Roberto Mancini’s men held on to the flimsy early lead earned by skipper Carlos Tevez’s strike despite having left-back Aleksandar Kolarov sent off to trigger a barnstorming Bolton bid to rescue a point.
City hit the bar and the post as well as squandering opportunities to put the result beyond the visitors and De Jong said: “It was a tough game but they didn’t really give us a lot of problems because they didn’t create a lot of chances.
“OK, the last 15 minutes were difficult because we were playing with a man less, but they still didn’t create one good chance.
“We can blame ourselves for that because we didn’t score. That was the only flaw in a very good performance from the whole team - especially the first 20 minutes.
We flew out of the starting blocks, it was unbelievable
“We won every second ball as well and we took a grip of the game. We produced a good performance and now we need to take that into the next game against West Ham.”
It was City’s first home Premier League victory since beating Newcastle in early October after three successive matches against Arsenal, Manchester United and Birrmingham without managing a goal.
Nigel added: “It wasn’t that we were back to being the real City - all we have been lacking is scoring goals, especially at home. But we are strong, and we proved that we are a very good side that can play good football.
“But you have to score the goals to go with that as well, otherwise you put yourselves in a bad position, especially towards the end if there’s a red card like there was today. That’s always going to be a bit tricky.
“Bolton have been playing well and getting some good results, but we stood strong and they didn’t score.”
