Chris Moore, UTV current affairs journalist and author of Theatre of Dreams: a Lifetime of Devotion to Manchester United
I never step outside the house without having something on me that says Manchester United - and I'm particularly careful to wear my colours the day after a defeat. I get huge amounts of stick at work, but that's OK. I have no tolerance for people who change teams. It's like the car sticker: a dog is for life, not just for Christmas. The same goes for football teams. I'm in two syndicates in Belfast, so I see between 10 and 12 games a year at Old Trafford - as often as work allows and my wallet permits. It's not that expensive if you put four people in a car and drive. I was at the first leg of the Champions' League match against Juventus, and to be truthful, we were lucky to get away with a draw. Most of the people around me were either day trippers or bandwagon jumpers; the kind who neither sing nor clap nor cheer. That's the trouble with middle-class football. What we've got now is plastic card football - they come to be entertained. It's as if they were at the theatre; they sit and watch and they do not contribute. Me and my son were the only singers in a couple of hundred people, and we tried to cajole them, saying "come on, help them, help them", but there was nothing doing.
There's nothing more moving than to be in a ground where there are sets of chants from rival supporters. I know sometimes it can be a bit abusive, but it's just for 90 minutes - you don't mean it in your heart of hearts, and cheering your team on really does contribute to their performance. You know that from talking to players. I have a new book, United Irishmen, coming out in the autumn, about the Irish players at the club, and when I talked to Denis Irwin he was was fantastically perceptive about the atmosphere of football losing out to the commercial aspects of the game.
You can have 55,000 at Old Trafford and the atmosphere can be zero. People sitting in glass boxes eating and drinking: that's not football. The game has been taken away from its working-class roots, taken away from those who, by their violent behaviour towards one another in the past, abused their position of privilege. So the best thing about being a United fan is to be present and cheer your team on to victory - or even if they don't win, but give a good account of themselves and play like Man United teams in the past, which means exciting, attacking football. Even in the modern tactical games that are being played now. That means being able to defend, but also being able to break with great speed; to go from one penalty box to the other in 10 seconds and put the ball in the net. That's exciting. As for the Champions League, I've been saving up air miles to get to this year's final at the Nou Camp in Barcelona. We'll see.