Pep Guardiola said Manchester City’s return to winning ways will “clear our minds and our souls” and he insisted the Premier League champions will be back to their best after a welcome win at Leicester.

Guardiola expressed his relief after City halted their miserable run of results by registering their first win in six games and just their second in 14 games in all competitions.

“I think it’s more relief than happiness, I think that’s the right word,” Guardiola said. “In terms of performance, it wasn’t the best, I couldn’t really expect that. Leicester were better in the last 10-15 minutes of the first half and the last 15-20 minutes of the second. The game was close. We have to improve a lot. We will improve as the results get better, that’s for sure. The best of us will come back.”

“Against Everton (on Boxing Day) the performance was much better than today, but today we won and that’s what we need to cleanse our minds and souls and see that we can win games,” said Guardiola.

“I never thought it would be difficult to win a single game, but now we feel it. Maybe it’s good. This time helps me realize what we have done. She made me think about how difficult it is to do what we did.”

The City coach paid tribute to Haaland, who secured the victory late on, having recently become a father. Savinho scored the first goal after firing in the rebound from Phil Foden’s saved shot. “Sometimes Erling is judged badly, but that’s part of football. He’s tired, he’s played a lot of minutes. He became a father for the first time in the last few days, lots of emotions and exciting days for him.”

Ruud van Nistelrooy said he was encouraged by Leicester’s performance despite their fourth consecutive league defeat. Leicester are in 18th place, two points ahead of Ipswich, who host Chelsea on Monday, and two points behind Wolves, who equalized late against Tottenham.

“There are two ways to look at results,” said the former Manchester United striker. “You can just look at the results: if you win, you’re great, if you lose, you’re bad. But we want to develop our players in the game model and when something works on a day like this on the pitch against a great team as a manager, coach and squad, you feel like you’re developing something and that’s a nice feeling. But the best feeling is collecting points.”