‘A good statement of intent’

Bayern’s deserved 3-0 win over Leverkusen was “a very good statement of intent,” felt Arjen Robben. Pep Guardiola was also a happy man. “We’ve played against big, big rivals,” commented the Spaniard, whose only complaint was that his troops failed to win by more: “We urgently need to improve the final ball.”

Reaction to Bayern v Bayer

Pep Guardiola: “I’m obviously very, very pleased. We’ve played against big, big rivals. I watch almost every game played by Roger’s team and they usually create five, six, seven, eight or nine clear-cut chances, but today they only had Hakan Calhanoglu’s free-kick. Your build-up play in the first third is very important against this team. We urgently need to improve the final ball. I hope my players return from the international break uninjured.”

Thomas Müller: “We’ve watched Leverkusen a couple of times. They play very intense football, but producing that kind of hard-running performance isn’t easy when they’ve had a midweek game. We should have made more of our chances at the end.”

Arjen Robben: “A 3-0 win is a very good statement of intent. We’ve played very, very well and deserved the win against top-class opponents. We have very quick wide players. We need to be moving the ball at speed and creating one-on-one situations. We have a clear pecking order for penalties: Thomas is taker number one, I’m number two. But it’s good that Arturo also wanted to take it. It’s better than everyone being scared.”

Roger Schmidt (Bayer Leverkusen coach): “Congratulations to Bayern. They played well and deserved to win. It wasn’t easy for us after our match last Wednesday, which was physically and mentally very demanding. I think you could see we wanted to be courageous. It was evenly-matched until they took the lead. We could have got back into it after the break, but once they went 2-0 up the task was too great and our opponents too good. You have to acknowledge that Bayern totally deserved to win.”

Christoph Kramer (Bayer Leverkusen): “We needed an unbelievably good day and plenty of energy if we were to come away with anything from here today. But we had neither. Bayern deserved to win by the margin they did and it could easily have been more. We had no chance and we have to accept that.”