It's the sort of thing that happens with depressing regularity on windswept Wednesday afternoons in UK university football but was unheard of in the Bundesliga before TSG 1899 Hoffenheim schlepped 78 kilometres south to play VfB Stuttgart only to find out that the derby wasn't on. At least as far as the Swabians were concerned, it wasn't. "There is no derby, not yet," Stuttgart's sporting director, Fredi Bobic, told the miffed visitors. "Our supporters don't regard this as a derby. There is just not enough tradition, irrespective of the date in the [opponents'] badge."

It was a cheap shot, to be sure, but as a former striker who specialised in the ugliest of goals, Bobic clearly felt it needed to be taken anyway. The slight seemed to backfire at first. Hoffenheim played as if they were contesting a derby in the Mercedes Benz Arena, while Bruno Labbadia's men had trouble coming to grips with the formidable skills of Ryan Babel and Firmino.

The Icelandic midfielder Gylfi Siggurdson, testament to a better than average scouting department, missed the best chance for TSG before plenty of little fouls interrupted the flow of play and Stuttgart regrouped in the second half. To the 55,000 supporters' joy, Shinji Okazaki reacted quickly when, according to 1899 coach Holger Stanislawski, "the whole group [of Hoffenheim players] fell asleep again" after Tamas Hajnal's free-kick. Pavel Pogrebniak converted a penalty he had won to make it 2-0 to Stuttgart, who triumphed thanks to their passion and hard work but were also helped by the visitors' over-complicated attempts in the final third. "We're checking back again and again, dribbling again, putting it from our good foot on to our weak foot instead of shooting," bemoaned Stanislawski. The 42-year-old's mission to inject some of his own highly-strung commitment into the gifted but somewhat lethargic side – he drinks up to three kettles of coffee a day – suffered a setback.

His opposing number, however, can take pleasure in the fact that his men have undergone some degree of Labbadiaisation in the 10 months he's been in charge. Stuttgart, a side so two-faced that you wondered why Christopher Nolan hadn't cast them as chief villain in his latest Batman flick, have suddenly become a very solid, tactically astute outfit. "They're hard to play against," said Hoffenheim's general manager, Ernst Tanner. The Swabians are probably one of the least entertaining sides in the top half of the table but after years of wild inconsistency that saw them either at the very top or precariously close to the very bottom, they're happy to swap excitement for stability. Without European football to distract them, a top four finish – they're currently fourth – may not be a pipe dream, even if not everybody's convinced that the only way is up. "Where are they going? [this season]" wondered the Stuttgarter Nachrichten newspaper.

What makes their renaissance interesting is a number of factors the combination of which could perhaps only be found in the Bundesliga. The first one concerns the managerial set-up. After failure at Leverkusen and Hamburger SV, Labbadia wouldn't have been given another shot at a big team in many countries, especially since the industry was rife with less than flattering reports about his man-management skills. Stuttgart, however, believed in his technical expertise and also felt that the street-smart Bobic could do all the arm-round-the-shoulder management for the colder Labbadia instead. Their good-cop-bad-cop routine is as predictable as a 1980s buddy movie but it has certainly brought results. "We have now picked up 50 points [since I got here]," Labbadia pointed out.

A strong relationship between the coach and the sporting director has been one key ingredient for success in this league in recent years, clever squad construction another. Self-sustained Stuttgart needed to reduce their wage bill quite significantly to ensure the on-pitch volatility wouldn't translate into a financial equivalent. They managed to do that by adding relatively cheap, well-sourced players like William Kvist,. The holding midfielder from FC Copenhagen, who cost €3.5m, has brought exactly the kind of stability to the middle of the park that's been missing since Sami Khedira's departure.

Without artificial, oligarch money sloshing around, Bundesliga transfer values and wages have not been under as much inflationary pressure as elsewhere. That's one of the reasons why Stuttgart have been relaxed about the unresolved contractual situations of Pogrebniak and the defender Khalid Boulahrouz. Both are out of contract in the summer. Because there's far less need to protect the value of assets, Bobic has been able to sit back and watch both excelling on the pitch. Professional footballers, he knows, have a funny habit of playing really well when negotiations are due to start.

