The faces said it all – overwhelming relief, delight and, yes, disbelief. Borussia Mönchengladbach’s players wore the look of players that had won not a derby but a war of attrition against themselves. As Marcus Thuram, the summer arrival whose first two Bundesliga goals sealed an ultimately unlikely triumph against Fortuna Düsseldorf on Sunday, took off his shirt and placed it on one of the corner flags, which he then proceeded to gleefully swish above his head, it felt as if he was sending the signal miles around of a battle won.

In isolation recent Bundesliga results look good, with a push into the top six on the back of successive wins over local rivals, at Köln last week and now over Düsseldorf this. Compartmentalising, however, has been impossible for Gladbach’s players and fans. This meant so much because it was – astonishingly – their first win at home since they beat Augsburg on 26 January.

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Borussia-Park has the aspect of a modern fortress; big, imposing and standing alone some four miles to the south-west of Mönchengladbach’s centre, with shuttle buses ferrying fans out from the city’s Hauptbahnhof on matchdays. Yet during that run of 11 winless games there this year – four draws, seven defeats – it has felt more like a site of desolation than a formidable home turf within which Gladbach can corner enemies.

It all reached a nadir on Thursday night in the Europa League against Wolfsberg (that’s right, not even Wolfsburg), when much of the gentle optimism surrounding the new coach, Marco Rose, began to evaporate in 45 minutes of embarrassment. Last year’s third-placed side in the Austrian Bundesliga were making a debut in the group stage of European club competition but raced into a three-goal lead by half-time, aided and abetted by some statuesque home defending at set pieces, an achilles heel that the new coach is making a priority to fix.

Wolfsberg’s own story is a terrific one but from the Gladbach perspective, there was little other way to analyse it than that they had been humiliated at home by a club from a town whose population could fit into Borussia-Park twice over with room to spare. Eventually finishing 4-0, it was Gladbach’s worst-ever defeat at home in Europe. Kicker’s Oliver Bitter spoke for many when he described it as “a disgrace” and it was the kind of performance, the goalkeeper Yann Sommer told journalists after Sunday’s win, “that must never be repeated”.

In this context it is clear just how important the visit of Düsseldorf had become. Gladbach started as if they knew it too. They looked timid and it was with the flow of the game that they went a goal down in the seventh minute when Kasim Adams headed home after a corner was not cleared. It was an invidious position to be in against Friedhelm Funkel’s side, one of the last outside Bayern or Dortmund that a team in Gladbach’s situation would want to face. Fortuna are compact, well-drilled and able to pick off opponents with little possession.

Given all this, and that midway through the second half one could be forgiven for concluding Düsseldorf were on their way to playing out a routine away win, one had to admire Rose’s sang froid. He had rejected the temptation to turn his XI upside down after Thursday’s shaming, making only three changes to his starting lineup. Nor did he make panic substitutions as the minutes ebbed away and the anxiety in the stands was palpable.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Gladbach were on the end of a Europa League hammering from Wolfsberg last week. Photograph: Martin Meissner/AP

When Rose did make a change, though, it counted. Thuram was introduced for his compatriot Alessane Pléa (who scored the winner in last week’s derby at Köln) in the last 25 minutes and it did the trick. A tidily taken equaliser was followed by a winner, expertly hooked in from close range after a goalmouth scramble that took some unpicking by VAR before it was confirmed that there was no offside in front of the Nordkurve. Already suspecting their potential winning goal was a good one, Borussia-Park and its players erupted as it was confirmed.

Rose was blunt in his thoughts on the hero of the day. “Football is becoming more and more physical,” said the coach, “and those who don’t push their limits will have problems. At Köln Marcus didn’t do what we need for our intense play.” Thuram clearly took it on the chin and showed his own mettle for the high-pressure moment – the sort of nerve that saw him take, and score, a winning stoppage-time penalty in the Coupe de la Ligue at Paris Saint-Germain for his previous club Guingamp last season, having missed one earlier in the game.

It is the sort of guts that Gladbach, and Rose, need. After such a chastening week, the recovery is impressive, and promises much going forward.

Talking points

• Hertha finally registered a first win of the season and the former Manchester City winger Javairô Dilrosun sparked it with a Ryan Giggs-esque solo goal against Paderborn, although it was hard-going against the Bundesliga’s minnows. “We’ve been practising high-press training recently but that didn’t work out,” noted Dilrosun – so Hertha gave Paderborn the ball and played on the break, a risky but eventually successful strategy.

• Leverkusen recovered from their bad week – the beating at Dortmund was followed by a home Champions League loss to Lokomotiv Moscow – by turning over the other Berliners, Union, whose hopes disappeared when the substitute Sebastian Polter saw red three minutes after coming on. “By the end it felt like our third game in a week,” noted the Leverkusen coach, Peter Bosz, of his side stoically seeing the game out.

• Leipzig roll on after winning 3-0 at Werder Bremen, who are having abysmal luck with injuries at the moment – Niclas Füllkrug, the most unfortunate of them all, tore an ACL in training this week meaning that Florian Kohfeldt’s team were missing 10 first-teamers (factoring in the banned Nuri Sahin) for the leaders’ visit.

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• Dortmund lost ground after frittering more points on the road, conceding an 88th-minute Thomas Delaney own goal at Eintracht Frankfurt to draw 2-2. Marco Reus was angry with Sky’s post-match suggestion that BVB have a mentality issue away from Westfalen. “I don’t care about your mentality shit, the same shit every week,” he said before abruptly finishing the interview.

• It was more plain sailing for Bayern, who signalled the beginning of Oktoberfest by beating Köln 4-0. Robert Lewandowski’s double means he has nine goals in the Bundesliga already and has matched Carsten Jancker’s record from 2000-01 of scoring in the first five matches of the league season.

• Good news for Schalke, too, whose win over Mainz was their third straight – and they have as many points already as they did after 11 games last season. Amine Harit, looking more like his old self, netted a sublime late winner.