Manchester United boss Sir Alex Ferguson was satisfied after their penalty shootout defeat to Bayern Munich in the final of the Audi Cup.

"We're going to give the players a few days off now, they deserve that," the manager told MUTV. "It's been a long haul. It's always tiring going to the Far East. The good thing was that we've come back through Germany and hopefully that re-energised them.

"They'll take the benefit of a three day break now, and when they come back on Monday they'll be ready to go straight into speed work."

Although Bayern eventually took the trophy after an entertaining penalty shootout in the Allianz Arena, Sir Alex still declared himself satisfied with a decent showing from his players.

"It was competitive, I think that was the kind of game we needed," he said. "In the first half they were the better team, we weren't competitive enough. But when we started being more aggressive in our forward play, we should have won the match.

"We had some really good chances and penalty kicks can always go either way. We were unlucky, We actually took quite good penalties. I'm happy with the game we got. It was very competitive and it'll bring us on, I'm sure."