Mark Hughes was full of praise for his Manchester City players following their 3-1 victory over West Ham.
The Blues gave an impressive display at Eastlands as they eased to a fifth win in six Premier League outings to move within three points of joint leaders Manchester United and Chelsea, with a game in hand.
Carlos Tevez, facing his former club as he was ontarget twice, while Martin Petrov scored the other.
City, who should have won by more, delighted Hughes.
“I thought some of our play was excellent tonight,” he said.
“It was about getting the job done. We have seen the results over the weekend and we knew we were in for a challenge this evening. West Ham are a good team, they try and play the game the right way, and we had to make sure they didn’t have a positive impact on the game in terms of creating chances and putting us under pressure.
“But I thought we were excellent from start to finish. We showed real purpose and a real determination to get the job done and won the game quite comfortably.”
Hughes admitted that City suffered something of a derby hangover in their Carling Cup encounter with Fulham last week, but he is confident that the 4-3 defeat to Manchester United firmly is firmly behind them now.
“We move on,” he said defiantly.
“It was a big game, the derby, as everybody understands and we had a little bit of a reaction on Wednesday in terms of emotion and physicality of the game. We won the game on the Wednesday, though, and we won again this evening so we are in good shape.
“We are enjoying our football and we are playing well at the moment. We have got big performances from big players in the team and that is what we need.”
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