MARCO Reus feels that Borussia Dortmund have escaped immediate relegation peril having clambered up the Bundesliga table with four consecutive wins.
BVB suffered a horrendous start to the campaign and spent the mid-season break in the bottom two, an astounding 30 points adrift of league leaders Bayern Munich.
Saturday’s 3-0 win over Schalke in the Rivierderby moved them up to 10th position, just eight points away from fourth spot, and afterwards Reus encouraged his team to remain focused on picking up points in their forthcoming fixtures.
“A month ago we were talking about being in a relegation battle,” the 25-year-old told the Bundesliga’s official website.
“I think it’s good we’ve pulled away from there for good now but we’re just taking things one step at a time and we’ve now won four straight matches, which is very important.
“At the moment things are going well but we’ve got some really tough games coming up. If the teams above us in the table drop points, of course we’ll try to catch them up, but there’s a long way to go.”
The first strike did not come until the 78th minute when goalscorer Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang and Reus donned Batman and Robin masks in celebration – something which the Germany international said was intended to bring some lightheartedness back to the team.
“We always try to have a bit of fun – there wasn’t a lot of that in the first half of the season and things like that always do you good. It was just meant as a little joke,” he added.
“We had a meal together two days ago and that’s when we came up with the idea.”