Ultimately, Bild's question ("Fourth place. Can they possible do more?") on Monday will probably have to be answered in the negative. Bayern, Dortmund and Leverkusen certainly have more potential, especially in the final third. But the fourth spot is very much on for a club who are trading in one cliche – "there are two Stuttgarts," Süddeutsche Zeitung used to write, almost every other week – for a more traditional one. The hard-working, diligent and frugal Swabians are embodying the values of their region, once again.

Talking points

• What's worse than a bad referee? Two bad referees, obviously. Schalke 04 supporters might have been a little unforgiving when they pelted Markus Merk with a pool ball and beer cups during the 1-2 defeat at home to Kaiserslautern on Saturday night; the 49-year old wasn't actually in charge of the match but was working as a TV pundit instead. Royal Blues supporters have never forgiven Merk for awarding a contentious indirect free-kick to Bayern in the final minute of the 2001 season, when Patrick Andersson scored to win the title ahead of S04. Whether Merk was really responsible for Schalke throwing away the championship 10 years ago is a moot point but his colleague Peter Sippel deserved some blame. The official started the match badly enough by asking the 'Lautern players whether they were "shitting themselves" before kick-off. Yes, seriously. A penalty for the visitors and a red card for Schalke keeper Ralf Fährmann were acceptable (Christian Tiffert converted) but his red for Rodnei and penalty decision for Schalke – Klaas-Jan Huntelaar equalised – were jokes of the most unfunny kind. Dorge Kouemaha headed in the winner for the Red Devils 18 minutes from time to cap a bad night for Huub Stevens's men.

• Hamburg's sporting director, Frank Arnesen, put himself in charge of the team for the trip to Freiburg, as new boss Thorsten Fink wasn't available yet. The fickle nature of football supporters was on show on Sunday, when the HSV fans cheered the much-maligned Dane after the slightly fortunate but not undeserved 2-1 victory. Former Chelsea striker

Gökhan Töre set up the pick of the goals – Ivo Ilicevic's winner. More remarkable than the second league win for the northerners was Arnesen's insistence that he had considered "70 coaches" for the job before settling on Fink. Maybe the unfeasibly high figure was rolled out to stump any "third or fourth choice" headlines.

• The manager was also the main talking-point after Leverkusen's 2-2 draw at Gladbach, albeit not in a good way. Robin Dutt went into "Ranieri in Monaco" mode on Saturday: he switched, changed, swapped and chopped men and formations around so many times during the match that the visitors were lucky to escape with single figures in the "against" column, let alone a point. "A turkey shoot, " was CEO Wolfgang Holzhäuser's verdict. Sporting director Rudi Völler preferred to concentrate on the red card for Gonzalo Castro, who'd insulted the referee assistant's – "there will be consequences," said Völler but the changing room grumblings are definitely becoming louder.

• Manuel Neuer can only dream about getting as busy as Bayer keeper Bernd Leno. Against Hertha BSC, the keeper spent another 90, unbothered minutes that might have been a lot more productive – and more challenging – if he'd been at home knitting or clearing up the attic. Bayern were 3-0 up inside 13 minutes against a side that looked and played a bit like "toddlers in stripy overalls", as Süddeutsche had it. Mario Gómez scored a fourth in the second half, when the league leaders had switched into energy-conserving mode. "We can only beat ourselves," said Philipp Lahm in light of their frightening results (seven wins and one draw). But there is hope for the opposition, at least in Europe: sporting director Christian Nerlinger has generously proclaimed that "one point" away to Napoli on Tuesday night would be deemed acceptable.

• For the full Bundesliga table and stats click here.

Results: Freiburg 1-2 Hamburg , Köln 2-0 Hannover, Stuttgart 2-0 1899 Hoffenheim, Wolfsburg 2-1 Nurnberg, FSV Mainz 0-1 FC Augsburg, Borussia Moenchengladbach 2-2 Bayer Leverkusen, Bayern Munich 4-0 Hertha Berlin, Schalke 1-2 Kaiserslautern, Werder Bremen 0-2 Borussia Dortmund.