Massimiliano Allegri praised his AC Milan side’s resilience during their 1-0 win against Roma in Serie A on Sunday.

Strahinja Pavlovic scored the winner for the Rossoneri at the San Siro, while Mike Maignan denied Paulo Dybala from the penalty spot in the second half, as Milan moved above Roma into third in the table.

It was the first time Dybala had missed a spot kick for the club (19 attempts), with his previous miss from 12 yards out coming for Juventus against Salernitana in November 2021.

Milan are now unbeaten in their last 10 matches in all competitions, since their defeat in their opening league game of the season to Cremonese, while they have lost just once in their previous 12 Serie A meetings with Roma.

Allegri conceded that his side struggled in the opening stages of the match, but concluded that it was an important win in their ongoing “process”.

“The first 35 minutes, Roma absolutely deserved to take the lead, as we were getting everything wrong that it was possible to get wrong,” Allegri told DAZN Italia.

“That was also due to the extreme pressure that Roma were putting on us, we were unable to get out, so we needed to drop [Davide] Bartesaghi and [Koni] De Winter deeper to create more room to play in.

“Once we took the lead, we were set out better in defence too, and could move to a four-man midfield.

“We came out with the right attitude for the second half and had chances to double our advantage, then of course Roma came back at us, but they struggled to create clear-cut scoring opportunities.

“This is a process, a team has to gain confidence and self-belief, which is not easy playing at San Siro.

“We were missing some very experienced players today, including [Christian] Pulisic, [Adrien] Rabiot and [Fikayo] Tomori, so this was an opportunity to test different players in the pressure cooker of this stadium. I have to say they did very well.”