It would be unkind to call TSG Hoffenheim's weekend a complete write-off: on Sunday night, they moved up one place from bottom to 17th. That marginal improvement, however, was both totally unmerited and simply accidental, as 1899 benefited from VfB Stuttgart's uncanny Robert Dee impersonation at the Allianz Arena. The Swabians were shot down 6-1 in Munich to take over wooden spoon duties on account of an inferior goal difference.

Being slightly less rubbish than their bigger southwestern neighbours will offer scant consolation to Hoffe over the international break. Their shockingly feeble 4-0 home defeat by promoted Eintracht Frankfurt means they've lost three out of three competitive matches, conceding 10 goals, and the only reason Saturday's abject awfulness didn't constitute a new low is that their 4-0 cup defeat by fourth division Berliner AK, an historic embarrassment for a Bundesliga side, is impossible to beat. "Hoffenheim slide into chaos," wrote Focus, before juxtaposing the stats from a reportedly convivial meeting between supporters and players in a pub in midweek with those on the board: "500 litres of beer, 800 Bratwürste, zero points."

The get-together with 400 fans, described as "one of the best meetings ever of its kind" by the coach, Markus Babbel, was supposed to smother discontent with the club's poor start, but TSG's legion of blue and white arriviste supporters may have to be bought off a few more times if the Eintracht game is anything to go by. "It's an enigma to me," said Babbel, before channelling the lyrics to the German Sesame Street theme tune: "Why? For what reason?" Answers were hard to come by. The 39-year-old remarked that his men had started solidly enough – again – but conceded that everything fell apart like a badly executed Streuselkuchen after Alexander Meier had given the visitors the lead in the 39th minute.

Hoffenheim gave up the ghost completely when Pirmin Schwegler fired a fantastic long-range effort past the stranded keeper Tim "Diego Delgado from Blow" Wiese just before half-time. The substitute Sejad Salihovic pulled off the feat of getting two yellow cards in four minutes; his team-mate Stephan Schröck soon followed suit. Two more goals conceded before the final whistle almost felt like a let off at the end of this drubbing. "I'll only accept the championship now," joked Eintracht coach Armin Veh after finding himself top of the table for 24 hours. Babbel, though, was not in the mood for laughs. "They couldn't get over the shock of the 1-0, the legs were heavy, we lost the fight," he bemoaned haplessly. The "definitive false start" to their fifth season in the top flight would have been a lot easier to stomach if the Bayern and Liverpool defender hadn't predicted a glorious future for the billionaire-supported club. "Only Bayern and Dortmund are better, squad-wise," Babbel had said, targeting Europa League qualification.

Survival looks a more realistic aim, both for the club and him. His reluctance to add Hoffenheim's badge to an array of former club tattoos could yet prove farsighted: the club benefactor, Dietmar Hopp, is not famous for his patience. The total lack of coherence in the side has been a chronic problem for nearly two years now and Babbel could easily go the way of his predecessors Marco Pezzaiuoli and Holger Stanislawski. "I hope that Markus doesn't ruin his reputation there," a former Bayern team-mate said.

Babbel thinks more hard work on and off the pitch will stop the team falling into the "old pattern" but he has two problems that go beyond the mundane. First, in previous jobs he's shown himself as a Stimmungstrainer, a mood coach, in that he was very adept at riding and prolonging a wave of good results and little more. Crisis management was certainly not his forte. Second, it increasingly feels as if Hoffenheim's troubles have taken on a life of their own, independent of the men on the bench and those on the pitch.

Babbel had made wholesale changes in an effort to banish complacency and ill-discipline from the side. Wiese (Bremen), the striker Eren Derdiyok (Leverkusen) and Matthieu Delpierre (Stuttgart) were signed to form the new, hungrier nucleus of a winning team. The end result, however, is starkly reminiscent of previous efforts: none of Hoffenheim's parts seem to fit together. It's a squad with real individual quality and almost no collective quality.

Something in the Sinsheim seems to disagrees with the pros. They only perform consistently once they're gone, and maybe it's no coincidence. Luiz Gustavo (Bayern), Vedad Ibisevic (Stuttgart), Demba Ba (Newcastle), Carlos Eduardo (Rubin Kazan) and Chinedu Obasi (Schalke) have used the club as a stepping stone and never looked back.

