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Cape Town - Massimiliano Allegri declared himself happy with Juventus' 2-1 win over Sporting in their Champions League clash on Wednesday.
Alex Sandro opened the scoring with an own-goal on 12 minutes before Miralem Pjanic levelled with 29 minutes played.
Mario Mandzukic then secured all three points with his goal on 84 minutes.
After the game, the Italian head coach admitted it wasn't the most convincing performance from his side, but he was nonetheless impressed with their fighting spirit.
He told the club's official website: "Sometimes looking at the points doesn’t give you the full picture of a match.
"If you look at our recent performances, perhaps tonight’s was the poorest. But we only picked up one point from our two previous games.
“We’re not in fantastic form at the moment. We’ve had injuries, with players coming back having not played for a while. Then there are a couple of lads that came back from their international duty not in the best shape."
Allegri added that he expects his side to push on after coming through the first "phase" of their season.
“From November, after the play-offs and the international break, a new phase of the season begins," he explained.
"Our approach is simple: to make sacrifices and to work, to be more focused during games, without taking our foot off the gas. Take tonight, once we made it 2-1, we needed to kill the game but we took risks. We need to push ourselves, game after game.”
He concluded: "The result is a good one. It’s another step forward towards qualification and well done to the boys for believing right until the end. Now we’ll look to the game in Udine, where we need to get going again in the league.”
