“FOR the first time, the sight is in end,” a tangled-up David Pleat said after 75 minutes, with Arsenal on the verge of greatness. And right on cue, Barcelona equalised.

Then the rain fell. Then Barcelona scored again. And with that, Arsenal were staring down what Pleat would probably call the gun of a barrel.

You cannot say that there weren’t omens: the teamsheet revealed that Arsenal were starting with two English players in their line-up. That’s what you call throwing away the formbook, in Champions League terms. This season’s competition has amply demonstrated that if you field a lot of Englishmen (Everton), you go out in the qualifying stages. If you field a smattering of Englishmen (Manchester United, Chelsea, Liverpool), you go out halfway through. If you field no Englishmen at all (Arsenal, Barcelona), you go all the way to the final.

Still, at least Arsenal showed up. If you didn’t clock on for the early shift on Sky, you missed entirely the panic about whether or not they would.

With 72 minutes remaining before kick-off, there was no sign of the Arsenal bus at the stadium and Richard Keys, who is paid not to miss this kind of story, was becoming worried. “I’m getting slightly concerned about the whereabouts of Arsenal,” he said.

The rules on this are clear: arrive at the ground less than an hour before kick-off and you risk a sanction from Uefa. Get there with an hour and nine minutes to spare and you risk sending Keys into a motherly tizzy, which is worse. “It’s most unlike Arsenal,” he said.

Over on ITV, Ally McCoist and Andy Townsend weren’t worried. They had made it again on to the playing area, accompanied by their table. Week after week this season, these tireless analysts have breached security in some of Europe’s finest football stadiums, carrying a substantial piece of furniture with them. Which either says something about their tenacity, or something about the levels of security in Europe’s finest football stadiums.

Whatever, those table-top chats have been a high point of ITV’s Champions League coverage this year — or what we could hear of them above the crowd noise, anyway.

Last night, those noise levels were exceptional. “It’s hard to hear yourself think,” McCoist said, which prompts the question: what, exactly, is the sound of Ally McCoist thinking? Impressions on a cassette tape to the usual address.

Meanwhile, up in the studio, Gabby Logan was risking a loss of focus by asking Terry Venables about the rumours linking him with the Middlesbrough job — on this of all nights, a small battle in a distant country, surely.

And Venables was risking losing viewers to Sky by doing an impression of Sven-Göran Eriksson on the phone, which would have worked if Eriksson was German and about 75 years old but, as it was, became merely the most leg-crossingly embarrassing moment seen during a sports programme this century.

Deprived by poor refereeing of the beautiful game that we had been promised, we will have to make do with our memories of the beautiful build-up.

As part of the ceremony celebrating the 50th anniversary of the European Cup, a sheet of numbers was dragged across the pitch. It looked like the maths homework that children up and down the country were busy not doing.

And has there ever been a better-decorated tunnel? Flushed with blue, apparently thickly carpeted and with a light smattering of scatter cushions, it appeared to be the entrance into a first-class airport lounge rather than the portal to a football stadium. The cameras performed the traditional last-minute inspection of the players and officials.

Reassuringly, Arsenal had found time to change. Equally reassuringly, none of the officials was in replica kit. It would later become clear that an official doesn’t need to wear the wrong kind of shirt to spoil a match.

EURO STAT: Barcelona's victory was greeted with a loud cheer by Celtic fans. The Spanish side's triumph means that the Scottish title-winners go into the Champions League group stage next season. If Arsenal had won, Celtic would have had to qualify.