Neuer relieved as Bayern progress

Manuel Neuer said FC Bayern München could count themselves lucky to have reached the last eight of the UEFA Champions League after allowing Arsenal FC to claw back a two-goal aggregate deficit at the Fuβball Arena München. The Germany goalkeeper admitted the Bavarians had all but assumed they would score on home turf, where they were made to sweat before ultimately progressing on away goals.

Manuel Neuer, Bayern goalkeeper
I don't think we were at our best today and a lot of things didn't go right for us. We're lucky we built up such a lead in London. If we hadn't won 3-1 there then we wouldn't have gone through.

However, as a professional you have to accept that sometimes games like this can go wrong because there are lot of quality teams playing on a level with one another. We have to learn from this and take the experience into future matches.

Our positioning wasn't right at times but we did create one or two chances and played well in attack. We were relying on the fact that we're always capable of scoring a goal. Usually we do score at home, but that's not something we should have assumed. We can count ourselves lucky that their second goal only came four minutes from the end.

We knew and said before the game that the tie wasn't over and that we were taking it very seriously, but we needed to show that on the pitch and we didn't manage that tonight. We can be pleased that we're through – and deservedly so – but nevertheless this serves as a lesson to all of us.

Thomas Müller, Bayern midfielder
We're through, so the end result is a positive one, even if the result on the night wasn't exactly what we'd hoped for. To lose such an important game 2-0 at home throws up a lot of questions, especially in this fantasy world we've been living in for the past few months. In that respect, maybe it's not such a bad thing because it will prompt us to think more about ourselves as a team.

We had a few good spells tonight and really should have scored. In fact, we didn't play that badly at all, but the fact that we conceded a second goal towards the end and had to endure a nervous last five minutes or so shows that something obviously went wrong.

I actually like situations like that because it means I can show my strengths – fighting for every millimetre and maybe taking the ball into the corner to run the clock down. It's something I learned back when I was playing in the reserves and the games were always tight.

Toni Kroos, Bayern midfielder
When you consider the tie as a whole, the only thing that matters is that we got through. We didn't play well tonight, even if we did deserve a goal in the second half. We pressed them and created chances and basically Arsenal scored from the only two chances they had. We didn't expect it to be easy tonight, but certainly a little more straightforward than it was.

We wanted to go into the game completely focused so to concede so early on was unacceptable. We wanted to keep a clean sheet here. It took us a while then to get into the game, but we had them under control in the first half without creating any major chances. In the second half we put them under pressure but couldn't score a goal. They scored from a set piece and that made for a tight finish.