The Warm-Up: Manchester City have it all wrapped up in time for Christmas, Kaka calls it a day

There is a stage which sporting teams or individuals reach when we’re warned that “superlatives are running out” to describe them. Manchester City have smashed through that bit of their ascension to greatness, it seems, and are now at the stage where Everything About Them Is Phrased As A Question*: can anyone stop Manchester City? Are Manchester City the greatest side the Premier League has ever seen? Do Manchester City really need Alexis Sanchez in January?

The anticipation for Tottenham’s visit to the Etihad on Saturday was based on its nominal billing as a Big Six clash. Beyond that, it was barely a contest, because City’s momentum (that is, the stratospheric confidence that what they’re doing will work every time) is irresistible. Ederson was passing the ball out like a begloved Beckenbauer; Kevin De Bruyne was spotting and exploiting passing options that are usually only identified from a privileged position in the top tier of the stands; Raheem Sterling was once again a 90-minute thorn in the side rather than a 15-minute one.

With the Premier League title barely a discussion point now, talk has turned – for the moment – to a new contract for Pep Guardiola, a man hitherto wedded to his three-year cycles of frenzied micromanagement. Dangerous words like “legacy” and “dynasty” are being bandied around, but it’s hard to argue with the idea that Guardiola is the only current Premier League manager in a position to fulfil that grand talk.

(*Theoretically, yes. Nnnnyyyyyeah. No.)

“What is wrong with people?” is a question that probably – definitely – cannot be addressed in a hundred words or so within a daily football round-up, but it certainly came to mind on Sunday evening as Antoine Griezmann gleefully Instagrammed his outfit for an 80s-themed Christmas party.

The reaction was, on the whole, not a supportive one, leading Griezmann to offer something of a flimsy justification via Twitter: “Calm down guys. I am a fan of the Harlem Globetrotters and the good times. It is a tribute.”

Soon after that, presumably once his increasingly desperate “people” had finally got through to him, Griezmann was offering the sort of qualified, it’s-not-me-it’s-you apology that is usually mustered in these situations.

This will soon be forgotten, which is great news for Griezmann’s bankability, but perhaps rather less so for football’s bumbling efforts to eradicate racism.

There’s a slight danger that history is gradually starting to remember him as the last winner of the Ballon d’Or before it became an exclusively two-horse race for more than a decade. Some may even have forgotten he was even still an active professional. In any case, Kaka has called time on a career that ticked every box worth ticking: Serie A and La Liga titles, the Champions League and, with Brazil, the World Cup.

A world-record move from Milan to Real Madrid in 2009 – for the now rather quaint sum of £56m – perhaps didn’t provide him with a crowning moment in his peak years, but the abiding memory of Kaka will be his elegant, effortless striding through opposition midfields and as the epitome of “a good touch for a big man.”

Now, though, a vague-sounding directorial role at the San Siro awaits, as does a post-playing career of Pot 2 duties at Champions League draws and the odd light-hearted charity game alongside the Ronaldinhos and Del Pieros of this world.

And somehow we’ve managed 180-odd words without mentioning a Brazilian footballer’s full name. Ricardo Izecson dos Santos Leite, we salute you.

Fresh from twisting the blood of Watford in midweek, Crystal Palace’s sole shining light was at it again in their surprise dismantling of Leicester – the Eagles’ first win and first goals on the Premier League road this season.

Zaha turned 25 last month. He is playing the best football of his career. He will not be cup-tied for European football when it resumes in February. This all points towards one seriously tiresome transfer saga in, ooh, about a fortnight’s time.

In many ways, it was a textbook Mark Hughes afternoon: one part injustice (West Ham’s penalty), one part moral lecturing (Marko Arnautovic’s mutually fond Stoke homecoming) and zero parts admission of any culpability whatsoever.

Just to cap it all off, he had David Moyes (David Moyes!) offering some inevitably patronising-sounding words of semi-support: “I feel for Mark Hughes at Stoke. I know how it feels to have people turn against you.”

And if there’s one thing we think we know about Mark Hughes, it’s that he almost certainly doesn’t like you feeling sorry for him.

The New York Times’Andrew Kehtravels to a prison on the outskirts of Milan, where football is being used to foster relationships between inmates and their children.

Conveniently, the tweet tells you all you need to know here, which leaves me with only the job of asking you to imagine this happening on Sky Sports News with Jim White or Rob Wotton or whoever.

On this very day in 1990: Peter Shilton’s testimonial warranted the assembling of an Italia ‘90 XI – managed by Franz Beckenbauer – who were then put to the sword by a very strange England team.

A 4-0 win at White Hart Lane was sealed through goals from Gary Lineker (nice dive, Platty), Matt Le Tissier (years before his England B indignity), Paul Gascoigne (with some textbook Gazza) and a 39-year-old Kevin Keegan.

Bring this sort of thing back immediately.

Everton continue their climb out of crisis territory by taking on poor old Swansea, who will be getting all misty-eyed about Gylfi Sigurdsson free-kicks and Ashley Williams’ 94% pass accuracy at Goodison Park.