"We fought for the victory until the very end"

Manuel Akanji: "I was a little nervous to begin with. My team-mates supported me brilliantly. I felt very comfortable after my first few touches and with the fans behind us. We fought for this victory until the very end. It was a tough match. The second half was better than the first. Ultimately, we deserved to win. When you manage to keep a clean sheet, it gives you something to build on. We do not intend to rest on our laurels after this victory."

André Schürrle: "Mario made a brilliant run; I just hit to play him in. We overcame all their resistance, today we really fought for the victory. We weren't brilliant in footballing terms, especially in the first half when we only had a few goalscoring opportunities. There's a lot we can take from the last two matches: we've fought, then scored the goals and deserved to win. It feels good."

Marco Reus: "We didn't put in our best performance, but at the moment it's just important to get the win and the three points. We already showed a good reaction in Köln, and you could see again today that the team wanted it. We created chances and if we'd applied a bit more pressure, we would've probably got the second goal earlier. But then we managed to wrap up the victory in injury time. We know that we still have a lot of work ahead."

Michy Batshuayi: "I'm very happy with my goal and the victory. It's extremely important that we've got two victories and kept ourselves near the top of the table. The interplay with the others is improving all the time. Nonetheless, I will still re-watch the game tonight to see what I did well and badly, so that I can play even better on Thursday." (br/djg)