Motherwell manager Stuart Kettlewell brushed off the significance of joining Celtic at the top of the cinch Premiership but hailed his players for “pushing the boundaries” with a 1-0 win at Tynecastle with 10 men.
Callum Slattery’s well-worked first-half goal and a resolute defensive display – especially after Paul McGinn’s 69th-minute red card – sealed victory against a Hearts side who only forced one save.
Motherwell are second on goal difference behind Celtic but Kettlewell is not getting carried away with the table after four matches.
“I don’t mean to be all doom and gloom but it means nothing at this point,” he said.
“I did speak to the players about pushing boundaries as much as we can and I think, as a short-term goal, coming to Tynecastle and getting a clean sheet and winning is pushing the boundaries for a club like Motherwell.
“Their resources and everything that they have is astronomical compared to ourselves but that doesn’t mean that we can’t come here, push boundaries and win games of football – and acquit ourselves in the way that we did.
“We’re not going to look at the league table or speak about it as a group.
“For supporters and people outside our club it’s a big story and it’s something to talk about. But for us, very simply we feel as if we have hit an unbelievable stretch of form.
“That’s now 10 Premiership games without defeat and we have not lost an away game since I took charge.”
Kettlewell added: “It was a brilliant performance. In the first half we were very good. We did a lot of things well in possession and out of possession.
“Fundamentally when you come here you want to turn the crowd, you want to try and ensure the opposition have to change their shape and their personnel. They did all of those things so we felt that first marker was there for us.
“In the second half you know you are going to have to suffer at times. At times you won’t have the ball but when we were reduced to 10 men that had to bring out a different side in us.
“We were laughing with the players because we work on attack versus defence and you saw how comfortable they were with it.
“It looked like they enjoyed it and there was a unity in everything they did. I think for Liam Kelly to face only one shot on target all game, that’s pretty incredible. But it also shows the work done in front of him.”
Hearts technical director Steven Naismith admitted his team’s performance was “poor” as they suffered a fourth consecutive defeat.
Naismith added: “It’s been very similar to every game we have played after a European tie. A very slow start, lethargic, safe, which then turns into nerves, turns into giving away cheap chances.
“I don’t think we deserved to win the game, we didn’t create enough, especially when they went down to 10 men.
“It was more of hope than real desire to get the goal to get back in the game that would put them under real pressure, which we failed to do.”
Naismith refused to use the exertions of Thursday’s European tie against PAOK as an excuse.
“If you’re at a club where the demand is you play in Europe season in, season out, then you need to understand you need to dig deep when you’re not feeling at your best,” he said.
“You need to have that mentality that says ‘no matter what, we’re going to win this game if it might not go straight to plan’.
“We need to have enough to cause other teams problems and I don’t think we have done that in these games after the European games.”
