Man City boss Manuel Pellegrini only has eyes for Leicester City

Manchester City manager Manuel Pellegrini said he was only thinking about the club's next match after their 1-0 win against Sunderland on Tuesday night.

City claimed a vital victory at the Stadium of Light thanks to Sergio Aguero's 12th goal in his last 10 Premier League games, a result that keeps them just three points behind Leicester City at the top of the table.

However, the Chilean - who was taking charge of his 100th league game with City - refused to be drawn on what the remainder of the season may hold after Monday's announcement that he would be leaving the club this summer.

"My future is my present, I try to win the next game and focus just on what we are doing," he said after the full-time whistle.

"I've just said what will happen in June, but I am not thinking about the future because I never do it. So for me it is very important now to focus on our next game, which is Leicester at home, who is the leader, and we will try and be top of the table and to try and finish every successful season."

Pellegrini - who also acknowledged the visiting supporters by saying: "I really appreciate the fans signing my name" - was especially pleased with the character his players showed on Wearside in what was City's third encounter in the space of just a week.

"I am very happy about that as that was our third game in a week, we played the semi-final against Everton and after that we had to play on Saturday against Aston Villa in the cup," he said.

"And now we returned to the Premier League having a win against a difficult team in a stadium where if you see the history of our team here, it is not very good.

"So winning 1-0 and the way the players showed character and run and defend every ball, I am very happy to have three more points.

"It was difficult because teams like Sunderland are fighting relegation, they play every game as a final and they fight every ball as though it is the last ball."

In particular, Pellegrini thought City's clean sheet at Sunderland had gone a long way towards laying to rest the view his side struggle when it comes to defending.

"So many times I must hear that we do not know how to defend," he said. "Well if we want to defend, we can defend with eight players near our box as we did tonight.

"I think the squad also felt a little bit the three games, so it was intelligent to do it that way and for that you have to be very concentrated and show character and we did it.

"I always said that to work on defending with eight players near the box is more easy [than] when you are an attacking team and you have space behind the centre-backs, because you have full-backs that are attacking.

"Of course, maybe you can concede some options to the other team, but normally you score more goals and that is why we are the highest-scoring team in the Premier League. But if we want to play in defending, I think it is easy to do it and I think tonight we demonstrated it."