Image: Â·HD (via Flickr)

The inside left has always been the player who sees the game from a different plain. Cutting, incisive and visionary, it’s the role so many of us wish we could have done justice to on the pitch. Having failed on that score, we’re now aiming to bring the spirit of the inside left to the world of football writing.

Our new online journal is dedicated to telling thought-provoking football stories – no news, gossip or reports, just the best comment, analysis and anecdotes from players, managers, supporters and a team of talented contributors who span the length and breadth of the globe, as well as the depths of the league pyramid.

Over the coming weeks, the pages on our menu that currently sit empty will slowly come to life. Our Odysseys section will bring you the remarkable stories of those who have travelled far and wide to new lands, all for the love of football, while the One Love section will reveal the culture behind various clubs and their fan bases, as life-long supporters give us the inside track on the team of their hearts.

If that doesn’t sound nostalgic enough for you, our next two features will dive back into the past with two feet. In Revisited, we will take a look at those events consigned to the file in football history marked ‘forgotten’ and talk to the people who were there about some extraordinary moments. Retroselective, meanwhile, should get you all talking, as we ask the experts to name their dream XI of modern-day players to fit into the antiquated playing systems of the game’s formative years.

Finally, in My Five, we will turn once again to the whim of our contributors, and ask them to select five great examples from any given aspect of football’s broad and illustrious past. If you want to see us select our five favourite anything (within the boundaries of the beautiful game, of course), get in touch with us through the Contact page.

As for our title, well there is, without doubt, something magical about the inside left, even if nobody uses the term anymore. I have a friend whose face lights up at the mere mention of the name Hagi. With wide eyes and a smile, he usually responds with one word – ‘legend’ – before presumably nipping off to search for the great man on YouTube.

A good inside left is creative and insightful, but most importantly carries an air of nostalgia – after all, no matter how fast, how strong and how fit professional footballers become, there will always be a need for the man who sits between the lines and just knows when and where to play the final ball.

So we know you’ll understand when we say we want to write about football like the inside left plays it.