Manchester City ended their three-match winless streak with a 1-0 victory over fierce rivals Manchester United yesterday, with Louis van Gaal saying Chris Smalling was “not vert smart” for getting sent off.

Sergio Aguero proved to be the difference with his goal in the 63rd minute but the home side were unable to kill-off the game, despite the away side playing the entire 45 minutes with 10 men after Smalling was given an early bath for picking up two yellow cards.

While Van Gaal had no complaints about the dismissal of his defender, he was angry at the lack of logic Smalling applied to the situation.

He said: “Yeah, I think the first, I didn’t see that, but the referee is giving a yellow card and then you know as a player you can’t do what he did for the second yellow card. That’s logical I think.

“I say a lot of things to the players and despite that they do not always follow what I said. There is also emotion and sometimes you cannot control your emotion but it was not very smart.”

Twelve points from 10 games is the worst start for the Reds since Ron Atkinson was in charge of the club in 1986. Atkinson was sacked later that season but the current man in charge is seeing signs that things will turn around sooner rather than later.

“I said to the boys that the willpower is unbelievable. When you can give that you can be very proud but we have zero points,” he added.

“We were so close in spite of playing with 10 men. We created more chances than in the first half. We are close but not close enough today and we have to improve.”

City manager Manuel Pellegrini was pleased to get back to winning ways but upset with his side’s inability to put the game to bed.

He said: “I’m very happy with three points. We must win and we played very well up until the moment we scored the goal.

“After that we maybe we finished playing, thinking that the game was over, but it wasn’t over.”