Manchester United v Sabah: Champions League – live

We live in a world eager to issue commands about all the things we need – chief among them money, not one we often contest. But it is unarguably the case that the world’s resources are bountiful enough for every person in it to live in comfort and luxury … if only our species was pleasant enough to deem that essential.

The problem is that for some people, it’s not about having, but about having more. Take Manchester United, for example: we’re currently being told that they need to be in the Champions League because the financial disadvantage of being out of it is so extreme that it’s impossible for them to compete with the clubs that are involved.

This is not so because, rather like planet earth – yes, here cometh the segue – Manchester United possesses the means to sustain itself. Rather what Manchester United need is owners who don’t sequester sizeable chunks of what it generates for their own selfish ends.

It does, though, remain the case that for reasons emotional and mythological, well enough known not to require enumerating here, Manchester United need to be in the Champions League. Well, here they are.

And they have the players to do something. They’ve made a spotty start in the league, but despite conceding an injury-time equaliser at Everton last weekend, the game contained more positives than negatives, the team still settling into a style of play intended to be dominant and controlled, in the aftermath of a World Cup summer, with their big midfield signing still injured.

All that will cost them in the league, so too the failure or inability to reinforce the defence. But provided they can stay in this competition into the new year – something that’s often been beyond them in the Post-Fergie Wilderness Years^TM – they ought by then to have a method which suits knockout football, and already no longer have André Onana in net, chucking them in as fast as they can be scored.

In the meantime, though, there’s a league out of which they need to get – created, by amazing coincidence, because for some, it’s not about having but about having more.