HE hasn’t just jumped the shark, Louis van Gaal has para-sailed over it while juggling chain-saws and mainlining Benzedrine.

In midweek, the Manchester United manager punctuated a stormy press conference by calling a journalist from Britain’s biggest red-top daily “fat man”, which is the media equivalent of a wimpy kid punching the biggest bully right in the nose, hoping the others will be scared off. (Yeah, as if...)

On Friday, he was back trotting out the usual mantras that Manchester United were “going in the right way”. This, despite two years of massive spending and the fact they are three points, two places and seven goals worse off than this time last season (and three points and eight goals worse than under David Moyes).

No matter. Van Gaal says the infrastructure is better, the organis-ation is better and all this is just part of a transition. Like all transitions, it could take a very long time. But – and this is where he goes foot-in-mouth again – he “cannot imagine” that it will take as long for United to win their next title as it will Liverpool, for whom it’s 26 years and counting.

Way to give your biggest rivals bulletin-board material on the eve of today’s clash, Louis!

Those are the bull-in-a-China-shop qualities that make you endearing in a wacky sort of way if you are delivering results. Because he’s not quite doing that – though, in a staggering show of humility, he did admit “maybe you could say we are underperforming” – his message rings somewhere between the hollow and the deluded.

For his part, Jurgen Klopp, today’s adversary, riffed about Van Gaal’s predecessor, calling him the greatest ever or the “John Lennon” of football. Classic Klopp. He knows that instant headlines, like feeding the media a tale of how he met Sir Alex Ferguson nearly a year ago, not only make him seem gracious and likeable, but diverts attention from other matters. Like the fact that they went into the weekend in ninth place, the back four is as much of a sieve as it was under Brendan Rodgers and the club’s record signing up front doesn’t seem to fit the system he wants to play.

Klopp obviously has far more mitigating factors than Van Gaal, but he seems to understand the basic message. If your results aren’t getting people excited, find other ways to fire up your players and your fan base.

It’s a better strategy than appearing to stick your head in the sand, wheeling out claims about intangibles that nobody can measure and calling reporters fat.

NOTHING like jumping to conclusions, eh? Real Madrid and Atletico Madrid both get hit with the same two-transfer-window ban that Barcelona faced and, immediately, some media go into Chicken Little mode, musing about the sky falling on the Spanish capital.

Sure, given that Atletico seem to make player trading their raison d’etre and it’s an open secret that Florentino Perez was planning the umpteenth overhaul of his squad, there will be massive implications. Atletico won’t be able to maintain the annual player churn since guys you sell need to be replaced and with a transfer ban, you’ll be short on bodies. And that can translate into cash-flow issues.

Equally, Real won’t be able to shift Cristiano Ronaldo or Gareth Bale (a corollary to this is that Paris St Germain and Manchester United won’t be able to buy them), nor will they be able to throw nine-digit sums at Sergio Aguero or Paul Pogba or whatever fresh act is needed to headline Florentino’s circus.

But, all this is predicated upon the ban taking effect this summer. And that is extremely unlikely, judging by what Barcelona went through. There are two levels of appeal for the Madrid clubs: Fifa, in first instance, and then the Court of Arbitration for Sport. Barca were originally banned on April 2, 2014, their Fifa appeal was rejected in August and the CAS appeal was turned down on December 30 that year. Only then did the ban take effect, which means the Madrid clubs have nearly nine months to prepare, taking us up to October 2016. In other words, rather than a transfer freeze, we will likely see one of the busiest summers on record.

And that’s assuming the ban is upheld. Both clubs are bullish regarding their chances as you would expect, but, more importantly, there are several key factors which could make this different from the Barca case. First and foremost, they are going to mount a defence other than “Yes, maybe we broke the rules, but La Masia is wonderful and they shouldn’t apply to us since we take good care of our kids”. Which, unsurprisingly, didn’t quite work out for Barcelona.

Second, they have been on their best behaviour since discovering they were being investigated nearly a year ago and that can be considered a mitigating point.

Finally, there’s the small matter of the Fifa elections on February 26. Sure, the Ethics Committee is fully independent (no giggling in the back of the room!), but there’s also a level of realpolitik. And a new president might be more predisposed to buying their arguments.

In other words, the sky isn’t falling. Not just yet anyway.

IT was 13 months ago that Arsenal made their last trip to the Britannia, where today they face Stoke. They gave up a goal in under half a minute, lost 3-2 and, on the way home, Arsene Wenger was roundly abused while boarding the train, an event captured on video and replayed endlessly on YouTube.

That defeat left them sixth, 13 points behind Chelsea. Today, of course, they have a shot at returning to the top of the league and the “Arsene Out” brigade is silent. The Gunners are favourites for the title and it’s largely the same crew (other than Petr Cech) as it was then.

To some, it’s evidence of the folly of questioning a man like Wenger. But perhaps a more accurate, if less profound, message is that this is a low-scoring game where chance and probability play a huge part and that managers are humans who make mistakes and have their own learning curves. And that the measuring stick ought to be forward progress in performance and whether someone else could be doing a better job, rather than simply results.