Eliaquim Mangala says City needed to dig deep to come from behind late on to beat Borussia Monchengladbach.
The City defender says it was no less than the Blues deserved, but added victory was achieved because the team never stopped believing things would eventually turn around.
Mangala said: “We showed character in the second-half and we deserved to win. We kept going which is what you need to do in games like this and we got our reward in the end.
“It’s good to finish top of the group, but we’ll wait and see what happens in next week’s draw. You need to improve in this competition and you have to work to do that, but we feel we are learning all the time.
“We know we can beat most teams when we are at our best and if we play as well as we did in the second-half of this game, we can do very well, but we have to play well for the whole game, not just the second half and obviously this competition gets harder each round you progress.”
Mangala also added that he was impressed by the performance of two-goal hero Raheem Sterling – a player he believes will get better and better
“He did really well for us tonight and he’s shown he can score important goals for us. He’s a great talent and he wants to learn and keep improving and I’m certain he will,” he said.
He also added: “Now we have to concentrate on Swansea this Saturday – that’s a game we have to win because we want to get back to the top of the table as quickly as possible.”