Pep Guardiola hailed a proper defensive display from Manchester City as they held on to beat Fulham 2-1 in the Premier League.
Erling Haaland opened the scoring with a penalty in the third minute but the Blues were made to work for their victory, with Carlos Vinicius equalising in the first half and the home team pushing for a second after Julian Alvarez had scored a wonder goal to put the reigning champions back in the lead. Ederson and Kyle Walker were both booked in injury time as City used every trick in the book to see out the result.
Despite the pressure from Fulham, Guardiola was happy that his side only conceded one shot on target in the entire 90 minutes. The performance was especially satisfying for the City boss given it was immediately after what was billed as a title decider against Fulham.
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"After we came from Bayern Munich, we come from the run of victories and it looked like Arsenal was the target. We have to beat them to be there," said Guardiola.
"And when you play that game, you drop a little bit [afterwards]. But I didn't see that drop much because the team was ready but the quality of Fulham, their exceptional season, the grass was so dry for both teams and difficult to give rhythm.
"They played really good and played really well. We found our momentum and played properly. It's the gap we improved the most compared to the past - we defend. We didn't concede a lot of shots on target with the ball, maybe another one in the second half beyond the 18-yard box and no more than that.
"We played really well, the last eight or nine minutes we played so smart, we did really well. Having Erling and Phil we have to play these type of ball and we were brilliant.
"In the last minutes, I'm very pleased with how they handled the situation. These players don't need a leader, they know exactly what they have to do."
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