Goals in each half from Claudio Braga and Calvin Miller put the Steelmen to the sword at Fir Park, ending a run of two straight defeats for Hearts, having lost to Trabzonspor in the Europa Conference League on Thursday, and 7-1 at Celtic seven days ago.

For Motherwell it was a sixth straight defeat, leaving them in the William Hill Premiership bottom three.

Hearts are closing in on second-placed Rangers, and Wouter was delighted.

He said: “They’re a massive three points. Considering the circumstances with ourselves and also here with the wind, it was difficult to bring quality football all the time.

“It was not possible, then you had moments in the game where it becomes a battle, and you have to win the battle, but we did.

“It’s not just circumstances either; when coming back from the long travel [in Turkey] then it’s scientifically not possible to recover in two days, then you had the stats with the away games outside Edinburgh. After those run of games I’m happy that they rewarded themselves.

“Everyone knows the difficult situation we were in and the bounce back from the Celtic game [was important]. If you don’t win today, it’s not positive anymore.

“They worked together for a result, in a difficult moment. It was important after last weekend, and even when you win, you want to see this on the pitch.

“This is what we need all the time, and with this run it’s not always easy. People might underestimate these amounts of games, especially when you have players from a lower tier who aren’t used to top-level games all the time.”

Motherwell boss Alfred Johansson said one win is all that is needed to get themselves out of their slump in form, but was pleased with some aspects.

He said: “One win can turn this around. These things tend to go negatively, as a snowball, and you feel it’s not working, and then ‘boom’ – and you know the confidence and focus comes even more, and you feel we’re getting ‘paid’ and we perform even better in the next games.

“This is something that is going to help the group when we get ‘paid’ at the end of the match, because we are working really hard, but we’re just not strong enough in some of those moments right now.”

Johansson added: “There are aspects that I’m pleased with, but it’s another defeat. I think we did enough to get a result, in many ways, but to close the circle, to get the result and the points that we need, we need to convert in the offensive box, and we need to be even more solid in how we protect our box.

“Ultimately, we need to compete better in both boxes. The facts are that we created more chances, had more touches in their box than what they had in ours, but they go away with a 2-0 victory, and that’s very hard to accept. It’s what we need to improve, going forward.”