John Sugden and Alan Tomlinson look at the bidding process for the 2006 World Cup, and England's chances of staging the competition

Sir Bobby Charlton features prominently in the calendar produced to promote England’s campaign to host the 2006 World Cup, which was recently mailed across the football and media networks of the globe. This slick bit of marketing covers 15 months from January 1999 to March 2000 – the month when FIFA is due to announce the winning bid. Sir Bobby appears in two of the pictures – straddling the nostalgia of a black-and-white image of his youth (in a back street of his home town) and the multicoloured glory of England’s 1966 World Cup victory.

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Barnet's chairman has big ideas for a swish stadium to secure the club's future. Funnily enough, not everyone is convinced, as John Cosgrove explains

About five years ago a very small story appeared in the London Evening Standard. It mentioned that Barnet FC were in negotiation with the local council with regard to the possibility of a new stadium to be built within the borough of Barnet. No one at the club would admit anything, no one could say where the story had come from. Very strange.

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Stephanie Pride reports on the legal scrap over Scarborough's ownership that has left football – and the fans – as the main casualties

When striker Steve Brodie parted company with his boot during a dismal midweek goalless draw against Barnet in October in front of barely 1,000 spectators (Man Utd were on the telly), it just about summed up the potency and pulling power of a thoroughly disheartened side seemingly on the road to relegation. But, dismal though events on the pitch have been, it is not the football that Scarborough fans have been talking about in recent months.

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John Williams and Stephen Hopkins look at the departure of Roy Evans from Liverpool, and what it says about how football has changed in the past decade

So farewell Roy … after the inevitable media feeding frenzy comes the wailing and the wake. Most Liverpool supporters adjusted to Roy Evans’s departure from the club to which he had dedicated his entire professional life – and probably too much else besides – more in sadness than anger.

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The biggest shock of the FA Cup first round came at Bedlington, and Ken Sproat saw it all

Bedlington Terriers are a new name to many, but have gained a massive profile following their debut in the FA Cup first round. New unless you know me, that is. I have been preaching Terrier lore with wide-eyed zeal since moving to the town in 1990. Strangely, it is only in retrospect that I realise it was love at first sight. The early matches were turgid, lower Northern League Second Division fare.

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