"He was so aggressive..." - One player stood out to Guardiola in Man City's win over Arsenal

Pep Guardiola claimed Erling Haaland’s performance stood out for Manchester City against Arsenal.

On Wednesday, City seized the initiative in the title race with a 3-1 win over Mikel Arteta’s side at the Emirates.

The victory sees Guardiola’s side leapfrog the Gunners to go to the Premier League summit on goal difference, albeit having played a game more than their title challengers.

Central to City’s victory was Haaland, who netted his 26th Premier League goal of the season to give his side an unassailable two-goal cushion.

Pep Guardiola on Haaland’s performance

City boss Guardiola noted that Haaland’s “aggressive” all-round performance was key to the Manchester club winning the game.

The Spaniard said, via the City website: “After winning back-to-back Premier Leagues, always I had the feeling that we need a little bit more.

“That's why in the last weeks we talk a little more about that, but I saw the way they trained yesterday - their concentration and focus was there and we knew it, especially for the fact for our resilience in the bad moments when we suffer.

"They were better in the first half. We were not able to make the extra passes.

"We allowed them to have the ball in the second half and we made a step forward, we were more aggressive. Bernardo was much better on Odegaard and that allowed us to have an extra player in the middle.

"Erling helped us a lot because it was man-to-man marking from them and he was so aggressive and he used his power to win those balls and that's why we won the game."

Indeed after the game, Haaland claimed City had produced a performance worthy of champions.

The Norwegian, asked if he felt City had delivered a champion's performance, told Amazon Prime: "City are, 'we' not me, are the champions so you can say so, yeah.

"Small adjustment in half-time from Pep and in the end we have good quality players and we have to get it out of every player and we did today.

"We have to play a little bit more like this sometimes and that is what we did today - I am so proud of every guy here and so happy to be here.

"We can all agree [Arsenal] has been the best team this season so to come and play against them is not easy, but we played an amazing game and got three really important points - we are in it again."