Ruben Dias has warned Chelsea and Liverpool that "this is what we do" after Manchester City downed a resilient Aston Villa side to keep pace in the title race.
The 24-year-old broke the deadlock with a super left-foot strike from distance, before Gabriel Jesus and Bernardo Silva combined on the counter to hand City a comfortable two-goal lead at the break.
Ollie Watkins halved the deficit but City had enough to see out the win despite a worrying injury record.
Kyle Walker, Ilkay Gundogan, John Stones and Kevin de Bruyne were absent from the squad, as five youngsters and two goalkeepers were named joined returnees Phil Foden and Jack Grealish amongst the substitutes.
Dias applauded his team-mates for the victory which kept them within a point of leaders Chelsea, adding: "The bigger the challenge, the bigger the wins, and we love that."
He told Amazon Prime: "Very important win today away game against a team that you could say was a little bit on fire with the new manager, they had two wins. So very important to pick up the three points, everyone fought a lot, we're very happy."
"Yeah I have [scored a goal like that before], but obviously a very special goal for me.
"[Bernardo's goal was] even more so because it was 2-0 and he gave us extra confidence to go into the second half. Obviously, the game changed when they scored.
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"We've got to give them credit because it was a very good goal, that changed the game. They went with the crowd, they started to try things differently, but our team was always there and we were always in control of the game.
"That's who we are, what our team is made of. Obviously, a big shoutout to everyone because to go out and perform the way we did today it's just a demonstration of the work we do, everyone - no exceptions.
"The bigger the challenge, the bigger the wins, and we love that so that's what we're here for."
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