Pep Guardiola believes that Manchester City players could not ignore the pressure of being favourites for their Champions League quarter-final.
City's manager had attempted to downplay the importance of the game beforehand and talk up the quality in the Dortmund side, but declared after the match that this had not been enough for the squad to shake the burden of feeling like they should win the match.
As it was they did and will take a 2-1 lead to Dortmund for the second leg next week, but they were given a serious test from the German side who put their Bundesliga concerns to one side and gave themselves a fighting chance of upsetting the Blues in the second leg.
"The second half was better. Listen, when you have won 26 of your last 27 games and they are not winning in the Bundesliga and are seven points behind in [the race for] Champions League qualification the pressure is on our shoulders, not them," said Guardiola.
"Everything is guaranteed for us and this competition is so tough and the opponents are so good. But everybody believes - and our players [did] as well - that we have to win.
"We have an incredible commitment and desire to go through. Now we fly there with 2-1 lead, we know we have to score goals because they have qualities to always score goals but we have that quality."
Guardiola was delighted with the response shown by his players to numerous setbacks through the game, although they will not need telling that the job is not close to being finished; Monaco stunned them in the second leg of their last-16 clash four years ago while Liverpool, Tottenham and Lyon respectively have handed them three consecutive quarter-final exits.
As well as aiming to take the mentality and belief that earned them a 2-1 win into the second leg, City's manager will also talk through tactical changes with his players.
"We're going to adjust a few things that today we couldn't do. We're going to see calmly the best way possible the game we played and we can do better and we're going to go there like we have done the last five or six months and go there to win the game.
"I said to the players just win the game, I didn't want anything else. They did it, we did it and now we are going to Dortmund to absolutely not defend.
"We're going to adjust our high pressing, we're going to adjust our buildup we're going to adjust the control of the runners and we're going to play 90 minutes to try to reach the semi-final."
