John Stones delighted as Manchester City overcome 'tough' Champions League test vs Napoli

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Tom Doyle17 October 2017

John Stones hailed Manchester City for passing a "tough test" with a 2-1 victory over Napoli to maintain their 100 per cent start in this season's Champions League.

City stormed out of the traps with goals from Raheem Sterling and Gabriel Jesus inside the opening 13 minutes but Napoli wasted a gilt-edged chance to halve the deficit when Dries Mertens' penalty was saved by Ederson just before half-time.

The Brazilian goalkeeper was a towering presence in the City goal and the only time his net was breached was through Amadou Diawara's 73rd-minute spot-kick.

City, though, never really looked in danger of failing to secure their third win in Group F and defender Stones was pleased by several aspects of their performance.

Champions League | Group F

Pos Team P W D L GD Pts
1 Man City 3 3 0 0 7 9
2 Shakhtar Donetsk 3 2 0 1 0 6
3 Napoli 3 1 0 2 0 3
4 Feyenooord 3 0 0 3 -7 0

He told BT Sport: "We've put ourselves in a good position, a lot of games to play still. I say it all the time but we've got to keep going game by game.

"I think tonight was a great test to see where we were really at after a good run of hard games. We knew it was going to be a tough test.

Getty Images

"We wanted to play our game and I think some of the football out from the back right the way through to the guys up top was, at times, great to watch for me personally.

"We're a bit upset to concede the goal that we did, I thought it was a bit soft but overall: a great team performance.

"Every game is a hard game. We want to keep improving, keep scoring goals, keeping clean sheets and hopefully we can progress in the group."

Fellow defender Kyle Walker was quick to hail the performance of Ederson after City sealed a 10th consecutive win in all competitions.

The former Tottenham full-back said: "We always knew they were going to come at us in the second half. I thought the lads showed good character out there. Ederson's kept us in it and we need to say a big thanks to him."

Additional reporting by the Press Association.