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The Champions League is back this week, and that means the point in the season when clubs must settle into playing more than once every seven days. This is when the campaign truly begins to gather pace and football starts to dominate the week again, exactly as it should.

Matchday one of the Champions League league phase will be played across three days, from Tuesday to Thursday, and there are already several heavyweight fixtures on the schedule. Among the Premier League clubs involved, Aston Villa travel to Club Brugge and Manchester City go away to Porto on Tuesday, Liverpool host Atletico Madrid while Arsenal head to Napoli on Wednesday, and Manchester United entertain Sabah at Old Trafford on Thursday.

There is also a light spread of EFL Cup third-round matches in between, along with nine fixtures in the Championship.

The calendar is beginning to fill up once more.

Game to watch: Liverpool v Atletico Madrid It is a real pity that the Liverpool and Arsenal matches kick off at the same time, because both are highly appealing contests. It may be a night for multiple screens.

Still, if one has to edge the other, Liverpool’s meeting with Atletico Madrid just about gets the nod when it comes to likely entertainment value.

These two sides crossing paths in the Champions League is hardly unusual; they also met at this stage last season, when Liverpool came away with a 3-2 victory at Anfield.

That night, Liverpool surged into a two-goal lead - just as they did on Friday against Ipswich Town, incidentally - before Atleti fought back to level matters with less than 10 minutes of normal time left.

There was even time for a stoppage-time winner, with Virgil van Dijk delivering the decisive moment.

If this latest meeting produces a similar level of drama, it will be difficult to take your eyes off it.

The Arsenal fixture has plenty going for it as well. Right now they look the stronger Premier League side and, to everyone’s relief, they finally seem to have remembered how to be entertaining too.

But if you were glad to leave behind the slightly robotic tactical feel of last season, then running into Massimiliano Allegri’s Napoli may not be ideal viewing.

Napoli have gone against the grain in recent Serie A seasons by offering a more attractive version than the stereotypical image often attached to the league, but Allegri’s appointment in the summer - as though Antonio Conte having been there before him was not warning enough - threatens to reverse that trend.

And while Diego Simeone is also known for building difficult, hard-to-break-down Atletico teams, at least previous meetings between his side and Liverpool have consistently delivered goals.

If Allegri sends Napoli out in a stubborn setup, by contrast, there is a genuine risk that Arsenal’s game turns into a drab watch. Just when it felt like that kind of thing had been left behind.

Team to watch: Roma The phrase ‘the Champions League is back’ will resonate especially strongly with clubs that have been away from the competition for a very long time.

Take Fenerbahce and Roma, for instance. After absences of 18 years and seven years respectively, they happen to be meeting on matchday one as both return to this level at long last.

In Roma’s case, their return to Champions League football comes alongside the sudden emergence of what looks like a winning formula.

They have been the most eye-catching team in Serie A so far this season, at last showing some of the trademarks of Gian Piero Gasperini’s adventurous style that he perfected at Atalanta but struggled to fully bring out at Roma last season, even though he still managed to guide them back into the top four.

Roma swept aside their first two opponents of the season, Fiorentina and Lecce, before producing a dramatic late comeback against Atalanta on Saturday to win 2-1 through goals in the 89th and 93rd minutes.

Even in that match, they generated 35 shots. After the teething troubles of last season, Gasperini appears to have refined his aggressive, front-foot system, and Roma are fast becoming one of the major entertainers in European football.

Can they reproduce that on the European stage? A Fenerbahce side packed with star names but also carrying age makes for a fascinating test.

Roma have built serious early-season momentum, thanks in large part to the red-hot form of striker Donyell Malen, and they could hardly have picked a better time to start looking like a genuinely serious side again ahead of their Champions League comeback.

Their match - scheduled for Thursday evening in what feels like a sly nod to both their and Fenerbahce’s recent habit of appearing in the Europa League or Conference League instead - does not clash with any English clubs’ Champions League fixtures, so it should be well worth tuning into.

They are one of my dark horses.

Manager to watch: Francesco Farioli It is hugely tempting to make Jose Mourinho the manager to watch this week, with his Real Madrid side taking on one of his favourite former flames, Inter Milan.

Their showdown at the Bernabeu is certainly one of the marquee fixtures of the week, bringing together two giant clubs and offering the first bits of evidence as to whether Mourinho truly merits this move back to a club of a level where simply participating in the Champions League is nowhere near enough and the expectation is to win it, or at the very least go close.

