Pellegrini Pep would be good for the Premier League

Manuel Pellegrini believes that Pep Guardiola would make a sensational addition to the ranks of Premier League coaches.

The two go head-to-head for the fourth time in 12 months when Manchester City take on Bayern Munich in a game City must win if they are to retain an interest in qualifying for the Champions League knock-out stages.

So far the Spaniard leads the Chilean by 2-1 and the City boss knows he must get the better of his old La Liga rival on Tuesday to avoid the inevitable scrutiny that will come with failure.

“I cannot read what will happen in the future but I am sure that if he were to arrive sometime in this country, he’d be a success,” says Pellegrini.

“It will be very good for him and very good for the Premier League also. He will be a very important manager, as he was in Barcelona and now at Bayern Munich.

“He always gives a style of play to his teams. The Bayern players are not the same as Barca’s so they will not play exactly the same. But his are always very attractive and offensive teams. They play high possession of the ball.

“But we play Bayern Munich against Manchester City. We never play the manager against the manager. I think the most important thing for us is to try to make a very good game against a great team.”

Because of his links with former Nou Camp executives Ferran Soriano and Txiki Bergiristain, now at the Etihad, City has always been mooted as a possible eventual destination for Guardiola. But with two trophies collected in his first season, Pellegrini looked fireproof until he hit problems getting out of an admittedly tough group.

Now, after taking just one point from six against CSKA Moscow, City will probably have to follow up a win over Bayern with victory at Roma if they and their manager are not to be branded Champions League flops.

However, Pellegrini has been operating under UEFA-imposed financial restraints on transfer outlay and with a squad restricted to just 21 players.

“I don’t complain because I don’t like to use excuses,” he says. “All the media knows the way we are this year, that we have a lot of restrictions and cannot have more than 21 players in the Champions League squad.

“But it is not my way to use all these things to excuse bad results. We have the reality of what happened this year and have to work with that.

“I think that criticism is always normal when you don’t reach the target that you think you must reach. I never feel that people are attacking me. The pressure to continue to the next round is more from myself maybe than from the owners.

“Maybe you don’t always reach the target but you must sit down and think about what happened. But I will do that only when I know we are not going to be in the next stage.

“If we don’t progress to the round of 16, then of course it’s a step back.”