Shanghai Shenhua coach Gregorio Manzano is convinced his team are moving in the right direction after seeing them beat Chinese Super League champions Guangzhou Evergrande 2-1 on Saturday thanks to a brace from Nigerian striker Obafemi Martins.
The win -- the club's first against Evergrande -- moved Shenhua into third place in the standings, two points ahead of crosstown rivals Shanghai SIPG in the battle for spots in next season's Asian Champions League and comes just two weeks after a 3-2 win over second-placed Jiangsu Suning.
"This year we want to build our team and compared with our first game against Evergrande [this season] we were missing five players, but we ended up with a great result," said the Spaniard, who took over at the start of the year after spending two seasons with Beijing Guoan. "That proves we are growing stronger as a team.
"We're now on the right track, but we have to stay on it. We beat Jiangsu and now Evergrande, so we are really going in the right direction. But at the moment we shouldn't get distracted by focusing on other teams. We have to focus on ourselves first."
Shenhua remain four points behind Jiangsu, who picked up a 2-1 win over Changchun Yatai on Sunday thanks to goals from Trent Sainsbury and Alex Teixeira to close the gap on five-time champions Evergrande to eight points with eight rounds remaining.
Guangzhou boss Luiz Felipe Scolari was left to rue his side's defeat and, in particular, the absence of defensive duo Zhang Linpeng and Feng Xiaoting, who returned from a national team training camp having sustained injuries that ruled them out of the game.
"I didn't want to mention this, but as you mentioned it my players got injured in national team training," said the Brazilian World Cup winner when asked about the loss of the pair.
"I can't comment too much on this. We having a big group of Chinese internationals, so I have to have a flexible squad. Sometimes, due to injuries, our formation has to change, it caused instability which ended up in this loss. I hope they can recover as soon as possible. Only by staying fit can they help us and also help the national team."
Scolari added: "It was a great game. Both sides created lots of chances. Shenhua took advantage of our two first-half mistakes and scored twice. They deserved the win."