10-manheartsbroken by Steelmen strength
Motherwell followed last weekend’s win at Aberdeen with this comprehensive victory over Hearts, who could have moved ahead of Celtic and into second place had they taken the three points here.
Yet they failed to turn up and the home side could easily have won by a greater margin – and they would have done if it hadn’t been for the heroics of Craig Gordon.
“I don’t think anyone can complain with the result and I thought it was a brilliant performance,” said Motherwell manager Graham Alexander. “It’s great to see they’re confident in what we’ve tried to put in place over the last few weeks after the Rangers game.
“We know we’ve got creators and goalscorers in the squad and we showed that today. We had numerous chances all game.”
“I’ve played with Craig Gordon and he’s an unbelievable goalkeeper. It was
great to see him work so hard today and great to see us beat him twice as well.
“If we hadn’t have won that game we would’ve been disappointed because the performance merited it.”
Hearts started the brighter and Ben Woodburn had an early chance to do some damage after Barrie Mckay’s throughball left the Welshman through on Liam Kelly but a poor first touch allowed the home side to regroup.
Then Kelly pulled off a reverse drag-back to take the ball away from Josh Ginnelly inside his 18-yard box when failure to do so would have left the striker with an open goal.
Kaiyne Woolery was inches away for the Steelmen with a full-blooded drive from 18 yards and the winger played a key role when the hosts made the breakthrough in the 23rd minute.
His low cross was missed by the Hearts defence, the ball broke off Sean Goss and fell kindly for Connor Shields and the 24-year-old smashed home from six yards.
They might have doubled their lead a minute later when Callum Slattery’s corner found Barry Maguire loitering on the edge of the penalty area and it required a superb reflex save from Gordon to beat away the midfielder’s piledriver.
Hearts were – with the exception of Mckay – lacking in
creativity. Too often his teammates opted for the long ball, missing out their midfield.
Ginnelly wanted a penalty in first-half stoppage time but home defender Ricki Lamie’s challenge was timed to perfection and Ginnelly should have done better with another fine Mckay pass.
Taylor Moore was shown a yellow card for a cynical foul on Nathan Mcginley as Motherwell took the game to their opponents after the restart.
Woodburn was found unmarked 18 yards out but he shot straight at Kelly and was soon replaced by Liam Boyce.
Before he had a chance to make an impact, though, Hearts found themselves a man down and two goals adrift. Moore found himself on the wrong side of Shields after Woolery had released the front man and, when he brought him down, referee Willie Collum showed him a second yellow card.
Sean Goss floated the resulting free-kick to the far post and Lamie timed his leap perfectly to reach it and head behind Gordon.
Hearts were all over the place by then and Watt had a 20-yarder deflected inches wide. Gordon then produced a remarkable double save to keep the scoreline respectable, getting down low to his left to keep out Woolery’s header and then recovering to parry Shields’ effort from the rebound.