Alex Tettey's toe-poked winner may not win any style points but it was a thing of beauty for Alex Neil.

The Norwegian international's first Norwich goal of the season sealed a memorable win at Old Trafford, after bursting onto Cameron Jerome's pass to lash past David De Gea from 18 yards.

'To be fair I don't care how he put it in, because he owed me one after scoring a few for Norway recently,' said Neil. 'Al has been a great competitor. He is one who features nearly every game that he is available. It is always tough when you come to Manchester United and they are throwing everything at you but you have to be resolute and solid and he typified that.'

Jerome was another who responded in kind, following his glaring miss the previous week against Everton, when he cut inside Chris Smalling to put City in front.

'It looked on a couple of occasions as if the ball was getting away from him,' said Neil. 'His determination and his strength and power got him through and it was a great finish. People asked me after Everton was it going to be hard to lift him. Strikers miss chances, it happens. I didn't even mention it to him during the week. We did our analysis, we paid reference to it on the Monday morning and then it was put to bed. I was delighted for him. He put a real shift in for his team.' Smalling missed a glorious chance in stoppage time to deny Norwich a famous win.

Yes, I was worried,' said Neil. 'I was thinking, 'Please don't let it happen again,' because there has been so many times this season. You go back to Manchester City, when we were hanging on for a point, we had limited them to very little and then we make an error. I wanted it so badly for them and I thought we deserved it.'