Fine, fine, miss, miss, mistake, try again.

Pep Guardiola was attempting to praise the perseverance of Savinho after his first Manchester City goal - "Until the end, he tries", the manager said - yet it has been a frustrating sequence for everyone. Even at the King Power, moments before he scored he did the hard work of dribbling through a number of players into the box, only to lose his whereabouts and carry on beyond the byline.

A player who took the No.26 that Riyad Mahrez excelled in has shown glimpses of the Algerian master but has been a novice in front of goal. He had the most shots of anyone who hadn't scored in the Premier League before Sunday and just four assists to show for nearly 1,400 minutes of football.

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It is fair to say that this isn't the City side that Savinho expected to be dropped into, and it is much easier to perform in a winning machine than it is when everything around you had stopped working. Yet if the Blues haven't met the player's expectations it is also fair to say that fans have not seen the best of a star who shone so brightly in La Liga last season.

The most damning thing you can say about Savinho in his first six months of English football is that nobody has mentioned his fee. People were queueing up to froth at the mouth when it was announced that City were paying one of their sister clubs to sign the Brazil international and a £21m pricetag - while signed off by the Premier League - had the potential for more uproar from the usual suspects.

Instead there has been silence, because Savinho has been unable to carry his form from Spain into a new league. He hasn't been alone in underperforming, but as a tricky winger is more prominent when he flatters to deceive.

That spark and confidence has been missing - and perhaps that is understandable as he strives to wrestle with the new challenge in front of him. The youngster is a dedicated student and is trying to learn English but has struggled to get to grips with a notoriously tricky language since he arrived in summer.

That remains a work in progress but he will get there, and it was fitting that Savinho's first goal came with Ruud van Nistelrooy in the opposition dugout, given he had given the 20-year-old short shrift when he had gone to PSV on loan from Troyes in 2022. The former United assistant has now lost two games of football to the forward this season including the Community Shield, and those have stung the pride of any part in his development.

"When you work with players it’s great to develop them and when you see them years later and developed really well, I thought, ‘what have I done?’", Van Nistelrooy said on Sunday, "but I congratulated him on his performance. Of course as a young kid coming from Brazil, he came into PSV, we took care of him, developed him in a certain way of playing that suits Manchester City.

"I wasn’t surprised they took him because you could see his quality today, how good he is on the ball, also off the ball with his deep runs, that he is technically very gifted, a great character. He will definitely be there for the Brazilian national team and in the top level of football so I congratulated him on the performance, although it hurt a bit."

For Savinho, there was joy and relief at a goal that all his teammates celebrated. The microscope on the pitch has been harsh but those who have been under it can uniquely appreciate together how difficult it has been.

Behind the scenes at City, players and staff can appreciate how Savinho is adapting because it is a journey that almost all of the squad have had to go down. The training ground can be a lonely place for anyone when they have not won, but it is particularly difficult for those who are further away from home.

Savinho is a lifetime away from the farm where he grew up and learnt the importance of hard work, yet he is also more than a thousand miles from his mum. Even if she has been a frequent visitor to Manchester and also travelled with his dad to Paris for the Ballon d'Or awards where he was up for an award, she still lives in Girona.

Friends have been and his personal trainer also gets over, but for the most part it has just been Savinho and his wife Anna Carolina. They are expecting their first child, and even had what must be the first gender reveal party to be held on the Etihad pitch when they saw 'IT'S A GIRL' light up the scoreboard with a pink background.

Plenty has happened since he signed then, with Savinho as well as the team. That isn't to excuse his long wait for a goal, but a reminder of what has been settled and what hasn't as the player has found his way.

Kevin De Bruyne may have been Kevin De Bruyne when he rather bluntly described the goal as 'a bit of a tap-in' but has been one of the wise heads helping to keep Savinho on the right path. "I thought he started really well this season and then maybe go down a bit with the team," he said.

"But he's created a lot of chances. It's always important to get that goal. In the end it's kind of a tap-in but it will help for him to get a bit of confidence. It will be alright."

Guardiola agrees. The manager sees every one of his players struggling mentally yet there is a particular block around the first goal for a forward and when one arrives the rest usually start to follow.

There is an acceptance that City's form hasn't allowed for the bedding in period that is afforded to most signings, and the robustness of Savinho to be able to play multiple games in a week was appreciated even before the injury crisis.

As pleased as Guardiola was with the goal at Leicester, City's coach also purred over the assist. The floated ball into Haaland was exactly the kind of delivery that De Bruyne or Mahrez might have done and the sort of patient, accurate ball that the No.9 simply hasn't had enough of from his teammates this season.

Goals give confidence and give wins, which give more confidence both to the individuals and to the collective. City have to ease the goalscoring burden on Haaland, but the more they can feed him as well the better everyone will be.

"Defensively he's so smart. Not incredibly strong one against one in a duel but his workrate is impressive and he's so impressive," smiled Guardiola. "He's had a lot of chances this season. We spoke about the moment he scored one or two he will score a lot. I'm really pleased for him."

If he can cause some ex-United stars more pain, Guardiola will be even more pleased with a summer signing who many remain convinced will prove a bargain.