Arsenal making progress, Dortmund deflated

• Arsenal reach knockout stage for 15th year running by beating Dortmund
• Santi Cazorla acknowledges first place in Group D is now the target
• Injuries to Yaya Sanogo and Mikel Arteta taint win for Arsène Wenger
• Exclusive behind-the-scenes photos from tonight's game at the Arsenal Stadium
• Next games: Galatasaray v Arsenal, Dortmund v Anderlecht (9 December)

Santi Cazorla, Arsenal midfielder
It was a very good result for us. With this result we have qualified and the team played well. The first goal was important for us – [Yaya] Sanogo played very well today and had a good combination with me and the most important thing is the finish from him.

The goal was very important for the team, [enabling us to] play more easily. We pressed high, had a good spirit and played very well. We need to continue playing the same and now focus on the league again.

When you finish first, you can play against another team – not Barça, not Madrid, not PSG. It is difficult because we need Dortmund to lose or draw at home and for us to win at Galatasaray, but we want to win that last game. Alexis [Sánchez] is very important for us. He is in a good moment for the team and I hope he continues to play the same. He is a very important player for Arsenal.

Arsène Wenger, Arsenal manager 
Overall it was a committed game. Maybe we were defensively better tonight. We are a team that likes to go forward – sometimes we feel we must dominate the game and we maybe forget to take precautions to defend. We did that better tonight.

Alexis Sánchez has unbelievable fighting spirit, a mixture of talent and desire. I like what Yaya Sanogo did as well. What he did on his first goal is class. Unfortunately he got injured, though, and Mikel Arteta doesn't look good either – it's a calf. I think he will be out for a while. The injuries are difficult to take.

When you work in a football club you realise it's not easy to be consistent, so I'm very proud of the qualification record. I think also the club deserves a lot of credit. It's not enough, we want more than that. What is important is that we are united. This team has a top-quality attitude and we have shown that today, after the disappointment of Saturday. What is important is what we do inside the club.

From now until February we must improve as a team. We will get encouragement from tonight's game and then we will have all our players back for the next round. If we look around Europe to see who has qualified there are many, many top teams.

Jürgen Klopp, Dortmund coach 
It took a while to get into the game. It was the worst possible start to concede such a quick goal. There were situations and moments where we were able to do what we wanted, but those moments were minimal. There were just too many times we weren't good enough, and Arsenal were deserved winners tonight.

Jürgen Klopp:©Getty Images

We will get better through work. That's the plan. We have to work. Work always works in life. In a negative period it seems like nobody takes it. We always work hard and try to improve things – same as we're doing now – but we're having a difficult period and we're not confident. You can work hard to get the luck in life, and sometimes you can work hard and think you have given everything and you still do not get the win.  

We were not courageous enough tonight, we did not close the gaps and we were not close enough to the players. There were a thousand reasons why we were not good enough.

Neven Subotić, Dortmund defender
We started off really badly obviously with the first goal in the [second]
minute in a game we wanted to start well. We know Arsenal are very good at home and we knew that obviously there was a way to break them as there is with any team, but it was very tough, especially after the first goal, to gain self-confidence, make that extra metre and get there into the tackle.

They scored their goal, we started chasing the game a bit and never really got to the point where we put them under so much pressure that they had to make unforced errors. They had plenty of time and we didn't put our game on the pitch. The second half worked out a bit better, but obviously Arsenal scored a nice goal through Alexis Sánchez.

Dortmund traipse off at the end©Getty Images

We weren't at our peak. There's a lot we could have done better and even though we didn't play our best we still had chances. Sadly we didn't score any, but I can't say the result wasn't fair. We did not play well enough to deserve a win. As time moved on we got better and better but with the second goal the next big hit happened. After that it was just us trying to chase the game and get a goal at any cost and we just didn't have the luck to do that. To be honest we didn't deserve much more.

It is extremely [important to finish top], that's why we wanted to seal the deal today. We knew Arsenal was going to be tough but we also knew that they are beatable. Our plan was to take home a point, but sadly that didn't happen. Now we have the next game [at home to RSC Anderlecht] to seal the deal and we have to do it. At this level [finishing top] can be a big help for the next round and we have the goal set to finish first.