Enrique pleased with Messi progress

“It is good to see Messi back on the pitch – we all enjoy watching him train and play”. Argentina captain Messi returned to action for the first time since injuring his knee at the end of September as a second-half substitute at the Bernabeu.

Wenger said: “It’s true that we need a positive result from Bayern but that positive result only has an impact if we win, so let’s focus on what we can do”.

“With this pain comes an opportunity to exact revenge in a few months time and play the kind of game we wanted to play today”. “If we want to keep our destiny in our own hands, we have to win here, although not many teams have done that these last few years”, said Garcia at Monday’s pre-match press conference.

And finally Zenit St Petersburg have already qualified from Group H but will clinch first place with a draw against Valencia, who in turn, will progress if they win and Gent fail to beat Lyon in the other tie.

“We battled hard and tried to play our game despite the weather”.

“Tuesday will be a different competition”.

“We’re going to try to do things differently and not just defend”. “Hopefully we can prepare for it well and produce a big performance at Barcelona”.

It looks highly likely Barca will top the group but the race to finish as runners up and qualification for the knockout rounds is finely balanced with two rounds of matches to go.

Roma, meanwhile, are without Francesco Totti, Gervinho (both thigh) and Mohamed Salah (ankle), though Daniele De Rossi could be fit to return to the squad.

That result left Luis Enrique’s men four points clear of the BBVA Primera Liga and showed that after a slow start to the season, they are now very much back to their best.

Enrique has seen how the Luis Suarez-Neymar striking duo has grown during Messi’s absence and as such will allow his start striker to pace his recovery, thinking in the long term rather than in any quick fix.