Thirteen points from 11 games is hardly the stuff dreams are made of but, for Borussia Monchengladbach supporters, Friday night's emphatic 4-0 win over Wolfsburg felt like waking up from a long nightmare.
They screamed, sang and jumped around on the Borussia-Park terraces, bewitched by the best performance of the season and captured by a kind of restorative joy: three wins and a draw from their last four matches have brought Gladbach back from the brink and they are now in ninth place.
Gerardo Seoane's men were in 15th five games into the season and looked a sorry mess in the 3-1 derby defeat against Cologne on October 22, which was their eighth league match of the campaign.
Worse still, it appeared that 2023-24 would continue the downward spiral that had started with the announcement of manager Marco Rose's departure to Borussia Dortmund halfway through the 2020-21 campaign.
Gladbach, who reached the round of 16 in the Champions League that season, finished eighth in the league in 2020-21 (having finished fourth in 2019-20).
They then remained in mid-table insignificance under Adi Hutter and Daniel Farke - finishing 10th in 2021-22 and 2022-23.
Problems off the pitch, such as the departure of long-serving sporting director Max Eberl and a drawn-out squad transition process, suggested that a successful decade of constant single-digit placements in the league table had come to an end for good.
But now, their potential for progress is coming into view.
Director of football Roland Virkus and new sporting director Nils Schmadtke, the 34-year-old son of Liverpool sporting director Jorg Schmadtke, have put together a side with considerable skill.
French winger/wing-back Franck Honorat, scorer of Gladbach's third goal on Friday, has probably been the most eye-catching arrival.
The 27-year-old, an EUR8million (PS7m; $8.
6m) buy from Brest, has already provided four assists in the league this season.
Czech striker Tomas Cvancara (bought for EUR10m from Sparta Prague in July) is also beginning to find his feet.
The tall but mobile 23-year-old scored his sixth goal in 12 games in all competitions this season against Wolfsburg, and it earned him a late call-up to his national team.
Behind him, 22-year-old midfielder Manu Kone (once a Liverpool target) is now getting back to his best after injury.
Yet it is homegrown talent Rocco Reitz who has stolen the show.
The 21-year-old defensive midfielder has been preferred to stalwarts such as Christoph Kramer and Florian Neuhaus and, on Friday, it was easy to see why.
Reitz's intelligence and poise shone throughout the game, as did his energy.
Three minutes before the break he won the ball pressing high, dribbled past a defender and then scored Gladbach's second goal.
It was his first for the club that he joined as an eight-year-old.
Reitz, the club's player of the month for September, for October and probably for November as well, has become the "symbol and figure of hope" for their renaissance, local paper Rheinische Post wrote on Monday.
"The experienced players are pushing, the team sorts things out themselves on the pitch now, they are coaching each other, take an active stance and don't just look on when things happen.
"Whether it will be enough to return to European football is another matter, though.
While Seoane's game plan has worked better lately, it is still tough to see them breaking into the top seven due to the fact that there are still a lot of quality teams above them in the table.
But if Gladbach can maintain the same verve and pace they showed in dismantling Wolfsburg, they should at least get close to restoring the good times.
Either way, there are reasons to celebrate and the signs are that the worst is over.
"Once again, we showed that well-known face that we are very unhappy about," coach Edin Terzic said after Borussia Dortmund followed up their fine 2-0 win over Newcastle United in the Champions League with an awful 2-1 defeat against high-flying Stuttgart on Saturday.
"They were superior in all aspects," defender Mats Hummels lamented, and forward Niclas Fullkrug felt that his side had chosen "the wrong approach" and had been outsmarted by Stuttgart's changed build-up pattern.
"You can see that we are hitting our ceiling against many good teams, even though we have enough quality (in the squad) to do better," the Germany international added.
Fullkrug later said that his harsh assessment shouldn't be taken as a criticism of the manager.
But the damage is already done.
Just when you thought that Dortmund's recent consistency had quashed all doubts about Terzic's long-term suitability for the job, their meek capitulation in Swabia has put the issue back on the agenda.
Dortmund are in fifth and 10 points behind leaders Bayer Leverkusen.
In Munich, by contrast, there was a rare sense of happiness and harmony this weekend.
On Saturday, Bayern made fairly light work of promoted Heidenheim, beating them 4-2 with two goals from Harry Kane, and then on Sunday, the numbers got even better for the defending champions.
New chief financial officer Michael Diederich announced a record turnover of EUR854m for the season gone by, and zero debt.
"We are a beacon of light in European football," Diederich said with classic Bavarian modesty.
Thomas Tuchel will no doubt remind the board of that line when it comes to strengthening the side in January.
"We're out of energy," the head coach said after the match, professing himself ripe for a holiday, too.
In far less happy news, 11 people were injured by a firecracker (allegedly thrown from the away end) during Augsburg's 1-1 draw with visitors Hoffenheim.
Police have arrested two suspects and Hoffenheim apologised for the "idiotic outrage" in a statement on Saturday night while promising to support the authority's investigation.
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