Miron Muslic: No small feat at this stage of the season

Miron Muslic:

I’m very pleased and proud, especially when you consider that we’ve lost eight key players in the space of just a few days. The incident involving Robin and Soufi was another shock, but it didn’t break us – it made us even stronger. The important thing was not to lose our shape or composure afterwards, so huge credit to the lads. Their resilience carried us through to the final whistle.

Defensively, it was another top performance. As a newly promoted side, we’ve now kept three clean sheets, and that’s no small feat at this stage of the season. The point is fully deserved, then. We also put in a lot of work going forward and created some dangerous situations. The next step is to turn those opportunities into goals, and we’ll continue to improve.

René Wagner:

In the second half, Schalke defended even more compactly and with greater determination, which made it harder for us to create clear-cut chances. We tried to make things happen from good positions, while also having to guard against their threat on the counter-attack. It wasn’t easy to strike the right balance between taking risks in the final third and protecting ourselves against counter-attacks. Ultimately, we defended well against a team that is incredibly dangerous from set-pieces. A point might feel like too little, but Schalke were determined to keep a clean sheet at all costs towards the end, and we were unable to create any further real danger. All things considered, a 0-0 draw was a fair result.

Loris Karius:

It was a real team performance and another good response from us. We were in the game from the first minute and matched them in the battle. It’s a little disappointing that we weren’t able to reward ourselves with a goal, but I’m convinced that picking up this point will give us even more confidence. I’m pleased to have kept another clean sheet and to have been named Man of the Match again, but the whole team deserved that award. The lads in front of me worked incredibly hard and hardly allowed Köln to have a shot on goal.

Youri Mulder

We showed what we’re really about again today, despite all the players we’ve lost to injury this week. The lads did a very good job, and with a little more composure and calmness, they could certainly have scored a goal as well. But I really liked the way they fought for each other.

The draw was a fair result, ultimately. You can see a real consistency in our performances: every Bundesliga game is tight and closely contested. Things will inevitably go one way or the other at times. But if we keep performing like this and continue to develop, we’ll pick up more points.