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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Harry Pearson charts the reversal of fortunes for Hamilton Ricard

The second and third things Middlesbrough fans least expected to see this season were resident Scandinavian fop Mikkel Beck winning a 50/50 challenge and Hamilton Ricard heading towards Christmas as one of the Premiership’s top marksmen. The barrel-chested Colombian arriv­ed at the River­side from Dep­ortivo Cali in a £2 million deal dur­ing the second-half of last season after an apparently bitter tug of love between Boro and Sheffield Un­ited over his affections.

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A brief guide to football on the English riviera from Nick House

1927 Torquay take Aberdare’s Football League place following a controversial second ballot. The new boys promptly lose 9-1 at Millwall and finish in the bottom five in all but two of their first seven seasons. Unusually bad results each August suggest the signing of holidaymakers on fortnightly contracts.

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