Hearts manager Neil Critchley admitted Saturday’s 2-0 victory over Ross County was important after watching his side make ground on the teams above them in the top six.
The Gorgie side climbed up to sixth in the William Hill Premiership after Elton Kabangu and Jorge Grant scored either side of the break.
And the three points also saw Hearts make ground on Dundee United, Aberdeen and city rivals Hibs in the battle for third place.
Critchley was a pleased man after his team also collected a first clean sheet at home since January 2.
He said: “All results have gone in our favour today, which is positive for us. So it’s been a good day all round.
“The sunshine was out, a fantastic pitch, we scored two goals, kept a clean sheet and the results have gone for us.
“You’d class it as a routine home win, but we’ve had to fight and work really hard for it, as Ross County make you do that.
“It’s not easy when a team basically puts 11 players behind the ball on the halfway line.
“It’s very difficult to play against and you have to be patient and you have to work for your openings, and we did that with a fantastic first goal.
“It was a really good team goal. It’s important to get the first goal.
“And then they had to go for the game, more attacking subs on and open the game up, which you’d expect them to do.
“I thought the subs came on and made a real difference for us as well.
“We’re in a good place, we get a little bit of time to rest.
“Some players will play in midweek, and then we get time to rest and get ready for a really exciting challenge at Celtic in a couple of weeks’ time.”
Elton Kabangu opened the scoring in the 26th minute when he poked home Beni Baningime’s pass before Grant turned home Musa Drammeh’s cross in the 89th minute.
County boss Don Cowie, whose team are now ninth in the table – four points behind Hearts – admits County lacked a cutting edge.
He said: “It was everything that I would expect.
“A team working extremely hard to try and make it as difficult as possible for Hearts.
“We managed to frustrate them for periods of the game.
“But I think, as I always say, we’re an honest group and we just lacked that little bit of quality to create that real momentum and that opportunity to get back in the match.
“We made a lot of substitutions in the last half of the game, really attacking ones to see if we could get that opportunity to get back in it.
“We just came up short, we didn’t manage to show that bit of quality, whether it was from a set-play that we had – because we had quite a few of them – or in the actual game play.”
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