Friday night’s resumption always carried the threat of pushing us towards drawing hard and fast conclusions for the second half of the season. In the end the raising of the curtain was so dramatic as not to leave us any other choice. Twenty-four seconds into the Rückrunde and, as Nathan Tella’s volley thundered past Gregor Kobel, we had our emphatic notice that the balance of power at the top of this season’s Bundesliga is not about to change any time soon.

It was not the quickest statement by the standards of Dortmund versus Leverkusen, of course. Ten years ago last August, Karim Bellarabi scored the Bundesliga’s fastest goal, nine seconds into this fixture in the opening match of the 2014-15 Bundesliga season. The winger’s rapid strike set the tone for what turned out to be Jürgen Klopp’s final season at the helm, symbolically snuffing out their hopes of doing something significant with the campaign almost before it had begun.

A decade on the protagonists and the parameters might have differed, but for some the feeling it left didn’t. For Nuri Sahin, frustration then equalling frustration now, with a first home Bundesliga defeat of the season. For Leverkusen, everything has changed in the intervening period. They have not been without their problems, either during their double-winning campaign of last year or now; they went into this without Xabi Alonso’s crown prince. Florian Wirtz, like his teammate Exequiel Palacios, was late for the team rendezvous pre-match and accordingly left out of the starting lineup. His replacement Tella blew away the doubts, underlined his team’s versatility and vindicated the coach.

This is what has made Alonso the ultimate asset for Leverkusen. Not his tactics, training or imagination, but his willingness to deal calmly and efficiently with how things are, rather than how he or anyone else wishes they were. His ability to adjust, and readjust, to reality is what makes Leverkusen so durable. After they raced into a 3-1 lead in less than 20 minutes against a prone and wounded home side, the score could have been anything in Leverkusen’s favour, but it wasn’t. After a generous penalty award by referee Tobias Stieler, Serhou Guirassy was able to bring the deficit back to a single goal but there was no panic from the visitors, and they were closer to another goal in the closing stages than BVB were to an equaliser. The red-hot Patrik Schick, with another double, deserved to be the game’s decisive centre-forward, and he was.

Allowances could be made for BVB and their coach Sahin, particularly after the flu that swept through the camp and left them without Nico Schlotterbeck, Emre Can, Waldemar Anton, Ramy Bensebaini and thus with a scratch defence (the illness situation was such that the club brought back coronavirus measures, banning handshakes and team meals). They did not have a fit senior centre-back to call upon, with Julian Ryerson filling in there and both Yannick Lührs and teenager Almugera Kabar making first starts.

Yet this is not about one match or one performance, but a trend. The pressure on this game was created by what went before Christmas. The leisurely passing of the ball around an unfamiliar back four that led to Tella’s lightning shock of an opener was infuriatingly self-inflicted and reflected badly on Sahin. Having slipped to eighth and five points behind the Champions League places, Dortmund simply have to win at doomed Holstein Kiel on Tuesday night whatever the available personnel (and Sahin appeared pessimistic that any of his ill players would return for the trip north), lest a near-insurmountable gap develop to the top four. For the second successive January window, BVB will be forced to attempt significant signings to salvage their season.

The delayed arrivals of Wirtz and Palacios weren’t the last instances of lateness surrounding the match, with uncommonly heavy traffic around Signal Iduna Park leading to BVB’s bus being delayed and kick-off being put back 15 minutes. Lars Ricken later recounted how Rudi Völler had joked over dinner that the extra time wasn’t needed. “He said: ‘Do it like we used to. Change on the bus and then go straight on to the pitch,’” said Ricken.

Dortmund politely declined, not surprisingly given their necessary clampdown on matters of hygiene. Yet the attitudes stuck in the mind. Leverkusen see obstacles to be surmounted, Dortmund see them and sigh. One of these clubs has almost twice the budget of the other but on the evidence of this, as with much of the last two years, you would never guess which. Predicting which one has a plan for a successful Rückrunde? That’s much easier.

Talking points

• Bayern took their four-point lead back by – really – thrashing Borussia Mönchengladbach 1-0, despite needing a Harry Kane penalty to clinch thepoints in a game they were always in complete control of, with goalkeeper Moritz Nicolas starring for the hosts. It was Kane’s 26th consecutive successful penalty since his miss for England in the 2022 World Cup quarter-final.

• Omar Marmoush made light of the incessant talk of a move to Manchester City, scoring a stylish winner for Eintracht Frankfurt at St Pauli then showing his respect for his former club with a muted celebration. The atmosphere at third-placed Eintracht around the issue is at least outwardly relaxed, with sporting director, Markus Krösche, saying: “I assume that he will play in three days [against Freiburg] … The goal is to keep the team together, unless something extraordinary happens. So far, I don’t see anything extraordinary.”

• Jürgen Klopp, after dropping in at Paris FC on Saturday, made his next stop on his inaugural Red Bull tour at Leipzig on Sunday, tucked in strategically to a main stand seat between director of football, Marcel Schäfer, and RB technical director, Mario Gómez. Still, Klopp was not the biggest provider of star quality – that was the returning Xavi Simons who, after almost three months out, hit a superb brace in the 4-2 over Werder Bremen, who were simply befuddled by his brilliance. “After the game I told him – ‘top job’,” said Marco Rose, and by that I don’t mean today’s game, but the path he took after his injury. He didn’t just come back, he came back the way he came back.”

• Another glorious comeback was that of Deniz Undav, in the Stuttgart squad for the first time since early November having been kept out by a thigh injury. Undav came on just after the hour at Augsburg and nudged in the only goal of the game just four minutes later to lift his team into the European places. Sebastian Hoeness, though, has made it clear that Undav will only gradually be reintroduced to the XI. “We have to act responsibly,” he cautioned.

• Heidenheim have some catching up to do themselves after an awful run and nailed a first Bundesliga win since September against Union Berlin, with pretty much everything going wrong that could for the capital club’s new coach Steffen Baumgart. Tom Rothe was sent off for a last-man foul between Frans Krätzig’s and Adrian Beck’s goals, stretching Union’s winless run to nine. They now just have four points more than playoff-occupying Heidenheim.