Despite the fact that neither underfoot nor overhead conditions were conducive to attractive football at McDiarmid Park on Sunday, St Johnstone and Hearts served up a decent game which, as both managers admitted, could have gone either way.

A draw would have been a fair result, but Saints don’t get many of those – which is one of the big reasons they are where they are in the Premiership table.

Time is running out for Perth hard luck stories, with crucial games against Ross County and Dundee to come over the next few days.

Courier Sport picks out four talking points from the defeat to Hearts and casts an eye forward to a couple of fixtures that warrant the “season-defining” tag.

The biggest theme to emerge from the previous weekend’s defeat at Rugby Park was the need for the Saints players to be less wedded to a ‘play it out from the back’ gameplan.

In the main, Saints struck a far better balance.

Unlike against Killie (and St Mirren) it never felt as if they were about to unnecessarily pass their way into trouble.

Andy Fisher delivered balls into the Hearts half that gave Adama Sidibeh a fighting chance of winning and, although he didn’t make his mark on the contest in a footballing sense, Jonathan Svedberg helped get his team up the pitch by contesting long passes that came his way, forcing throw-ins deep in opposition territory on a couple of occasions.