Motherwell boss Mark McGhee wants more of the same after battling Hearts draw

Motherwell manager Mark McGhee has told his players they must at least match their performance in the 2-2 draw against Hearts in the coming weeks.

Motherwell twice took the lead before being pegged back, looking sharp in possession for the majority of the game and committed out of it.

Louis Moult knocked home the opener in the second minute for his eighth goal of the season after beating Neil Alexander to Scott McDonald's cross.

However, Hearts levelled seven minutes later when Osman Sow outmuscled Kieran Kennedy at a long ball and set up Juanma Delgado to finish brilliantly.

After torrential rain and driving wind eased, McDonald sent Marvin Johnson away to turn Jordan McGhee both ways before firing across Alexander in the 65th minute.

Hearts levelled even quicker this time when Sow sent a 30-yard strike soaring over Connor Ripley and the visitors dominated the final 20 minutes, with substitute Prince Buaben helping them retain possession.

But both sides deserved a Premiership point for producing an entertaining game in difficult conditions.

Motherwell had Stephen McManus back from suspension, and Keith Lasley and Steven Hammell making their comebacks from injury as they improved considerably on their 3-0 defeat by Ross County.

McGhee said: Last weekend we went there without Hammell, Lasley and McManus in the team and we knew we would be better with them in the team. And that's the way it was.

That's not rocket science, we are going to be better with three of our best and most experienced players.

I'm looking at that performance as a benchmark of what we should expect from this group of players.

The result was all right but we probably should have won the game given the number of chances we created. So that was disappointing.

But both sets of players had to cope with horrendous conditions and they did it really, really well and produced a competitive and entertaining game.''

Hearts head coach Robbie Neilson was disappointed with the result, which saw them slip to third place, although he was happy to see them come from behind twice.

That's encouraging but the disappointing thing is we're losing goals,'' he said.

We went through a good period, four or five games without losing goals and that was two really poor goals that we lost.

We scored two decent goals but we should be coming down here and keeping clean sheets and letting our technical players win it for us.''