I'm the football correspondent of the Financial Times, cover football in the north-east of England for the Sunday Telegraph and have a weekly column about eastern European football on the Guardian website.

I also write regularly for FourFourTwo and Champions and for a range of magazines in Japan, China and India. Being from Sunderland, I acknowledge Bob Kyle's 1913 title-winners as the greatest side ever, but also have a lingering affection for the Red Star Belgrade side of 1990-91. Who were brilliant, even if it might not have looked like it in the final.

My two achievements in life are persuading the Holiday Inn chain, after an extended letter-writing campaign, to place non-caffeine-based drinks in all rooms as standard, and seeing the Belarusian government commit to erecting a statue of the late playmaker Sacha Prokopenko three days after I'd written a piece lamenting the lack of respect shown to Dinamo Minsk's 1982 Soviet League champions. Admittedly there is no direct evidence I had a decisive influence in either case, but can anyone prove I didn't?

My first book, Behind the Curtain: Travels in Eastern European Football, was short-listed for the NSC Football Book of the Year Award; my latest, Inverting the Pyramid: A History of Football Tactics is out this June.

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