THE image isn’t quite that of two desperate passengers on the Titanic scrambling for a life raft, knowing there will likely be just one place available and that neither might actually make it. But it’s not far off. City and United face off today in the Manchester derby and, with nine games to go, the stakes are obvious: a shot at a top-four finish and a place at Europe’s top table next season.

The life raft analogy isn’t a perfect one. United have been cheerily briefing that they are just such a profitable, cash-spinning brand that even another year out of Europe would not really affect them where it matters (to the Glazers, at least) even though it would be their second in three seasons. But qualifying certainly won’t save Louis van Gaal’s job, either.

As for City, come what may, they will have a new manager. Missing out would mean registering their lowest league finish since Year One of the Sheikh Mansour era, but, heck, Pep Guardiola is on his way so that’s really a secondary concern anyway.

In reality, it would be more of a blow than either side let on. The charade whereby we pretend United really are progressing because their 64-year-old manager with a single year left on his contract is “bringing through youngsters” will come to an end. Anyone can chuck kids – none of whom he was responsible for taking to the club – into a starting line-up, but if, as a consequence, the side drop like a stone, it doesn’t do much good. Sir Alex Ferguson flooded the first team with Academy products and they went on to win the league. Van Gaal can push his kids all he likes, but if the results – in addition to awful football and inane post-game comments – amount to finishing lower than last season, that’s not progress. Not after his monstrous summer spend.

With City, the prospect of bending over backwards to acquire Guardiola only to send him off into the Europa League wilderness is equally unpleasant. He didn’t leave Bayern for a club that play on Thursday nights. And while everyone bangs on about the new Premier League TV deal, it’s an undeniable fact that the gains would be offset by lost Champions League revenue. For a club not yet clear of Financial Fair Play obstacles, that’s not a good thing. So make no mistake about it. Today is pivotal. It may well come down to who copes better with the absences: up front for United, at the back for City.

At Fifa, in case you hadn’t noticed, there are folks desperate to give the organisation a total makeover. It’s not just new president Gianni Infantino. It is the lawyers, too: the in-house legal team led by Marco Villiger and the “white-shoe” US law firm Quinn Emanuel, who were brought in to help with the US Department of Justice case.

Last week, Fifa announced they are seeking a cut of the £130 million the FBI seized from defendants such as Chuck Blazer, Jack Warner and other disgraced football power-brokers. They may or may not recover some of that money and, to be fair, they have a decent argument – ultimately, if Concacaf and Conmebol were turned into kleptocracies, a chunk of the stolen cash belonged to Fifa. But there’s more to it than that. By seeking restitution, Fifa are bolstering their case to maintain the “victim status” the DOJ indictment has afforded them. It is not just an image thing, though it bolsters the narrative that those indicted, some of whom have pleaded guilty, ultimately defrauded Fifa and their members.

The reason it matters is that should the DOJ change their mind and conclude Fifa aren’t victims but co-conspirators, the £1 billion or so they hold as cash reserves could be frozen.

That is the good news about the revamp. We will see if the transparency lasts, but, for now, the fact that credible folk with wide-ranging powers are running a fine-tooth comb through Fifa’s activities over the past two decades – and have gone so far as to recognise that at least two World Cup bid processes (France 98 and South Africa 2010) were rigged – can only be a positive.

Less impressive is the more cosmetic stuff. On Friday, Fifa unveiled China’s “Wanda Group” as a “new” commercial partner, signing them up until the 2030 World Cup. Wanda are China’s biggest property developers and cinema owners as well as shareholders in Atletico Madrid. A year ago, they bought InFront, the media rights and services company which, since 2002, have been Fifa partners. So, in a sense, they are sponsoring an entity (Fifa) that also happens to be a client.

The irony and remarkable coincidence? InFront’s chief executive happens to be Philippe Blatter. Ring a bell? Yes, he is the nephew of the former Fifa president.

Some things don’t change.

THE Champions League draw is not seeded at this stage and there are only so many combinations with eight teams remaining, yet it can’t be lost on anyone that the ties that cam out of the hat on Friday kept the big boys apart as much as possible for one more round.

Real Madrid and Bayern Munich were likely doing cartwheels at drawing Wolfsburg and Benfica respectively. A mid-table Bundesliga side and a Portuguese club stuck in a deadlocked league battle take on two of the three richest sides in the world. What’s more, both Real Madrid (third in La Liga and out of the running) and Bayern (nursing a five-point lead in the league going into the weekend) can devote all their attention to the Champions League.

Barcelona v Atletico is nowhere near as one-sided on paper, but that’s down to Diego Simeone’s prickly style, which has made his team the one most opponents would least want to face. When it comes to relative strength, there is no contest as has been painfully obvious when the two square off in La Liga. Two years ago, Atletico knocked Barca out in the quarter-finals, but that was under Tata Martino (who is no Luis Enrique), Neymar was still finding his feet in Europe and there was no Luis Suarez banging in the goals.

The closest tie appears to be Paris Saint-Germain v Manchester City. It’s Zlatan Ibrahimovic’s potential European swansong against City’s lame-duck manager and injury-prone defence. City have the firepower to derail Laurent Blanc’s PSG express, even though the latter finally look like a team, not a Qatari Panini sticker collection. Whether they regain enough of their mojo to actually do it is another matter.