Everyone should of course read Robert Harley’s Complete Guide to High End Audio. That said, keep it simple. Phono stage to pre-amp, unless you’ve made some a very questionable choice in pre-amps then any combination will work just fine. So you can forget about that one. The main thing you need to understand, if you pick a low output MC (arbitrarily defined by me as below 0.3mV) you can expect to have a lot more challenges than if you pick a medium output (again arbitrarily defined by me as above 0.3mV) cartridge.
This is NOT to say buy a cartridge based on output. Its simply a way of winnowing down the field by eliminating the ones that are most likely to pose a challenge.
Limiting yourself to a nice medium output MC (or any MM) will free up virtually all phono stages on the market. You won’t have to worry about gain, or step up transformers, and noise will be much less of a concern too.
Then armed with this one simple rule now you are free to focus on what really matters, sound quality. THAT is the way to match components. NOT to each other but TO YOU!