The Warm-Up: PSG FFS

Marco Verratti treating Joe Gomez’s shin like a lumberjack treats a prime redwood. Thiago Silva getting treatment for a minor bang on the head sustained while diving. Marquinhos doing chest bumps with team-mates after making blocks. The white Real Madrid kit. Angel Di Maria setting a new time-spent-horizontal record. Eric. Maxim. Choupo. Moting.

It was like Paris Saint-Germain had read some ‘How to Annoy Your Opponents in 13 Easy Steps’ guidebook before kick-off.

And that’s before we even get to Neymar, backheel-nutmegging Jordan Henderson, rainbow-flicking near the corner flag, ignoring actual passes to him in order to gee up the crowd, celebrating by appearing to count bank notes and drawing approximately 634 fouls. Per minute.

For the neutral – and The Warm-Up, as football’s most respected snark-ombudsman, would never be so crassly human as to ‘support’ a team – it was, quite frankly, brilliant. One large portion of schadenfreude, please. With more of the same for dessert.

For Liverpool fans, and for Jurgen Klopp, it was agonising. Although perhaps, if we were being really cynical, PSG’s antics were also a useful distraction from what was a pretty anodyne display from the Reds. Yes, the stop-start rhythm did them no favours, but there was oddly little menace to their attacking play, and the midfield only came to life when Naby Keita and Xherdan Shaqiri entered the fray.

All is not lost for Liverpool, whose fate remains in their own hands. If they beat Napoli 1-0 or by two goals, they are guaranteed to qualify. But that’s now three defeats in the group – more than they suffered in the entirety of their Champions League campaign last term – and Klopp, you imagine, will be slightly concerned about just how things are shaping up for his side.

At least they don’t have to play the pantomime villains of PSG every week.

Let’s just check in on crisis club Tottenham, shall we? When we last joined them, remember, they were enjoying their best ever start to a league season despite loads of injuries. Awful!

They’ve now… wait, this can’t be right. Six wins in a row? And still somehow alive in the Champions League? Right. Probably time to take the Crisis-O-Meter 3000 in for its biannual service.

106 Champions League goals now. Stop it. Just… stop it. It’s borderline immoral.

Arsene Wenger has been basking in the honeyed glow of semi-retirement for the last few months, his foibles happily forgotten by Arsenal fans who have been able to move on. It’s amazing what a little time, a little distance does for you.

Except, uh-oh, here comes Wojciech Szczesny, with revelations of what life was like during the Wenger nadir years at the Emirates. The 28-year-old was on Polish television talking about Gerry Peyton, Arsenal’s goalkeeping coach from 2003 until this summer – and not, by all accounts, a big details man.

“Let me give you an example. A delicate one, but it’s one of these. First you laugh and then you are like, ‘I’m playing for Arsenal, and I hear stuff like that.’

“Before a Chelsea game, I hear this: ‘Watch out. Hazard, when shooting penalties, tries to shoot to the corner opposite to the one you dive.’

“That’s funny, but then you analyse it and say, ‘Holy s**t, he was for real.’”

Lukasz Fabianski, Szczesny’s team-mate in north London back in the day, was on hand to provide a nice summary of Peyton’s approach: “‘He hits here, or here, but the best way is to go with your gut feeling.’ Meaning, we analyse the stuff, but do what you want.”

Oh, just give this man a knighthood already, will you?

You may already have seen the story about the Irish amateur club falsely reporting the death of one of their players to league organisers. (If not, hi!) But yesterday brought an official apology – “grave and unacceptable mistake,” etc etc – and, more excitingly, an intervention from the absolutely-not-dead person at the centre of the whole affair.

“I was at home yesterday, playing some video games, when suddenly I got a call from work,” said Fernando Nuno La-Fuente, who had actually just moved to Galway for a job.

“They told me, ‘You’re a celebrity!’ That’s how I found out I was dead!”

And his take on Ballybrack’s version of events? Again, winningly deadpan. “It’s serious on their part, but I’m finding it a little bit funny. Because, basically, I’m not dead.”

Get that man on the shortlist for the Ballon (Death’s) d’Or.

Adam Hurrey: gone from these parts, but very much not forgotten in Retro Corner, his natural habitat. This is a joy:

Oh, and it’s Ryan Giggs’ birthday, so we’re morally obliged to include this video of him turning Lee Dixon and friends into human jelly:

That’s Simon Kuper on Kylian Mbappe’s curse. And Jonathan Liew is on a nice roll with Tottenham.

It’s Vorskla vs Arsenal… or is it?! After UEFA moved the game to Kiev, the vice-president of the Ukrainian minnows, Oleg Lisak, said there was no guarantee they would play, which you have to imagine would be pretty bloody frustrating for the Gunners after a long old trip. Ah, the Europa League group stage: just a non-stop festival of fun.

Elsewhere: Rosenborg vs Celtic, Rangers vs Villarreal and Chelsea vs PAOK.