Ten-man Hearts dropped a vital three points in the Scottish Premiership title race before suffering a 1-0 defeat to St Mirren in Paisley.

The league leaders played with one man less for over an hour after Craig Halkett was sent off in the first half and survived a series of attacks until Miguel Freckleton scored the winner in the 88th minute.

Jambo still lead by six points but gave chasers Celtic and Rangers the chance to close the gap on Wednesday.

Stephen Robinson’s St Mirren secured their first league win in eight games to move 12 points clear of the bottom side and move above Dundee into ninth.

In the end, the home team deserved the win. Even before Halkett was fired, they were the better of the two teams.

But this is where the early pressure turned into an onslaught.

The stand-in Hearts skipper initially did well to compensate for a mistake by defensive partner Stuart Findlay, but then mishandled the ball himself before bringing down Jacob Devaney on the edge of the box to miss a clear goal-scoring opportunity.

And the plot of the first half did not end there.

St Mirren captain Marcus Fraser put the ball into the back of the net, but teammate Alex Gorgic headed the ball against the post and was ruled offside after catching Fraser’s rebound.

Robinson’s side thought they had been awarded a penalty when referee Steven McLean pointed it out following Harry Milne’s challenge on Jayden Richardson, but the decision was overturned by VAR as the foul occurred outside the penalty area.

Hearts goalkeeper Alexander Schwolow was in action again early in the second period, making a fine save over his right shoulder from close range to deny Mikael Mandron.

The visitors appeared to have weathered the storm thereafter but were unable to replicate the heroics of last month’s back-to-back wins, being outnumbered and Freckleton’s thunderous header from Declan John’s corner sealed victory for the Partners with two minutes left.

Hearts may only be three points ahead when they face city rivals Hibernian next week. They then face title rivals Rangers at the top of the table on Sunday 15 February – live on sky sports.

Sunday, February 15th at 4:15pm

Starts at 4:30 pm

Robinson: Well-deserved win helps our cause of survival

St Mirren coach Stephen Robinson told Sky Sports:

“Tonight was more like us. Now four games undefeated with two wins. We’re starting to build more momentum again. We’re starting to turn things around. To put in a performance like that against the league leaders… it’s looking more like us. I think we deserve it.

“We had a lot of half-chances; maybe we should have had more. Getting sent off affected the game, but we were patient and managed to get the final result.

“We started really well. We pressed really, really well and we kept taking the ball away from them. We missed two or three really good chances and penalties were overturned – both decisions were correct, actually. I just saw them come back. We criticize the referees enough but you have to say when they get it right too.”

“Like I said, four games unbeaten. We’ve managed to win a cup this season and I think people have forgotten that too. We have a chance to reach the quarter-finals of another cup on Friday night. The goal for this club at the start of every season is to stay in the league. Tonight’s win helps us do that.”

McGinnis: If we continue to go down to 10 people, we’re playing with fire

Hearts manager Derek McInnes told Sky Sports:

“It was very (tough). I thought we did what we had to do to get something out of the game, we worked harder than we wanted to, kept going down to 10 men, but we had created the situation.

“It’s incredible that our coping mechanisms have recently been reduced to 10, but if we continue to do that we are playing with fire.

“No complaints about the red card. Our refusal to push forward got us into trouble. We knew St Mirren would try to chase us and the gap between our centre-backs and theirs was 30 yards, but we refused to play in behind them.

“We pulled the game back in front. It was OK at times, we could break through the pressure and get through it, but we need to play from behind more.

“Nothing is more important than a red card. We had two chances to move forward and we didn’t. We ended up in a groove and Huskers ended up with the final challenge. Can’t blame him.”

“There are consequences too. You struggle here and try to salvage something from the game but there is a consequence, the knock-on effect of player suspensions.

“No complaints about the team’s effort and how hard we tried to keep the team in check. We’ve done that recently and the team had the confidence and confidence to try and get something out of the game but it was annoying that it came from a set piece and numerical superiority didn’t matter. We were just trapped under the ball. It was a good header but a free header from six yards out and we had a lot of fun there as well.

“Credit to St Mirren, they kept pushing forward and asking questions, but overall we performed well until the final embers.”

What will happen to the Scottish Premiership?