Man City earn important win over Chelsea thanks to Gabriel Jesus goal

Manchester City narrowly beat Chelsea 1-0 in an entertaining clash at Stamford Bridge on Saturday.

Gabriel Jesus' 53rd-minute strike was the difference between the sides, with a Romelu Lukaku goal ruled out for offside.

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"We prefer to play good, so we come to play against one of the best teams in the world, European champions, they are so good, they have a lot of amazing players. We played very good and won the game," Jesus said. 

"I turned good, shot and got a little lucky but I am very happy to score that goal. The most important thing is that everyone played so good.

"It is not about the message, we always try to play as good as possible. We have a lot of top players to create the chances and score the goals."

Chelsea had beaten City in their last three meetings prior to Saturday's clash -- with the latest coming in last season's Champions League final. The result marked Pep Guardiola's side's fifth clean sheet in the Premier League in a row.

"We lost the game and City deserved to win. Until the goal we were very strong in the last 20 metres of the field, but only there unfortunately. Everywhere else we were not good enough to relieve pressure and to hurt them," Thomas Tuchel said.

"The performance was not complex enough. Overall, simply, we were not at our best level. After the goal it felt a little bit like the belief in winning was bigger than the fear of losing, I don't know why. We tried to push and get the crowd behind us. It was a very emotional game but never on our highest level."

City dominated the first half with close to 70% possession for most of it, pressing high against Tuchel's side.

Matt McNulty - Manchester City FC via Getty Image

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However, the Chelsea defence held strong and the sides entered half-time level.

City finally managed to find a gap eight minutes into the second half through Jesus.

Joao Cancelo broke with the ball and won a corner that was delivered short and then into the box. Jesus' strike took a slight deflection, which saw it spin past Edouard Mendy.

It looked like Chelsea had evened it 10 minutes later when Lukaku tapped the ball into the City net. However, Kai Havertz was well offside and the goal was disallowed.

Jack Grealish had the ideal opportunity to double City's lead on 82 minutes when he broke away from the Chelsea defence but Mendy stood tall and saved his shot.

Meanwhile, Chelsea defender Marcos Alonso was the only player not to take a knee before the game after saying on Tuesday that he thought the gesture was "losing a bit of strength."