It was an almost perfect afternoon for the Black and Yellows in Freiburg, where Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang grabbed a brace to end his drought of 471 minutes without a goal and coach Thomas Tuchel picked up his 100th Bundesliga win in 226 matches on the touchline. On top of that the whole Dortmund team looked dominant and, at some stages, impressive as they eased to victory.

"We were very good and dominated for the whole 90 minutes, it was a good performance. I'm happy we managed to avoid conceding away from home," said shot-stopper Roman Bürki of Borussia Dortmund's first Bundesliga clean sheet on the road since beating Stuttgart 3-0 on 23 April 2016. Ten months later and 200 kilometres further south, they picked up another 3-0 win in Baden-Wurttemberg.

Only Bayern better than Borussia in 2017

image
Sokratis netted the all-important opener in Freiburg. It was the first goal of the season for the Greek international, who has scored precisely once in each of his six seasons in the Bundesliga.

"We played very good football at a high tempo for the whole 90 minutes. We knew how strong Freiburg were but we didn't let our level drop," explained Marco Reus, whose most notable involvement came when he set up Aubameyang for the second on a poor-quality pitch.

For Erik Durm, BVB – whose points tally of 13 since the turn of the year is only bettered by top-of-the-table Bayern, who have amassed 14 in 2017 – delivered an outstanding performance at just the right time. "From the beginning we stuck to the instructions the coach had given us. I can't really recall Freiburg having any clear-cut opportunities to score. We defended superbly, starting from the strikers," the 24-year-old said.

Talking of strikers, every single one of the Black and Yellows was delighted for Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang, who – despite spurning a couple of good opportunities in the first 45 minutes – scored his 18th and 19th goals of the campaign after the interval. The Gabon international now has 73 Bundesliga goals for BVB, moving him above Andreas Möller and into sixth on BVB's list of all-time record goalscorers.

Aubameyang now level with Lewandowski

In addition to surpassing Andreas Möller, Auba – who now has 103 goals in 172 competitive matches, as well as 32 assists – moved level with Robert Lewandowski, who took 15 games more to reach that mark. In his post-match press conference, coach Thomas Tuchel said: "It's best for all of us if Auba doesn't think twice, if he's eagerly anticipating our next matches, if he's looking forward to his next chances and if he has that effortlessness back in his game." And with an intense run of fixtures now under way, the end to his goalscoring drought seems to have come at just the right time.

Erik Durm: "We'll go to Lotte on a high"

BVB's next match comes on Tuesday, when they square off against Sportfreunde Lotte for a DFB Cup semi-final berth. It is a match they are well-positioned to win, according to Erik Durm, who said: "Having won 3-0 in Freiburg, we'll go into the match in Lotte on a high. We need to get through to the next round, but it will be very, very difficult."

Roman Bürki added: "We're ready for the knockout games that now await us. Lotte will be a tough task, there'll be such a euphoric atmosphere in the stadium. But if we're as dominant as we were here in Freiburg, we'll make it into the next round." (gh)