Neuer: 'We can’t rest on our laurels'

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Augsburg - FC Bayern München were full of praise for their opponents’ energetic display for the first hour of the Bavarian derby away to FC Augsburg on Saturday, while the hosts admitted to only mild disappointment in what they described as a “bonus game”.

FC Bayern München

bundesliga.com

rounds up the best of the post-match quotes following Bayern's

4-0 victory

at the SGL Arena.

Manuel Neuer

: It’s always nice to be top of the league, but being there isn’t the important thing at this stage; what’s important is the way we’ve kept improving. I think we’ve shown over the first half of the season that we’ve made progress. It’s important that we score the first goal - it’s dangerous if we don’t because some opponents can defend very well. We’ve had a few problems in our away games, at Schalke and Gladbach for example, but otherwise we’ve been good. It’s a great achievement that we’ve conceded so few goals at this stage of the season but we can’t rest on our laurels. Everything was fine with [the tackle on Tobias Werner close to the halfway line] and I was happy to get involved. If I hadn’t gone out for the ball he’d have been through one-on-one with me and you never know what can happen there.

Arjen Robben

: The first half was difficult. We weren’t aggressive enough and we weren’t good enough going forward. During the break we said we needed to do more and we were much better after the interval. The victory was important because it was against an opponent who’s had a really good season. Now we’ve got another two games, so we need to do well in those and then we can have a bit of a break.

Thomas Müller

: Augsburg made life difficult for us by putting in a lot of effort. Thankfully they weren’t able to keep that up in the second half. Winning the

Herbstmeisterschaft

is a normal part of the process if you want to pick up as many points as possible en route to winning the title at the end of the season. We changed to a 4-3-3 in the first half as it was very difficult to play through the middle because Augsburg were lined up very compactly and their strikers closed down a lot of space. They ran with a lot of intensity in the first half and made life hard for us, but you can’t keep that up over 90 minutes and you can’t substitute 11 players.

Sebastian Rode

: I was delighted when I heard my name in the starting line-up and I wanted to justify my selection with a good performance. In the last few Bundesliga games with almost played with five strikers, so it was a bit different today with Basti [Bastian Schweinsteiger] and me in midfield but I think we did well. I’m not indifferent about the

Herbstmeisterschaft

: it’s my first one so it’s more special than it is for the other boys who are used to it by now. So I’m happy we’ve won it but at the end of the season the only thing that counts is lifting the trophy.

Pierre-Emile Højbjerg:

Augsburg did a good job because they're a good team, they have a good mentality and I think they also have a good coach. They're third in the Bundesliga so they've got to be good. Once we got the goal, we didn't stop and I think this shows a good mentality and a good spirit.

Franck Ribery:

I think it was good and very important for us that it wasn’t so easy today against Augsburg. They're a good team and the first half was tough because they're such a good team and have been doing really well this season. We then did well in the second half, pushed up the field more. The goal's good for Medhi and for his self-confidence. Then we quickly made it 2-0 and 3-0 and it was hard for Augsburg then.

FC Augsburg

Halil Altintop

: It’s definitely disappointing but we have to be realistic and put it behind us now. We’re frustrated that we weren’t able to achieve our aim of picking up at least a point. When you concede two goals inside a minute then it’s very difficult to come back against Bayern. If we’d kept our cool a bit better on one or two occasions then maybe we could have been able to create clear-cut chances but unfortunately we weren’t able to.

Tobias Werner

: It’s not enough to just match Bayern for 60 minutes. We did a lot of things well. We conceded from a set-piece, which is annoying as that’s normally one of our strengths, but things like that happen in football. That broke our resistance and then the individual quality they have shone through. We gave them a bit too much room and they exploited it ruthlessly. It’s good that we have the next game on Tuesday against Hannover so we don’t have much time to mull over what we did wrong.

Ragnar Klavan

: In the first half we did well but weren’t good enough over the entire 90 minutes. Their first goal came from a free-kick out wide and it came in a difficult period of the game for us. The second goal came straight after that and that knocked us out. They’ve got so many quality players in attack who can decide the game and that’s what happened today. This was just a bonus game for me. We gave it our all but it just wasn’t enough.

Nikola Djurdjic

: The second half was very difficult. We didn’t get any points today so now we have to think about our game on Tuesday. It’s a new game and we have to focus on that.

Paul Verhaegh:

We know the quality of Bayern and we tried today to be aggressive, to run a lot, but we knew before the match it was a very difficult game. Maybe 4-0 is a little bit too high, but you see the quality of Bayern. It's a loss today, but we have a new chance on Tuesday and I think if you see how Bayern play every week, it's not that bad. We knew before the game that if we got a point here, it would be a real big surprise but we couldn't make it today and we conceded four goals. We just have to be fit again on Tuesday against Hannover. Jonathan Stockitt reporting from the SGL Arena.