The Warm-Up: Magical Leo Messi sinks Stones; let's give Kolo Toure a hug

John Stones on playing Leo Messi, Tuesday: It doesn’t scare me. I see it as an exciting challenge and one I’m looking forward to.

Leo Messi, playing John Stones, Wednesday:

Stones is perfectly entitled to feel no fear, and to relish going up against the best – but in future he might prefer to avoid verbalising sentences that get snarky football round-ups thinking, “Ah, great, I’ll stash that for when Messi scores a hat-trick.”

Of course Stones’s real crime was not giving a quote that now looks fate-temptingly absurd. It was playing his part in a woeful City defensive performance that allowed Messi and Barça to record a 4-0 win without playing their best.

Pep Guardiola’s commitment to passing the ball out from the back is not inherently reckless - but it must come accompanied by a soundness of decision-making that City lacked utterly.

Stones produced an error for Messi’s third, but by that time Claudio Bravo pretty much ended the game, and perhaps demonstrated why he never played a Champions League match for Barcelona.

Bravo’s red card resulted not from coming out to field a long ball – that was fine, and he got to it well before Luis Suarez – it was his decision (or perhaps indecision) neither to punt the ball clear or lay it off to the unmarked Stones.

Instead he gave it straight to Suarez then handled a shot the Warm-Up is fairly sure he could have headed.

We’re not at all sure how anyone could blame tactics for that.

At the other end of the defensive confidence scale to Stones lies Kolo Toure, who produced a fronting-up masterclass with this mea culpa after costing Celtic both goals in a 2-0 home defeat to Borussia Moenchengladbach.

If you can tear yourself away from Scott Brown’s serial killer eyes, you’ll hear Toure blame himself for the first error, then say the second error resulted from him still thinking about the first error, then sum up by saying he’s a 35-year-old still making 16-year-olds’ mistakes.

We just want to give him a big hug.

Meanwhile, Brendan Rodgers strived hard but ultimately fell short of taking any positives with his post-match assessment.

"Our only disappointment is the two goals.”

In which a man literally described losing a football match 2-0.

No such problems for Arsenal, who dismissed a Ludogorets side wonderfully described by ITV’s Sam Matterface as “a banana skin waiting to happen”.

Mesut Ozil thumped in a hat-trick, Alexis Sanchez and Theo Walcott both scored pearlers in a 6-0 win, and everything went as swimmingly as you’d expect when you get to play Ludogorets and not Barcelona.

Not everyone was happy, though.

Remember when Rio Ferdinand represented a young, modern generation of football pundits?

Here he is despairing about Ozil putting a photo on social media.

The Warm-Up enjoyed Borussia Monchengladbach’s response to this:

Which was to change their Twitter name to "A German Team"

Who says Germans don’t have etc etc?

More jaded morning round-ups might grow tired of football clubs "doing banter" – but let’s ignore the fact that this will feature in a thousand content marketing best practice seminars and appreciate it for the bit of fun that it is.

Didn’t hurt, of course, that they won the game 2-0.

It’s not for this morning’s Warm-Up to slam Jack Lang’s endorsement of Leicester prioritising the Champions League over the Premier League.

It’s for Roy Keane.

It’s not quite Steve McClaren on England-Iceland, but the opening to Sky Sports News version of Claudio Bravo’s red card certainly tickled the Warm-Up:

It’s big trouble, you know. Top, top energy, boys.

That game at Anfield had us clamouring for more Manchester United, and here they are with their second match in what feels like 90 seconds. United against Fenerbahce in the Europa League (20:05 kick-off) does sound rather appealing, though after Monday’s shambles we’re making no promises.

Before that Southampton visit Inter Milan (18:00) for what should be a pleasing way to spend your teatime - especially as they have a player who's twice as good as Manchester United on his own.