Martin Samuel was named Sports Journalist of the Year at the British Press Awards in London last night. The honour comes less than a month after the Chief Football Correspondent of The Times was named Sports Writer of the Year by the Sports Journalists’ Association for the third successive year.

Samuel has been a sports writer and columnist for The Times since 2002 and was named Sports Writer of the Year for 2005 and 2006 at the What the Papers Say awards.

In the Sports Photographer of the Year category, Marc Aspland was highly commended.

In today's column, Samuel describes how Manchester City are sending mixed messages to their fans by courting Ronaldinho, the Brazil playmaker. With a global recession beginning to bite, City's owner, Thaksin Shinawatra, admits that his first year in charge of the club has been “heavy on the pockets,” having spent £56 million on a shiny new team for Sven-Göran Eriksson. Yet he is reportedly prepared to pay the Barcelona player, who many consider to be past his best, £100,000-a-week. "In many cases," Samuel says, "the illusion of ambition is what is being placed before supporters."

Samuel could not collect his award as he was witnessing one of the great European nights at Anfield. In his match report he claims Kolo Toure "was disturbed by the legend of a Liverpool who will not lie down, who return from the dead like The Shape in John Carpenter’s Halloween films."

He added: "Had so many of the trappings around Anfield not belonged to the branded, packaged billion-dollar industry that is 21st-century football, this could have been a European Cup tie from the 1970s: one team continental in origin, the other as English as pudding and rain in July. The difference was these Englishmen were mostly foreigners, marshalled by a Spaniard."

Below are the pieces Samuel's award was judged upon:

Wednesday May 2, 2007: Forget Tevez - loan system leaves game open to abuse (this article led to a significant Premier League rules change)

Thursday September 20, 2007: End of the road for gunslinger who played like an accountant

Wednesday November 21, 2007: Long and the short of growing pains that stunt England's finest

Click here to read more of Martin Samuel's columns