But attention should be directed elsewhere for a moment. By now, everyone knows what Mourinho is about. That game will generate headlines, without question, and he will feature heavily in many of them. Yet some of those headlines may not say anything new.

For those in the mood to discover something different, it may be worth switching over to Porto v Manchester City at the same time on Tuesday night. Any accusations of Premier League bias can be dismissed, because the real attraction here is Porto’s manager.

Francesco Farioli is already in his fifth managerial role despite being only 37. A former assistant to Roberto De Zerbi, the Italian has become a fashionable pick among those who closely track emerging coaches. But do not let his nomadic CV mislead you.

Farioli has Porto in excellent shape at present, with five wins from five in the Portuguese top flight and just one goal conceded in the process. After last season’s league title, it feels as though his coaching promise is beginning to turn fully into substance.

Tuesday will mark the first time he has managed against an English club in the Champions League. He came up against Nottingham Forest three times in the Europa League last season, but now he gets the chance to test himself on the bigger stage against a City side that should be favourites on paper yet remain very much in transition.

A tactical duel with Enzo Maresca does not quite carry the same aura that one with Pep Guardiola would have done, but it should still offer a useful measure of whether Farioli has the credentials to trouble a supposedly elite English team.

Player to watch: Raphinha Starting at 5:45pm, Barcelona’s Wednesday clash with Feyenoord is the ideal appetiser before the evening’s 8pm matches involving Liverpool, Arsenal, Paris Saint-Germain or whichever fixture takes your preference.

And if you have not been following La Liga especially closely yet this season, this should be your first proper opportunity to appreciate the newest version of Raphinha.

The Barcelona captain has been outstanding this season after reinventing himself as a striker. Robert Lewandowski’s departure in the summer looked like it might become a major issue for Hansi Flick’s team, but Raphinha has had other plans.

He has scored six goals in four La Liga matches so far this season, hitting braces against Elche and Rayo Vallecano and also finding the net against Valencia and Athletic Bilbao.

This is a player who mainly operated on the right wing during his time at Leeds United and in his first year and a half or so at Barcelona, before moving over to the left and thriving there too.

Now it turns out he can lead the line through the middle as well - and with devastating results. Is there anything he cannot do?

In his latest Champions League appearance last season, Raphinha scored twice, set up two more and won a penalty for his side, which Lamine Yamal converted.

Matching that level of influence again would be a huge ask, but his current form alone should be enough to make Feyenoord uneasy.

EFL Cup game to watch: Chelsea v Leeds United Beyond all the noise and glamour of the Champions League, there is also the next round of the EFL Cup to look forward to this week.

The standout tie in that competition is Chelsea against Leeds United - a club pairing in which Chelsea are far more used to carrying European commitments during weeks like this.

It kicks off at the same time as the Liverpool and Arsenal matches on Wednesday in a rather cruel piece of scheduling, but if English football is what you are after, or if access to the European games is an issue, this is the one to monitor.

It is one of two all-Premier League ties this week, alongside Sunderland’s meeting with Hull City, and comes before four more top-flight clashes later this month. It brings together two teams who could both do with a meaningful cup run.

Leeds had been desperate for one for years until last season, when they reached the FA Cup semi-finals for the first time in almost 40 years.

Ironically, it was Chelsea who ended that run, with Enzo Fernandez scoring the winner for the side that eventually finished as runners-up.

Now the two rivals meet again, with Chelsea aiming to respond after Sunday’s defeat to Arsenal. They do not have as many trophies to chase as usual in Xabi Alonso’s first season, so this competition may carry extra significance.

Championship game to watch: Southampton v Swansea City After finishing in mid-table last season, Swansea City have emerged as the early pacesetters in the Championship following an unbeaten start across their first five matches.

They are currently on a run of four straight clean sheets, and the only goal they have let in this season came back in the 10th minute of their opening fixture.

Their latest examination arrives on Tuesday against Southampton, who are in the bottom half at present only because of their points deduction linked to spygate.

In fact, Southampton have recorded more wins than losses so far this season and will be looking to climb the table and rejoin the play-off race they were part of last season.

Only relegated Wolves have scored more goals in the Championship so far this season than Southampton, so their meeting with the division’s stingiest defence to date shapes up as a very appealing contest in one of football’s most unpredictable leagues.