Pellegrini delight as City make mark at Bayern

Josep Guardiola, Bayern coach
Congratulations to Manchester City on this great victory. Sometimes you need to lose a game. In the Bundesliga we have won everything, in Manchester we won 3-1, but now we lost and have to cope with that. But we're already looking ahead to next week in Marrakesh [for the FIFA Club World Cup].

In the first half we did not make many mistakes, but during the first ten minutes of the second half we did not play very well. In general we are satisfied. We met a great team in the group phase; Manchester City played quite well tonight. But the atmosphere in the dressing room was OK.

I congratulate the players on their success and I hope we understand now how difficult it is to play in Europe. We did not always have the right player in the right place on the pitch. We have to work on this – that is the lesson we learned today.

I think it is something we have to know, that we can lose. Opponents have good players and managers too. It is always difficult. But we started very well and for the first 30 minutes we were very good. Later we had to use the ball better and use our counterattacks. Manchester City are a good team and you have to have more than just possession.

Manuel Pellegrini, Manchester City manager 
It is a very important victory. Someone said yesterday that tonight's match was not important – it was, as we wanted revenge for the earlier match; we played very badly that day. To win here having scored three goals, without [Vincent] Kompany, Yaya Touré and [Sergio] Agüero, shows we have a very good squad.

We didn't play in the first 15 minutes, but we started to keep more of the ball and then played as well as Bayern. The best way to build confidence having gone 2-0 down so early is to score. After that, when you keep the ball you have trust and confidence in what you can do – all the players start playing better.

It's very important to be top of the group but not the most important thing. I was tempted to put Agüero on [towards the end] but I also thought it was a risk to continue with [David] Silva, as he cannot play more than 70 minutes at the moment.

I hope tonight's win will have a positive effect on the rest of the season. I know we haven't had good results playing away in the Premier League but we didn't play badly in most of those games. So we must continue trying to find a style of play and this match will be very important to us.