The City boss was honoured at a LMA dinner this week having secured the Premier League title and Capital One Cup in his first season in England.
Pellegrini admitted he felt honoured to be inducted by the LMA, saying: “The recognition by the LMA means a great deal to me.
“The Hall of Fame hosts managers with important achievements in English football and it is an honour for my name to be alongside theirs.
“It was a great season but very difficult to repeat. From a personal point of view, it was a great achievement because it was perhaps questioned that I had not won any titles in Europe - something which I believe was only achievable with Real Madrid.
“I say that, because winning La Liga with Malaga and Villarreal would have been extremely difficult. This was not a worry I had as in each of these clubs I had achieved the maximum number of points in their history.
“The success I had with those clubs were, for me, also very important achievements and could be said to be akin to the biggest Spanish clubs winning La Liga.”
Pellegrini was believes City’s recovery from a shaky start to last year’s campaign was the most satisfying aspect of last year’s Premier League triumph, though there were other key moments as well.
He said: “We only obtained four points out of 18 possible in the first 6 away games and at that stage many observers were saying that we had needed to change our style of play.
“They were also alluding to the fact that as I didn’t have experience in the Premier League as a reason why things hadn’t begun well and that is why we were losing.
“Our conviction was to continue playing in the same way, and that led us to become the team that took the most number of points away from home from that point moment on.
“The second stand out moment last season was when we beat Hull with 10 men having just been eliminated from the Champions League.
“The third was when we lost to Liverpool late in the season. The general consensus then was that Liverpool would be crowned champions. The pressure was on us to win all our remaining games, but we achieved our goal and kept focused throughout.”
Congratulations, Manuel!
