The Warm-Up: Real Madrid made to look extremely ordinary in Paris

The Champions League is thoroughly back, but the most Champions League-y team of the lot, Real Madrid, are absolutely not. The current format protects the big teams by giving them, in theory, exactly one tricky fixture in six. Fair to say Madrid made a right mess of theirs.

It’s odd, watching a poor Real Madrid performance. At some level your brain refuses to accept it. Sure, they look bad. But they often look bad, just before they score three goals and win the whole competition, not so much by accident as by right. It’s the entire brand: so much quality that they don’t need to bother being an actual football team. Weaponised privilege.

Well, it didn’t work here. PSG pressed the midfield out of existence, Eden Hazard was painfully peripheral, and Gareth Bale’s evening petered out after he did something brilliant but used his hand in the process. That’s not allowed, Gareth. Silly Gareth.

Obviously this doesn’t necessarily mean that Zidane’s second reign is destined to end around January time with pain, recrimination, and a massive severance package. But you certainly wouldn’t bet against it. On this showing, Madrid have problems. And on the showings of the last twenty years or so, Madrid have precisely one way of solving problems.

Anyway, PSG were decent enough, and look well-set for their traditional collapse in the knockouts. In the absence of Kylian Mbappe (bruised halo) and Neymar (sprained ego), Angel di Maria stepped up to punish his old team. And the third goal, which saw the Parisians' two full-backs exchanging passes in the Madrid box, is an early contender for the Le Tissier award, which is a special contest we’ve just invented to reward the most insouciant goal of the season.

Call us, FIFA. Our rates are reasonable.

Elsewhere in the Champions League, Spurs managed to throw away a two-goal lead against Olympiakos.

Whether they deserved anything more than a draw is an open question: they didn’t play particularly well either side of their goals, and were gifted their penalty by a good old-fashioned defensive brainfade. Oh god I did everything right and he still went past me. Stick a foot out! Stick a foot— oh no.

But closing out games after taking the lead is one of the classic signs of a Proper, Grown-Up football team; Spurs are apparently still cutting about in short trousers. Afterwards, Pochettino lamented his side’s failure to “respect the plan”, which is a rather cute way of saying “Look, I told these clowns what to do.” “Training needs to be harder,” he concluded, slightly ominously, the spirit of Jock Wallace flickering behind his eyes.

Still, a point away from home is rarely a bad result in the Champions League groups. Perhaps the more immediate concern is Christian Eriksen, who looked profoundly out of sorts for 90 long, error-strewn minutes. The Warm-Up likes Christian Eriksen a lot, and doesn’t enjoy watching him play badly. It doesn’t suit him, missing passes. Being ordinary. It looks frankly inappropriate. Sort it out, please.

Victor Lindelöf has signed a new contract at Manchester United. Not a huge surprise: he’s been pretty decent for a while now, and the early days of his partnership with Harry Maguire have been fine. Just think how they might look with a midfield in front of them.

This means that times are getting interesting for United’s other central defenders. Axel Tuanzebe is One for the Future, and given that Solskjaer’s whole schtick is being The One Who Plays the Ones for the Future, that leaves not much space for the injured Eric Bailly, the apparently unshiftable Marcos Rojo, the already checked-out on-loan Chris Smalling and, most importantly, the joyous bundle of chaos that is Phil Jones.

There’s a good chance that pretty soon, Phil Jones is going to be playing for somebody else. And given that Phil Jones playing football is one of the only honest pleasures left in the Premier League, that day cannot come soon enough.

Some players are good players, some are great. And some are walking distortions in the fabric of reality, around which anything can happen and most things eventually will. You can understand why Solskjaer wants to move on, but the Warm-Up misses him, and wants him back where he belongs. On the field. On his face.

So, get busy, mid-level Premier League teams (that aren’t United, ho ho ho). Get that captain’s armband ready. Jones the Face will soon be descending from Old Trafford, and there’s a place in the hearts of the nation to be won.

This particular aspect of the Warm-Up has been out of the loop for a couple of weeks, so it’s possible that you’ve all seen and processed this news already. Hey, maybe they did it last season and we didn’t care. But, five captains? Five? A vice-vice-vice-vice-captain?

Perhaps there’s some sense in here. ‘Arsenal lack leadership’ has been a constant refrain for a while now, so Emery is taking a new approach, and making it a numbers game. Pick them all! Give them an armband each!

And the next time David Luiz makes a fool of himself in the penalty area, watch them all plead with the referee at the same time, in plaintive and intricate five-part harmony.

Twenty years ago today, Bobby Robson stepped out at St. James’ Park as manager of Newcastle United. It was his first game in charge, and his team were in no kind of form at all … but then, the opposition were in even worse shape. Hughes, Shearer, Shearer (p), Shearer, Dyer, Speed, Shearer, Shearer (p): the Magpies put eight past bottom-of-the-table Sheffield Wednesday.

Dream start didn’t quite do it justice. There’s 25 minutes of highlights here, but if you don’t quite have time for that, here’s a quick thirty-second blast through a few of the goals, rounded out with a lovely warm hug between Sir Bobby and Wednesday manager Danny Wilson. At least his day wasn’t a total waste.

We spent ages trying to think of a joke to cue this picture up, but none of them were as funny as the thing itself, so we’ll just get out of the way and let the facial expressions do the talking.

Hope he’s a real fan. With a ’10 Maddison’ shirt and a ’10 Maddison’ tattoo and an extremely strong view on the lad’s future. “Ignore Manchester United. They’re a mess. Stick with Brendan, he’ll see you right. Okay, one photo. Don’t do the … oh.”

Right, now that the flashy stuff is out of the way, it’s time for the meat of the European season to get under way: the Europa League is back, and a grateful continent gives thanks. If you want to have a non-Arsenal, non-United evening, maybe go for PSV vs. Sporting, followed by Feyenoord at Rangers? Go on. Live.