“Executed our game plan perfectly” - Shakhtar match reaction

We gathered the reaction from the Foals after their 6-0 UEFA Champions League win away at Shakhtar Donetsk on Tuesday night.

Lars Stindl: That was an incredible performance. We were very focused and made ourselves difficult to deal with against a quality side. The aim was to be deadly in the final third and that’s just what we were, almost scoring with every chance to lead comfortably very early on. That’s the kind of football we’re playing at the moment. We saw how Shakhtar played against Inter and Real and knew what to expect. We didn’t leave any doubt as to how we were going to approach the game; we pressed them high up the pitch and won the ball back quickly. We were very incisive in the final third and scored our goals at the right times. We slowed the game down with possession when we needed too to make sure things didn’t get too hectic, and saw out the result really well. Alassane Plea had an incredible day and put us on the path to victory. We’re delighted with the win, but know full well that it will be a very different game when Shakhtar come to us in three weeks.

Christoph Kramer: It was a great performance. We started really well and executed our game plan perfectly. We knew that Shakhtar wouldn’t press us too high, but wouldn’t sit too deep either. We had good ideas to get in behind them with some dinked balls, by using the wings or with second balls. That gave us a real sense of power and dominance, and that was the key to victory. We knew that we’d have to want to get on the ball against a good footballing side like Shakhtar so that they would struggle to get into the game, and we did that fantastically.

Marco Rose: We did a heck of a lot right today, if not everything. The lads were there from the first minute, pressed hard and forced a lot of turnovers. We had to tinker a little at the start but once we started playing diagonal balls in behind the defence, we started to take control. The boys implemented our game plan to a tee, and that requires a lot of running, much like the opening goal, which isn’t something that you can exactly plan out before a game. Our overall setup today helped us as we had lots of bodies in the box and turned the space we created for ourselves into great goals.