This season's race for the Bundesliga title looks like it is going to last rather longer than the past few, thanks above all to Leipzig's dogged pursuit of Bayern Munich at the top.

While the record champions, chasing a fifth straight title, had to be content with a share of the spoils in Berlin, the top-flight newbies kept a cool collective head to come away from a seething Borussia Park with a 2-1 victory over Mönchengladbach in the bag. 

That cut the gap between first and second back to five points and, as Leipzig's Emil Forsberg put it, served as "a sign to the other teams that we're still up for it." No-one more so than Forsberg himself, the Swedish attacker announcing his return from suspension with Leipzig's opening goal before laying on the ultimate winner for Timo Werner.

Watch: Highlights of Leipzig's win in Gladbach on Matchday 21:

It was an impressive response to two successive league defeats, with a narrow loss at Dortmund followed by an altogether more surprising 3-0 home slap-down from Hamburger SV. "We're glad to have got back in the groove. You could see early on that we were still a bit uncertain," coach Ralph Hasenhüttl acknowledged after the game at Gladbach.

The win also put the brakes on a three-match losing streak on the road for Leipzig – who had not even managed to muster a goal in defeats at Ingolstadt, Bayern and Dortmund. "It was very handy to hit the net and go in front away from home," said Hasenhüttl, "That makes things a lot easier."

Watch: The remarkable rise of Naby Keita:

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Next up, they are back on home turf against seventh-placed Cologne. Another tough assignment but while pace-setters Bayern are still engaged on three separate fronts at home and abroad, Leipzig can focus all their efforts on further narrowing the gap at the top of the table. Having seemingly overcome their first top-flight mini-crisis, Saxony's football finest evidently aim to take this title race as far as it can go.