Manchester City boss Pep Guardiola hailed the performance of Jeremy Doku after victory over Brighton.
City defeated Brighton 2-1, with Julian Alvarez and Erling Haaland scoring for the hosts. City also had Manuel Akanji sent off in injury-time after Ansu Fati had pulled a goal back for the visitors.
Afterwards, Guardiola said: "Brighton have incredible quality and we had to suffer. Jeremy Doku played an exceptional game and helped us. He is clever with situations.
"We played 55-60 minutes really, really good and had more and more chances to score. At the end we defended with our heart.
"We accept it [red card]. We know what happened. We accept it."
City defender John Stones also said: "It was a difficult game and I thought how we played the first half was excellent. It was a different second half. We had to dig in and show our fighting spirit.
"We had lost three of our previous four games so knew we had to come out fighting. That fight and desire of not losing was massive for us. Everyone played their part.
"How Brighton play - everyone can see how much they dominate with the ball. I felt great, really good. The manager always says give everything and that's all you can do. I gave everything today."