Nuremberg ended the first half of the Bundesliga season sitting in the relegation zone and without a win to their name but survival is in sight after a superb start to 2014.
Saturday's win over Eintracht Braunschweig was the fourth in five games and only two teams - Bayern Munich and Schalke - have made stronger starts to the calender year.
Nuremberg have surged from 17th to 12th and have a four-point advantage over SV Hamburg in the relegation play-off place.
No side in Bundesliga history has avoided relegation having not won at all in the first half of the season - but Nuremberg are well on track to shatter that record.
The match with Braunschweig will also go into the history books.
Never before have three penalties been missed in a Bundesliga game and Nuremberg can thank keeper Raphael Schaefer for saving two of them.
Considering Nuremberg also had to play an hour with ten men following Per Nilsson's red card and came from a goal down at half time, the win is even more remarkable.
"I've never experienced a game like that - it was unbelievable. We're very thankful for what Rapha did. It's an important step towards staying up," striker Josip Drmic told the club website.
"It wasn't a normal team talk from the coach at half time and we showed the right reaction in the second 45 (minutes). It was a real battle right until the end." The team talk will go down in legend. The ten men of Nuremberg equalised less than 11 seconds into the second half and just a minute later they were in front.
There was even the luxury of a missed penalty as Hiroshi Kiyotake failed to make the points safe and after a nervous final 20 minutes, the home fans could celebrate.
But coach Gertjan Verbeek is anxious to avoid a repeat of the first half performance which seemed to have condemned his men to defeat.
"We have a lot to discuss in the next few days. I hope the team are more awake then than they were in the first half," he said.
"It was a terrible 45 minutes. You can't play football like that. We have to make it clear that we should be aggressive."
Nuremberg travel to third-placed Borussia Dortmund on Saturday but confidence will be high even for a difficult match.
And as Werder Bremen play Hamburg and Frankfurt host Stuttgart elsewhere, at least two relegation rivals will drop points.
