Motherwell manager Mark McGhee knows his players will have to be at their best to take anything from Hearts on Friday night, a side he ranks as one of the top three in the country.

McGhee reckons that Robbie Neilson has done a great job at Tynecastle, leading them back into the Premiership and establishing them as one of the top sides in the country.

He also believes though that his side can be a match for them under the Fir Park lights, even though they suffered a 6-0 defeat at Tynecastle back in January.

Motherwell were severely understrength that day, and McGhee points to the 1-0 win they enjoyed over the Edinburgh side in April as a more reliable gauge of how competitive Friday’s match will be.

He said: “They came back from the Championship and hit the ground running, and they did it with not necessarily top money in terms of being in the top three budgets, I don’t know what their budget was.

“I think they are doing a good job, the manager is doing a great job in terms of finding players and they have a type of player that they like and are consistent in what they do.

“I think it’s impressive, so I think that anybody that finishes above them will be in the top three.

“The 6-0 game wasn’t that painful, because we went there with injuries and had Josh Law playing in midfield, and Joe Chalmers coming back into the team when he hadn’t been playing, there was all sorts of things going on that day.

“They scored a few late goals and it looked worse than it was. We beat them out here in what was a much more matched game, where we had a decent team out and so did they, and that’s far more significant than any result when we were depleted.”

Motherwell could jump above Hearts into second place in the table, however briefly, with a win over the Jambos tomorrow night.

The Fir Park side are currently enjoying a four-game unbeaten run, but manager McGhee still wants more from his players.

“We’ve not won enough of those games,” McGhee said. “As far as I’m concerned a great run or a good run is when you win consecutive games, not when you go unbeaten, so we’ve still got work to do.

“If we go back a while, maybe the game at Firhill is one where we wouldn’t have the resolve to come back and get something from, and we could have won it in the end.

“For the second week in a row we’ve had a perfectly good goal disallowed, albeit it was at 1-0 to them when it was disallowed so it might only have finished 1-1 anyway.

“The week before against Hamilton we won the game anyway, but we could have done with those goals even for our goal difference.

“So we’ve been close to doing alright.

“If we can suddenly find the form that we did against Hamilton for a few games in succession, which we managed last year when we had a couple of good runs and I think we won eight out of ten at one point, then we can then say we are on a great run.

“That will consolidate us in that top half of the table and that’s what we’re trying to do.”