What to watch this weekend in the Premier League, La Liga, Serie A and Bundesliga - October 17

Manchester City vs. Tottenham Hotspur

For the Premier League fan, the first match following the long, traumatic silence of an international break is surely enough to get the blood racing and heart pumping once more. That it's Manchester City hosting Tottenham Hotspur, a game with potential for hilarity on both ends of the spectrum, can only add to the raw watchability that stems from not being a Euro 2016 qualifier.

Last season, eventual champions Manchester City beat Spurs by an aggregate score of 11-1 home and away. A 6-0 loss at the Etihad wasn't quite enough to cost Andre Villas-Boas his job, and the 5-1 reverse at White Hart Lane didn't do much damage to Tim Sherwood's career at Tottenham, but they were both incredible embarrassments and a strong reminder that Spurs basically had no idea what they were doing last season.

Premier League giants blowing out minnows is rarely funny unless you happen to be a supporter of said giants, but watching Champions League pretenders get mauled is always wonderful, and should we get a repeat of last season's matchup here we're in for some fun, familiar belly-laughs.

But there's hope for Spurs. Under Mauricio Pochettino, they've rarely looked as incompetent as during the dark days of 2013-14, and they're showing hints of what can only be described as organisation and discipline. Meanwhile, the champions are wobbly — they've won two straight but have hardly looked convincing in so doing, and they've dropped points in back-to-back home matches*.

*Admittedly one of those was against Chelsea.

What would be funnier than Spurs getting blown up in Manchester? If they reversed roles. Because if watching a ragtag band of highly paid footballers get mercilessly picked off over the span of 180 minutes of football by an actual coherent team is amusing, having that same team lose to the useless idiots a year later after upsetting their best player via a lack of birthday cake is sheer and utter bliss.

But since football is football, it'll be 2-1 City or something.

Galatasaray vs. Fenerbahce; Partizan vs. Red Star

So you claim to be a football purist. You love the game, the game for the game, the game within the game. You're just as happy to watch a goalless draw comprising of three shots total as you are to take in a an action-packed 5-4 goalbuster. It's the tactics that get you going, not the media, the narrative or the pageantry involved.

Yet I'd posit that even the most hard-hearted amongst us would find it difficult to not feel a tinge of warmth, a stirring of excitement, when faced with a contentious derby. As for the rest of us, we take no shame in appreciating a wall of fire going up around a stadium. Bring it, we say.

Fortunately, this weekend brings not one but two opportunities to satisfy the inter pyromanic in all of us. First up is Galatasaray vs. Fenerbahce, an experience not just for the eyes but for the ears — Turk Telekom Arena formerly held the record for loudest crowd sound ever recorded, although that's since been passed by the Seattle Seahawks fans. Still, few would find it easy to tell the difference between the world's loudest roars, and the game on Saturday is unlikely to disappoint. Particularly with Gala and Fener both tied on ten points, and both eager to upset Besiktas at the top of the table.

Later that day comes Partizan vs. Red Star. For this match, we not only have the visitors, last year's champions, inconceivably in third place (chill, they're just a point behind Partizan) but the match is to take place in front of a crowd that just might boil over. The Eternal Derby is already famed for the heat and fire that it creates, but this weekend the temperature could well go even higher. After the midweek Euro qualifier between Serbia and Albania was abandoned due to nationalistic messages spawning a massive brawl, emotions may not be kept in check. If such emotions are poured into impressive displays by the fans, it will make for an amazing sight. If they're channeled into attempts to hurt the opposing team or supporters, well, it could be very ugly indeed.

Napoli vs. Inter Milan

It's fair to say that things aren't really going to plan for Sunday's late night Serie A opponents, Napoli and Inter. By reputation and expectation (and arguably expenditure), both should be up around the top of the table, occupying the tier just below Roma and Juventus and bickering over the European places. Instead, they go into this weekend in seventh and tenth respectively, and while the season is yet young, pressure is building in both dugouts.

Up in the north, Inter's league campaign has so far been entirely the wrong kind of consistent: two wins, two draws and two defeats. A 7-0 hammering of bottom team Sassuolo was the high point of a solid if unspectacular start, but back to back defeats against Fiorentina and Cagliari in their last two league games have made a mess of things and left Walter Mazzarri clinging onto the manager's job.

Of the summer signings, Yann M'Vila has been underwhelming when selected, Gary Medel has looked every inch a former Cardiff City player, and Nemanja Vidic has taken to Mazzarri's back three with the ease and grace of a duck to rhythmic gymnastics. Other more established members of the team are also underperforming — Hernanes perhaps the most notable — and while there have been a few bright sparks, mostly in attack, the overall impression so far is of a unbalanced squad constructed in haphazard fashion. Inter's beleaguered manager must have been one of the few people on the continent praying for the international break to come around and interrupt things.

By contrast, his counterpart further south, Rafa Benitez, could not have lost his squad at a worse time. After the season began with the huge disappointment of Champions League non-qualification, two defeats in their first three games briefly threatened to throw Napoli into a full-blown crisis. Since then, a couple of wins against Sassuolo and Torino have settled things a bit, but this is Benitez, and that means when the results don't come, the near-constant tensions over transfer budgets and on-field aesthetics are allowed to bubble up. Things are far from happy at the good ship San Paolo.

In short, what we have here are two talented but underperforming teams and two league campaigns in sore need of a big, statement victory. Even better, goals have been happening; a total of 34, for and against, in the two teams' twelve games so far. With Gonzalo Higuain and Marek Hamsik lining up on one side, and Dani Osvaldo, Mauro Icardi and possibly Mateo Kovacic on the other, more seem a certainty. And whichever manager finds himself on the wrong end of the result could well find himself looking for alternative employment. Expect some serious touchline gesticulation.