We’ve had another excellent weekend over in Germany’s top division, with a few upsets and derbies taking the main headlines this weekend. That’s right, we had two derbies on Saturday, with Werder Bremen hosting HSV in the Nordderby while newly promoted Fortuna Düsseldorf took on Borussia Mönchengladbach.

But let’s start from the beginning of the weekend before we delve into any of that. On Friday, Mainz took on Fürth at the Coface Arena.

Mainz 0-1 Fürth

What a difference a week makes. Fürth won’t have been too pleased with losing 3-0 to Bayern, even if it’s probably the trickiest game they could have received as Bundesliga newcomers. A clash with Mainz is never easy, as Freiburg found out last week as they drew 1-1. But despite having less of the play, the newly promoted Bavarian outfit certainly had the luck of the green. Felix Klaus was the man to make a difference for Fürth, a heavily deflected effort somehow whistling over the head of Christian Wetklo. A good way to get things running for the season, but Mainz will have really wanted to come out with all three points here.

Schalke 3-1 Augsburg

Augsburg’s tough sophomore season just got tougher. Markus Weinzerl’s side lost to Fortuna Düsseldorf last time out, and another loss to Schalke isn’t the best way to respond to that. Augsburg had their chances, but they couldn’t finish until Torsten Oehrl grabbed a consolation effort late on. At that stage, the game was already decided by goals from Kyriakos Papadopoulos, Jermaine Jones and Klaas-Jan Huntelaar. Schalke will be very pleased by the way they’ve bounced back from a disappointing opening draw with Hannover, but Augsburg really need to step up the fight if they wish to keep their Bundesliga status.

Leverkusen 2-0 Freiburg

2-0 is a very deceptive scoreline. You can lose a very even game 2-0, perhaps you even had the best of the opportunities and succumbed to a 2-0 defeat. But Freiburg can have very little in the way of complaints at losing 2-0 to Leverkusen, because they were a world away from the team that took the Rückrunde by storm last season. Gonzalo Castro and Philipp Wollscheid were the scorers for Leverkusen, who will be happy with the response following a 2-1 loss to Frankfurt last time out.

Bremen 2-0 HSV

HSV really are in trouble. They might have signed some good players in Rene Adler, Petr Jiracek and Rafael van der Vaart, but their defence is painfully bad, and teams can’t rely on a few star individuals to stay up. That’s not to take anything away from Bremen; Thomas Schaaf’s men have started the season well, losing narrowly to Deutscher Meister Dortmund last week before this encounter. Derbies are always hard to call, what with the passion that is always at stake, but the result that we all expected followed. That’s not to say there wasn’t drama; Bremen had two penalties, one saved by Adler but another tucked home by Aaron Hunt. An on-loan striker from Bayern made it 2-Nils (sorry, I couldn’t resist making a Nils Petersen based pun), and HSV are in similar sort of trouble to Augsburg.

Nürnberg 1-1 Dortmund

All teams have tough weeks. Dortmund had their one this week, being drawn in the group of death in the Champions League, and following that up with a 1-1 draw to Nürnberg. Dortmund seemed to be playing well until a seemingly danger-free corner left them trailing 1-0. Tomas Pekhart scored a strong header down to Roman Weidenfeller’s right hand side, and Dortmund had to react to keep their long unbeaten run in tact. Like all strong teams, they did it moments later. There seemed to be some sort of game of goalmouth ping-pong in the Nürnberg box, all of which ended with Jakub Blaszczykowski having an easy tap in while goalkeeper Raphael Schäfer was somewhat stranded on the other side of the goal. Dortmund went on to dominate the game but in football you have to make your chances pay, and nobody else did.

Hoffenheim 0-4 Frankfurt

It’s hard to decide whether Hoffenheim are playing awfully at the moment, or whether the teams they’ve encountered are just in excellent form. Frankfurt have started the season better than expected, but then who expects to win 4-0 on the road at all? Perhaps it’s a DFB-Pokal hangover after being knocked out 4-0 by Berliner AK. Whatever it is, Frankfurt took advantage of it: Alexander Meier scoring twice, while Pirmin Schwegler netted one of the best goals so far of this season and Martin Lanig sealed the rout.

Düsseldorf 0-0 Mönchengladbach

There’s got to be a boring 0-0 draw somewhere. I say “boring”, I mean “sometimes entertaining”. There were spells of this derby where it looked certain that there’d be a lot of goals – Stranzl volleyed over for Gladbach early on, while ter Stegen’s distribution wasn’t great following a collision early on with Axel Bellinghausen. Gladbach started with a different formation to the one they used in Kiev on Wednesday, playing a 4-5-1 with Tolga Cigerci playing off of Luuk de Jong, who was alone up front, and the Dutchman missed a glorious opportunity to open his account for die Fohlen. All in all, a disappointing afternoon for both sides, but they both remain unbeaten this season which is, of course, a plus.

Wolfsburg 0-4 Hannover

You know in the brief summary of Hoffenheim’s game with Frankfurt I mentioned how 4-0 away victories are rare? Apparently not this week. We had another early on on Sunday as the weekend wrapped itself up. Hannover looked good in their opener with Schalke, while Wolfsburg laboured to a victory over Stuttgart, only winning through a last gasp goal from Bas Dost. You’d think, then, that this would be quite an even encounter. Obviously not – you’ve seen the scoreline. Hannover had far more opportunities than Wolfsburg, with Karim Haggui, Artur Sobiech (twice) and Leon Andreasen benefiting from them. A rather wonderful victory for Hannover, who also blasted away Wroclaw in the Europa League this week with a 5-1 victory.

Bayern München 6-1 Stuttgart

Fürth must be sick of Bayern stealing their moment in the limelight. Beating them 3-0 in their first ever Bundesliga match, and taking the headlines after their first ever win in the Bundesliga by absolutely destroying Stuttgart. This was a dismantling of epic proportions, and it was thoroughly deserved after some excellent forward play. Bayern started strongest, probing constantly at Stuttgart’s defence, but Martin Harnik had other ideas. An overhit free kick (or a training ground move, depends on how you look at it) flew over into Harnik’s path at the far post. An audacious effort came in on the volley, swerving past Manuel Neuer for a 1-o lead away in the Allianz Arena. Bayern wouldn’t allow themselves to trail for too long, however: Thomas Müller was soon racing into the box, and scooped a deft effort over Sven Ulreich to level the scores at 1-1. Having scored, Bayern obviously could scent blood; a minute later, Toni Kroos raced forward, powering an absolute piledriver into Ulreich’s net, giving Bayern a lead they wouldn’t relinquish. A goal to at least equal Harnik’s earlier strike? Even if not, Luis Gustavo decided to have another chance at equalling Harnik. From a long distance out, the defensive midfielder struck a shot that swerved just past Ulreich’s outstretched hand, and gave Bayern a 3-1 half time lead. That, everyone, is how to turn around a game when you’re losing.

There was however, the little matter of the second half. Would Stuttgart come out and play well after a rollocking at half ti… oh, Bayern scored again. 4-1 through Mario Mandzukic. A carbon copy of that goal, except with Thomas Müller capping it off with a header rather than a placed finish, put the game way beyond Stuttgart’s reach at 5-1. And Bastian Schweinsteiger joined the act at 6-1 with another header. München were just too good for Stuttgart today. There are no other words.