Manchester United are not much worse than unbeaten Arsenal on current form - not that you'd know it from all the hysteria

• Man Utd's defeat at MK Dons was an irrelevance
• Man United are a team in transition and will struggle
• Arsenal were lauded for scraping past Besiktas
• Sepp Blatter staying as FIFA president is a win for world football
• If Malky Mackay is the embodiment of football crassness, the Rotherham scandal typifies the political class

By Jeff Powell Follow @@jeffpowell_Mail

Published: 16:31 EST, 28 August 2014 | Updated: 03:32 EST, 29 August 2014

As if any further evidence were needed that bald results scalp plain reason in football, it has been forthcoming in the reaction to two matches this midweek.

The 4-0 defeat of Manchester United’s virtual reserve team at MK Dons provided an eye-popping score-line, sure enough.

But it is not by a headlining exit from that little old cup, which changes its identity more often than Spurs swap managers, that Louis van Gaal will be judged.

VIDEO Scroll down to watch Louis van Gaal: A new team is not built in one month 

Don for: Anderson and his Manchester United team-mates look forlorn at stadium:mk

Tough start: Louis van Gaal has failed to lead Manchester United to victory so far this season

Louis van Gaal: A new team is not built in one month

Old Trafford was in a hiatus of transition before this happened and will continue to be so while the latest boss struggles to correct this listing juggernaut.

A big win, rather than a heavy loss, in the backwater of Milton Keynes would have done nothing whatsoever to change that.

Nor is it by any means certain that spending £60million on the last player they thought of will do so, either. Until this week Angel di Maria was down there somewhere below the washing powder on United’s shopping list.

Of course he is a pretty good footballer. But a Messi, a Ronaldo, a Neymar – or even a Rooney or a Van Persie – he is not.

Di Maria’s goal per game ratio is proof of that - only 22 in 124 La Liga appearances for Real Madrid, seven in 76 for Benfica before that, just 10 in 52 games for Argentina.

Those statistics may come to take on far greater relevance for Van Gaal than the goals-against tally on Tuesday evening.

As for the second of our misleading matches, Arsenal were hailed from the roof-tops for scraping past Besiktas into the Champions League proper.

Pardon me for not coming over all faint with excitement.

So far our resident refereeing guru, Graham Poll, is one of the few to have pointed out that the Turks were deprived of not one, but two blatant first half penalties.

Had Besiktas converted only one of them, Arsenal would have been out and the vultures would have been swooping down on them, too.

Arsene Wenger was his usual oblivious self to such niceties. He went so far as to complain that Mathieu Debuchy did not deserve to be sent off for a second yellow card, even though he should have been shown a red one earlier for the last-man foul which was Arsenal’s second unpunished penalty offence.

Wenger is a good man, an exceptional manager and a purveyor of fine football – so I prefer to observe that he was reacting out of relief at this escape, not with jubilation. 

Easing the burden: Alexis Sanchez (left) and Jack Wilshere celebrate the Chile star's goal against Besiktas

VIDEO Sanchez showed fighting spirit - Wenger

A Spur-of-the-moment decision? Sanchez and his Tottenham-crested cap

He has reason to do so. His purchase of Alexis Sanchez for £30m would have become an almost intolerable financial burden had Arsenal not advanced to the treasure-laden stage of the Champions League. 

Sanchez eased the burden by scoring the only goal at the Emirates on Wednesday.

However, Barcelona’s Chilean reject did not play anything like as wonderfully as some of his reviewers proclaimed. 

It was also depressing to see pictures of him emerging hours later from the same Chinawhite night spot in London which has become a garish symbol of the Premier League footballer’s clubbing habit.

Not that he has picked up on all the culture just yet. He was wearing a cap emblazoned with a Tottenham-like cockerel.

It is thanks to Sanchez that Arsenal have qualified in the Champions League for a 17th consecutive season.

That is a tremendous achievement by Wenger and yes, overall Arsenal were better than Besiktas.

But on current form, United are not much worse than Arsenal.

Not, amid all the hysteria, that you would know it.

Blatter staying as FIFA president is a victory for football

Michel Platini has counted the numbers. They do not add up in his favour. So it will be carry on Sepp as president of FIFA for another four years.

And whether the anti-Blatter brigade like it or not, there are millions of perfectly good reasons why that status quo is being maintained.

There are the hundreds of millions of World Cup dollars which Blatter channels into the support and development of football around the world, as well as into the construction of whole villages to house the game’s impoverished families.

Contrast that with Platini’s fiefdom, UEFA, using much of its power and resources to further swell the coffers of the richest clubs in Europe.

For more years: Sepp Blatter (right), with Michel Platini (left) at the World Cup in Brazil

No wonder the wealthy Europeans – England and our bloated Premier League among them – would like to see the back of Blatter. Unsurprising, also, that all their propaganda falls on unreceptive ears elsewhere and that the rest of the world’s football confederations are standing solidly behind Blatter, the man who has negotiated on-going World Cup television and marketing deals more enormous than most believed possible.

While the Manchesters and Madrids of Planet Football are spending obscene fortunes on buying and paying players, FIFA by-and-large finance the game’s poorer rather than noisier neighbours.

Given that FIFA – in economic terms as well as its sphere of influence – operates on the scale of the government of a medium-sized nation, it is inevitable that some of its investments will fall into unscrupulous hands.

What happened, after all, to so much of the Live Aid money once it disappeared into Africa?

Nothing is perfect, FIFA included. But there is a missionary element to its work under Blatter which is virtually missing from UEFA… and from our own Football Association, come to that.

The ultimate prize: Germany celebrate winning the World Cup in the summer

Even the flawed and much-derided awarding of the 2022 World Cup to Qatar – which the president himself admits was a mistake given the summer heat in the Middle East – was born as much of that zeal as by the fortune to be made there.

Inferior: Spain celebrate winning the European Championship but it isn't a patch on the World Cup

The ensuing allegations of corruption have been followed by sabre-rattling here about European nations boycotting Qatar and, for political reasons, the intervening 2018 World Cup in Russia.

Oh really? The best players on earth will go along with that, will they?

Not if you were watching the Finals in Brazil this summer.

The intensity with which those stars competed for the greatest prize of all far surpassed anything we see now in the Premier and Champions Leagues.

There are millions of perfectly good reasons for that, too.

Nothing enhances the earning power or the advertising, endorsement and image rights of the modern footballer like a good World Cup. Certainly not the European Championship of nations, by the way, which falls well short of the World Cup in terms of excitement.

So Monsieur Platini will go back to ‘my work with UEFA,’ a job he would have been obliged to relinquish had he taken a tilt at the FIFA presidency which would have been doomed to failure.

Herr Blatter will continue to confound the witch-hunters while delivering more lucrative World Cups for everyone.

And while this may not be everyone’s ideal, at least in this area of global governance peace has broken out.

If Mackay typifies football, what of the Rotherham scandal? 

Those murky texts from Malky and his mate – banter as he described those racist and homophobic nuances – seem to have dropped below the radar already.

Can it be long, tragically, before the same happens with the police, their commissioner, the council fat cats and the appallingly misnamed social workers who put political correctness before the protection of hundreds of under-age girls being brutalised and gang-raped by gangs of Pakistanis who shame their own community and religion?

Malky is said to typify attitudes in football. What we can be certain of is that the sexual abuse and trafficking of children in Rotherham is happening in many other cities in this supposedly civilised country of ours.

Don’t let either of this lot get away with it.

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