Manchester City maintained the pressure on leaders Arsenal as the Premier League champions reduced the gap at the top to two points with a hard-fought victory over struggling Crystal Palace.
Pep Guardiola's side had to remain patient at Selhurst Park, but were eventually able to take their opportunity to edge closer to the Gunners, who visit London rivals Fulham on Sunday.
Erling Haaland settled the match from the penalty spot for his 28th goal of the campaign, stroking his 78th-minute spot-kick into the bottom corner after Michael Olise's late challenge on Ilkay Gundogan.
Guardiola stated: "My experience is that every time we come here it has been very tough. Always I have the feeling when we come here, we play really good thinking how good they are. We always struggle because we want to score more goals.
"They have weapons. [Wilfried] Zaha is there, [Michael] Olise, [Eberechi] Eze, they are incredible strikers and they have incredible threat. They have composure, great attacking players. It is a question of patience. They will waste time so we have to push to do it.
"Everything pleased me, we missed the counter attack a bit. It is not easy, they defend six players in the box and Erling Haaland had two men marking him, Gundo [Ilkay Gundogan] had a man, it was a question of patience.
"Teams defend deep against Haaland. Julian [Alvarez] is so important and we need him. We needed him in the middle and he had a chance. Gundo [Ilkay Gundogan] is an exceptional player and got the penalty and Haaland did the rest.
"Joao [Cancelo] leaves so we don't just have full-backs. We have Kyle [Walker] and Sergio [Gomez], the rest they are not. We play with four central defenders and we are solid. All four of them are great players and that's why we defended really well.
"Of course Arsenal is on an incredible run. Still we are there. Arsenal make 50 points. Here in the typical winter game, a difficult one, we were there all the time and then we won it. Now we have to do absolutely everything and next Tuesday and Saturday hopefully the Etihad can live one of the best nights we have lived and we can do it again."
