Pep Guardiola praised his Manchester City defenders for toughening up and eradicating the errors that scuppered their Premier League title chances last season.
The Blues moved into second in the table - their highest position of the campaign - with a 4-0 dismantling of Crystal Palace that leaves them two points behind neighbours United with a game in hand.
Roy Hodgson declared afterwards that the team have all the qualities needed to win the Premier League, and while Guardiola won't countenance such talk himself he has been delighted with the tightening up that has enabled their improvement. Ruben Dias and John Stones recorded their ninth clean sheet in ten games together as City remain the meanest defence in the league.
While Palace lamented their own errors, Guardiola's side are no longer making the kind of mistakes that cost them last season and earlier in this campaign against Tottenham and Leicester.
"If you see today Raz [Sterling] and Bernardo [Silva] and Gabriel [Jesus] and when they came in Ferran [Torres] and the other subs the way we press, how aggressive we are, how intense we are - it is so important, so good," said Guardiola.
"It helps the central defenders to be better but we cannot deny the guys behind don't make mistakes, they are so consistent and when the opponents scored a goal it is because they did well - not because we give it to them.
"Last season it happened many times that the opponents didn't do anything and we gave them goals. That makes it so difficult but this season we have improved a lot because we concede few [chances] and the difference is we don't make mistakes. After that the quality of the players up front make the difference."
