Motherwell 3, Hearts 1: Birthday boy Lennon Miller pulls strings in Well win

Birthday boy Lennon Miller presented Motherwell with three valuable points against Hearts at Fir Park this afternoon, as they bagged their first Premiership win of the season.

The 18-year-old provided free kick ammunition for both captain Paul McGinn and vice-captain Stephen O'Donnell to head past Craig Gordon, as Motherwell climbed into the top half of the table.

Hearts sub Yutaro Oda halved the deficit in 66 minutes, but sub Tom Sparrow latched onto Andres Salazar's pass-back to thunder a third into the top left corner with nine minutes left.

McGinn put Motherwell on their way in 24 minutes with a bullet header from a Miller free kick, and Andy Halliday and Tawanda Maswanhise both forced terrific saves from Craig Gordon to keep the score down.

At the other end, Blair Spittal had a shot cleared off the line by Ewan Wilson.

O'Donnell headed Motherwell into a 2-0 lead just before the hour-mark, again from a Miller set-up.

Oda fired Hearts back into the game in 66 minutes with a fine finish, following a stramash in the Motherwell box.

But Sparrow put the result beyond doubt, with a fine finish.

Motherwell boss Stuart Kettlewell made one change to the side that beat Kilmarnock 1-0 here in the Premier Sports Cup second round last Sunday. Tawanda Maswanhise made his first start, in place of Steve Seddon.

His Hearts counterpart Steven Naismith made four changes to the side that lost 1-0 at Viktoria Plzen in their Europa League qualifying play-off first leg on Thursday. Andres Salazar, Alan Forrest, Blair Spittal and Yan Dhanda replaced James Penrice, Kenneth Vargas, Cammy Devlin and Jorge Grant.

Andres Salazar thought he had beat the offside trap to present himself with a chance inside two minutes, but blazed over, only to