St Johnstone manager Simo Valakari implored his players to make sure doing the double over Motherwell marks a momentum shift in their fortunes.
Saints claimed a 2-1 comeback victory over the Steelmen thanks to late goals from Taylor Steven and Bozo Mikulic.
That narrowed the gap at the bottom of the William Hill Premiership to seven points.
Kilmarnock are now the nearest club in Valakari’s sights after Saints followed up last week’s 1-0 Scottish Cup win over Well.
The Perth side haven’t been able to build on promising results during the Finnish coach’s reign.
Yet, with 14 games to go, there’s reason to believe a great escape could be on.
Valakari said: “Everyone can see the fight is there. What they did tells me everything about them, the team is very together.
“That is the only way we will give ourselves a chance to survive, everyone has to stick together.
“There is a lot of talk about momentum in football, when you have it the ball starts bouncing for you and things start dropping for you. But you have to do all the right things for that to happen.
“We have never been able to use the positive moments to build momentum so far this season.
“So to come back and win it the way we did, it could be very significant.
“It wasn’t luck, it was down to the boys pushing and pushing, scoring a goal and then going for another one.”
Saints conceded a penalty after only 20 seconds through a Sven Sprangler handball and Andy Halliday converted from the spot.
Valakari was thrilled his side refused to panic in that predicament and stuck to their task to wear Motherwell down.
He added: “We had a good cup game, tried to take the positives out of it, and everyone was buzzing in training building up to this.
“Then, a few seconds in, bang, we give away a penalty and are a goal down. To come back the way we did after losing a goal so early was, I’m so happy.
“After that start it would have been easy to crumble but (Sven) showed his mentality. They all showed it.
“The bottom line is we needed these three points if we’re going to make a push.”
Motherwell boss Stuart Kettlewell was angered by his team’s late collapse.
He said: “We completely switched off; don’t stand strong in our own penalty box.
“Ultimately, for me, that’s where we need to ask the question about that mental strength, that mental capacity to be able to stand strong.
“I didn’t think we’d done well in the second half. Once you start to drop off, you start to concede that pressure, you start to concede territory.
“You have to show a far better determination to defend your penalty box. We simply didn’t have that – and that’s the end result.”
