ben Woodburn but his control let him down, and Kelly was able to clear.

From then on it was pretty much all Motherwell in a dominant display.

Kaiyne Woolery – who was outstanding – flashed a drive narrowly wide of the left post in 16 minutes, and the Hearts defence was forced to desperately hack clear moments later when a Goss free kick was nodded on by Sondre Solhom Johansen.

Motherwell could sense something was there for them, and they took the lead in 23 minutes.

Great running down the right from Woolery put him in a position to fire over a low cross, which Tony Watt didn’t quite connect with, but it fell to Shields, who rifled the ball under Craig Gordon and in to the net.

The Scotland keeper then did well to beat a Barry Maguire piledriver away from goal.

Graham Alexander’s men were in the mood and went close again in 29 minutes when Watt latched onto Woolery’s deft pass, but his powerful shot was well blocked.

Hearts had a glorious chance to level just ahead of half-time when McKay sent Ginnelly through on goal, but a superbly-timed tackle by Lamie saw him emerge with the ball.

Moore was shown a second yellow card for a foul on Shields in 64 minutes, and Goss’ free kick was headed in by Lamie to wrap up the points.

It could have got worse for Hearts after that but Watt sent a shot narrowly wide.

Woolery then met a Watt cross with a header that Gordon saved with his foot, before superbly blocking Shields’ powerful follow-up.

There was still time for Watt to collect a customary booking for his part in a bizarre stoppage-time altercation that involved Gordon racing halfway up the pitch to remonstrate with referee Willie Collum.

But Motherwell saw the game out comfortably, to the joy of most of the 7908 crowd that packed into Fir Park.

Motherwell now face a Tayside double-header as they travel to Dens Park to play Dundee on Saturday, before hosting United the following Tuesday.

Shields said: “We need to replicate what we did today, I thought we were brilliant.

“We were pressing so high up the park they didn’t really get a chance.

“They had a few half-chances but I thought we were the dominant team throughout and we just need to take the exact same way we played into next week and I think we’ll get the same result again.

“We work hard during the week to keep our fitness as high as it is, because the gaffer wants that from us, so by doing that you will gradually get fitter as well.

“I think as a standard we should be able to do that every week, and then hopefully we can push on again.”