You could be Scouse!

1. "Good evening everybody, and a very warm welcome to one and all of you wherever you may be. Here's hoping for a wonderful game of football between Manchester United and Barcelona in Rome's Stadio Olimpico tonight. Before we get on with the fun, a brief safety announcement: the fire exits are there, here and off down there. Pleasantries and formalities over, now we can get on with the ... oh, for the love and honour of sweet baby jesus, Sky anchorman Richard Keys is already saying that "on nights like these we're all Englishmen" ... to an audience that boasts Dutchman Ruud Gullit and Scotland's Graeme Souness and Planet Inanity's Jamie Redknapp.

2. Obviously he's implying that everyone in England wants Manchester United to win when he must know by now that nothing could be further from the truth.

3. Some ground-rules for some of our more excitable readers: If you wish to send in an always welcome email, please bear in mind that I almost certainly won't get a chance to read more than a fraction of them during the game, unless it's unspeakably tedious, in which case I may well switch over to BBC and start giving a minute-by-minute report on the latest antics of the chaffinch family on Springwatch.

4. 4 min: "Park! Park! Wherever you may be! You eat dogs in your home country! But it could be worse, you could be Scouse! Eating rats in your council house!" sing the United hordes. For my money, the greatest football chant of all time as it manages to be simultaneously endearing and offensive on a number of levels.

5. 28 min: "In an email entitled 'Another George classic', correspondent Michael Friel reveals that "acording to the renowned RTE commentator George Hamilton, Barcelona's play is not poetry in motion but 'geometry in motion' ... it's all about the angles you see."

6. 57 min: Stroke … pass … triangle … slide-rule pass … back-heel … tip … tap … slide-rule pass … neat triangle … neat triangle … neat tirangle … through-ball … languid stroke … flick … trap … deft touch … chest … clatter … hoof ... yaroo! Free-kick for Barcelona.

7. A lot of journalists in England left looking very stupid tonight ... and I'm not one of them. Yahoo! I honestly couldn't believe how many tabloid johnnies and supposed broadsheet behemoths were breezily predicting a win for Manchester United this morning. On what grounds were they basing this nonsense?

8. A text from my good friend and colleague Scott Murray "Liverpool always win in Rome," he says, archly."

Barry Glendenning, Guardian online live coverage Barça-Manchester.