It could be that an artificially built club in the middle of nowhere will only ever attract players with a roving eye; that instability is possibly inbuilt, a side effect of going after upwardly mobile pros. All Babbel has done to alter the formula was to add the volatile Wiese and two more established if not perhaps too ambitious players represented by the same agency to this combustible mix. Traditionalists up and down the country will undoubtedly delight in the downfall of the nouveau riche club. But there's something a little sad in the way that 1899, once a leading light in terms of coaching and scouting under Ralf Rangnick, have degenerated into a kind of country resort for the unwanted and wantaways.

Talking points

• Javi Martínez only played 13 uneventful minutes on his debut for FC Bayern but the €40m man from Bilbao made all the difference – to football reporters' copy, that is. The 24-year-old helpfully provided the easiest (read: laziest) of angles for the derby with Stuttgart. A poor performance would have been directly blamed on Martínez's destabilising effect on the squad but after the 6-1 demolition of the Swabians without his help, the general take was of course this: his sheer presence on the bench made everyone try harder and play better. More competition, more pressure etc, etc. One day, we'll find out if the Spaniard constitutes an actual as opposed to a theoretical improvement but Sunday certainly wasn't that day. After a semi-decent start from Stuttgart and a flukey Martin Harnik goal, the visitors completely let themselves go in the middle, a la late 90s Oprah. Bayern were basically whisked through on goal time and time again, until it was difficult to keep count. To make matters worse, VfB striker Vedad Ibisevic was then stupidly sent off for an attempted headbutt.

• Rafael van der Vaart warned supporters that he's not the messiah. But he would say that, wouldn't he? A thousand HSV fans turned out to see their saviour dribble past plastic cones as if they were... ahem, plastic cones in his first training session. "It's all a bit much, I can't do it alone, we all need pull together," said the 29-year-old on Sunday. The day before, he'd watched on from stands as Hamburg went down 2-0 away to Bremen in the northern derby; his paperwork hadn't arrived in time. A bit of optimism has returned along with the Dutchman; Hamburg looked at least half-competent against a very useful Werder side.

• Hannover 96 president Martin Kind told it like it is at the Volkswagen Arena. "Some of our fans are not Bundesliga or Europa League class," said the 68-year-old. "They are arseholes." A section of the travelling support had cast doubt on the choice of profession of Emanuel Pogatetz's mother after the defender had moved across to Wolfsburg this season. Maybe they should have sent Mrs Pogatetz flowers, chocolate and a thank you note instead? The Austrian and his defensive partner Naldo did their best to stand idly by as 96's attackers helped themselves to four fine away goals. "These are afternoons that are thankfully rare, but they do exist," said a dejected Felix Magath.

• Speaking of supporters who resemble orifices, we must turn our attention to 1. FC Köln. This column usually doesn't dabble in the second division, for good reason, but this weekend's horror story was sadly too awful to pass over. Defender Kevin Pezzoni asked for his contract to be rescinded after men had waited in front of his flat and written threats had been posted to his windscreen. "He told me he was afraid to make a bad pass," explained manager Holger Stanislawski. "This has gone beyond what's acceptable." The club and local authorities have vowed to find the perpetrators. Pezzoni already had his nose broken by unknown morons during this winter's carnival.

• On a much happier note, Greuther Fürth registered a first ever top-flight win away to Mainz (1-0). Felix Klaus was the goalscorer and later found adequately grandiose words for his heroic, monumental deed. "I didn't realise that I'd written history at first," said the 19-year-old, "when I shot, my only thought was 'shit ball, get in'". Miraculously, it did.

Results: Mainz 0-1 Greuther Fürth, Nürnberg 1-1 Dortmund, Schalke 3-1 Augsburg, Hoffenheim 0-4 Frankfurt, Bremen 2-0 Hamburg, Leverkusen 2-0 Freiburg, Düsseldorf 0-0 Gladbach, Wolfsburg 0-4 Hannover, Bayern 6-1 Stuttgart.

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