Hofmann: Dortmund made a statement

Jonas Hofmann says Borussia Dortmund “made a statement” to the rest of the Bundesliga in Saturday’s comfortable 3-0 win over Nuremburg.

Jurgen Klopp’s men had lost their last league fixture 3-0 at Hamburg, but returned to winning ways courtesy of second-half strikes from Mats Hummels, Robert Lewandowski and Henrikh Mkhitaryan.

That result saw Dortmund move back to second in the table, as Bayer Leverkusen were defeated 1-0 by Mainz.

Winger Hofmann – who contributed an assist for the third goal – believes Dortmund can take confidence from their impressive showing into future matches.

“It was a fully deserved win,” he told the club’s official website. “We played very well, our counter-pressing game was well executed and we scored beautiful goals.

“Of course I’m also happy that I was able to provide an assist to help the team win. We wanted to make amends for last week’s defeat to Hamburg and we achieved that. We made a statement, and we can build on this.”

Lewandowski – whose strike took him to 15 league goals for the season – added: “We scored three goals and allowed Nuremberg only one scoring opportunity, thus it was a good performance by us and we are very pleased.

“I’m happy about my goal as I want to score many goals. We are now back in second place where we wanted to be. But the season is still long and there’s still a lot of work to do to retain this spot.”