Matchday three of the Champions League group stages threw up the usual combination of goals, drama and action which this competition never seems to fail to provide.
All four English teams were victorious, with Tottenham Hotspur cruising to a much-needed 5-0 win over Red Star Belgrade and Manchester City also hitting five in their triumph over Atalanta.
Liverpool did not quite reach five but were still comfortable in their 4-1 win at Genk - their first away group-stage win for two years - and arguably the most impressive of that English quartet of victories was Chelsea's over Ajax at the Johan Cruyff ArenA.
Paris Saint-Germain were also big winners, hammering Club Brugge 5-0 in Belgium, joining other heavyweights such as Real Madrid, Barcelona, Juventus and Bayern Munich in avoiding upsets.
Arguably the standout fixture of the round before kickoff was Inter Milan's clash with Borussia Dortmund, which the Italian outfit won 2-0.
Here, Sports Mole selects its Champions League Team of the Week from matchday three.
Thibaut Courtois may have made the more eye-catching saves at the other end to keep Real Madrid ahead, but Galatasaray would not have been in with a chance of pulling off a shock without the 11 stops made by Fernando Muslera. The Turkish outfit ultimately fell to a narrow defeat, but it took a heavily deflected effort to finally beat Muslera.
Tottenham's attacking players stole the show against Red Star, but Serge Aurier also put in a fine performance from right-back, making a team-high five tackles in addition to registering an assist.
Atletico Madrid's Renan Lodi also chalked up an assist on the opposite flank, delivering an inch-perfect cross for Alvaro Morata as the Madrid outfit edged past Bayer Leverkusen, while Inter Milan's Stefan de Vrij set up their opener against Dortmund.
Yaroslav Rakitskiy went one better than the rest of this week's back four for Zenit St Petersburg against RB Leipzig with a rare - and stunning - goal to open the scoring, enough to earn his place ahead of Chelsea's Fikayo Tomori despite the Russian side going on to lose the game 2-1.
The midfield places are where the competition really begins to increase in this XI, but Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain's brace against Genk makes him a sure-fire pick. The Liverpool man was making his long-awaited return to Champions League action and marked the occasion in style, picking out the bottom corner from outside the area with his first and then eclipsing that with an impudent screamer for his second.
Tanguy Ndombele helped himself to two assists, while Benjamin Andre and Marcelo Brozovic recorded one apiece, but the second central midfield spot in this team goes to Toni Kroos, who pulled the strings for Madrid against Galatasaray and crucially got the only goal of the game too - a vital contribution in what had been dubbed a must-win match for the 13-time champions.
The number of outstanding forward performances this week was quite frankly ridiculous, and many of the players who miss out on this week's team would walk into most others this season.
Erik Lamela created two and found the back of the net himself, Lionel Messi produced a typically majestic performance and helped himself to a goal against Slavia Prague, while Son Heung-min, Sergio Aguero, Paulo Dybala, Robert Lewandowski, Dries Mertens, Mauro Icardi and Erling Braut Haaland all notched braces.
Even beyond those players, the likes of Sadio Mane, Mohamed Salah and Memphis Depay deserve mentions, so needless to say the four players chosen in those attacking roles this week all put in sensational displays.
Tuesday saw Raheem Sterling and Kylian Mbappe cement their places in the team with a hat-trick apiece, the latter entirely changing the game for PSG against Club Brugge during a devastating 38-minute cameo off the bench which also saw him create a goal in addition to scoring three times himself.
There was a hat-trick of sorts for Angel di Maria too as the in-form attacker registered three assists in PSG's comfortable win, narrowly edging out the fierce level of competition outlined above.
In a week where many high-profile centre-forwards excelled, Harry Kane was our pick of the bunch courtesy of his brace against Red Star, opening and then closing the scoring in the 5-0 rout. Both were finishes from a striker who knows exactly where the goal is, glancing a header in for the first and coolly passing the ball into the back of the net for the second.
Barney Corkhill
