Hey, what happened to that vast pro-Barcelona conspiracy?

You know, the one Jose Mourinho warned us about. The massive plot involving Uefa, Unicef, assorted Scandinavian referees, the Bilderberg Group, the Trilateral Commission, the Illuminati and anybody else who might once have crossed the Special One.

It's fair to ask, given that Zlatan Ibrahimovic's two-match ban for the red card he picked up against Valencia was halved this week, meaning he'll be able to play both legs for Paris Saint-Germain against Barca in the Champions League quarter-finals, rather than just the one at Camp Nou.

It's not enough to make favourites out of PSG, who host the first leg on Tuesday, but it does substantially move the needle. So much so that the Catalan press wasted no time in coming up with a conspiracy theory of their own: Uefa president Michel Platini is French and he loves Qatar and the Qataris own PSG.

How about that? Whatever the case – and sometimes it's really something as simple as wanting the best players on the pitch for the biggest games, especially when their offences were rather innocuous or uninfluential – this tie may be closer than many imagine.

PSG have rarely played well this season. For all their expensively assembled talent, they look disjointed and have a special knack for making life difficult for themselves. Leonardo, the club's director of football, said as much a few weeks ago when he declared: "We are much better in the Champions League than in Le Championnat, where our opponents simply put eight men in their penalty box and kick us to bits."

He was exaggerating (somewhat). But he also had a point about PSG and the way they play. Against ultra-defensive opponents, their uber-talented attacking midfielders – Jeremy Menez, Javier Pastore, Lucas Moura, Ezequiel Lavezzi – struggle to find space and it ends up becoming a case of lumping balls to Ibrahimovic. But Barcelona will be a different proposition. With their high line, there will be room for PSG to run into and the presence of Ibrahimovic poses serious match-up problems.

You can stick Gerard Pique on him and hope that will be enough. But then how are you going to mop up around him when PSG break? At the other end of the pitch, obviously nobody can keep up with Leo Messi on his day but Thiago Silva can come closer than most. In fact, he has neutralised Messi on more than one previous occasion. This clash is far from the walkover many expect it to be, particularly now the big man will play both games.

The other big quarter- final is also on Tuesday, with Bayern Munich hosting Juventus. The Germans appear to be everyone's non-La Liga favourites and with good reason. They've dominated the Bundesliga, they're sharp and deep, and even when they do relax (witness the home defeat to Arsenal in the last round) you sometimes feel as if they're doing it to lull the opposition into a false sense of security.

Either that or trying to make things more interesting for themselves: goalkeeper Manuel Neuer has said his side are so much better than their opponents he often gets bored between the sticks because he has nothing to do.

Juventus have been nowhere near as dominant in Serie A – although they are on their way to their second consecutive title – but what they have done is shown the ability to come up big when it counts, doing it again yesterday away to Inter.

On paper it looked like the kind of match they could afford to "take off": resting the starters, playing at half-pace, settling for a draw or even a defeat. That likely would have been the mentality of Juventus and other Italian clubs in the past. Sacrifice this game to give yourself the best possible shot at Bayern in the Champions League.

But this is a wholly different team under Antonio Conte. Apart from Stephan Lichsteiner and Mirko Vucinic, this was Juve's best starting XI out there on the pitch. And they played the Conte way: with an edgy intensity that came close to boiling over, but never did.

The meetings between Bayern and Juve will be fascinating tactically, not least because they bring together Toni Kroos and Andrea Pirlo, some nine months after they were up against each other at Euro 2012. Back then, Kroos, playing for Germany, was supposed to press Italy's playmaker.

The plan backfired spectacularly: Kroos couldn't get near him and, when he did, Pirlo led him down blind alleys which opened space for his team-mates to exploit. The result was a 2-0 defeat for Germany which, truth be told, didn't fully reflect their futility over 90 minutes.

Kroos is an essential part of Bayern's 4-2-3-1 and he will end up being the closest Bayern player to Pirlo. Does he go and try to press him the way he did in the summer or does Jupp Heynckes conjure up a different plan, perhaps with Thomas Muller on Pirlo duty and Kroos free to create elsehwere?

Or should Bayern just ignore Pirlo and focus on their game? Major decisions for Heynckes, of the kind that can cost you a place in a Champions League semi-final.

Sir Alex Ferguson has won two doubles and a treble with Manchester United and a double with Aberdeen but of course that doesn't dampen his enthusiasm for another league-cup combo, which is why he mixed things up yesterday, resting the likes of Tom Cleverley, Wayne Rooney, Nani, Rio Ferdinand, Patrice Evra and Danny Welbeck against an awful Sunderland side.

The real focus is on tomorrow's FA Cup replay against Chelsea at Stamford Bridge and it's not just about advancing and the prospect of Manchester derby. It's also about erasing the horrid display at Old Trafford, when United threw away a 2-0 lead and, in fact, risked losing the match altogether.

All season, the impression has been that United have dominated a generally unimpressive league, at least in the higher echelons of the table. What's been missing for the likely champions-elect has been performances, not results. Tomorrow is a chance to put that right.