Bayern trounce Nuremberg, Schalke beat Hoffenheim

Pace-setters Bayern Munich trounced Nuremberg 4-0 on Saturday to stay at the top of the German Bundesliga, while Schalke 04 moved into second place with a 3-1 victory at home against Hoffenheim.Defending champions Borussia Dortmund failed to move ahead of Schalke as they managed only a 1-1 draw at VfB Stuttgart in a game started late after the Dortmund team bus was stuck in traffic.Serdar Tasci opened the scoring for Stuttgart midway through the first half, but Polish defender Lukasz Piszczek equalized in first half injury time.In Saturday's late game Werder Bremen came from behind to win 3-1 at Mainz 05 to move to fourth in the table on 20 points.Claudio Pizarro, Aaron Hunt and Sebastian Proedl scored the goals for the visitors, while Niko Bungert scored for his side.Bremen coach Thomas Schaaf complimented his side. "The team did well and I think we deserved the victory. We can do better though."We needed to win as we did not want the gap to grow towards the top."Goalscorer Proedl also said the victory was very important. "We had not won for a few games. We did not give away many chances at the back and used ours upfront and that is great.In Munich Nuremberg were never in with a chance after Mario Gomez opened the scoring after less than 90 seconds had been played. Bastian Schweinsteiger doubled their score in the 19th minute and Franck Ribery gave Bayern a third six minutes before the break.Gomez scored his 12th league goal of the season in the 69th minute to crown a victory that takes Bayern to 25 points.The striker said that there was room for improvement. "You can always play better and we could have done more going forward."I think some of the players were thinking about the Champions League next week and I hope our fans can forgive us not going forward more after going up by three goals."We should also not become conceited and respect our opponents. We are playing well, but need to be at our best in all the games," Gomez said.Schalke, for whom Klaas-Jan Huntelaar scored a brace - including one from the penalty spot - and Raul the other, are on 21 points.Hoffenheim complained that Raul's goal, which opened proceedings, was scored with his arm and referee Tobias Welz asked the former Spanish international whether he had handled the ball, but Raul said he had not.Raul said after the game that he had played the ball with his arm, but it had not been deliberate.Bosnian Vedad Ibisevic pulled one back for the visitors.Borussia Moenchengladbach, who won 2-1 against Hanover 96 through two goals by Germany international Marco Reus, are fourth on 20 points.Also on Saturday, Hertha Berlin won 3-2 at VfL Wolfsburg, with Raffael, Levan Kobiashvili and Pierre-Michel Lasogga scoring for the visitors, while Mario Mandzukic and Marcel Schaefer scored for Wolfsburg.Sunday's matches sees Cologne take on Augsburg and Kaiserslautern away to SV Hamburg.On Friday Michael Ballack scored his first goal for Bayer Leverkusen as his side won 1-0 at SC Freiburg.