As grassroots football fans anxiously await the latest government and FA updates, desperate to get some idea of when the local football season might get the green light, there is one way they could be getting involved with their local club – Football Manager 2020.

YOUR CLUB, YOUR WAY

Your club, your way is the tagline for this season’s edition of the popular management video game but the standard issue only goes down to the National League South. So how does that help out grassroots fans who would like to try their hand at managing Buckland Athletic or Crediton United or even Newton Rovers?

Take a bow, Dan Gander!

Thanks to the Football Manager database editor and Dan’s annual sweat and tears, fans of any club in the English football pyramid can take the helm of their club (at least, they will be able to once Dan’s completed his mammoth task).

In fact, we’ve noticed that people connected to Paignton Saints are ahead of the game on this and have been using Dan’s database already.

Clubnets reached out to Dan to ask him some questions about his labour of love:

How long have you been editing the FM databases for?

“I’ve been editing for around six years now. My first one was only basic and went down to Level 10 of the English football league system as I didn’t know what I was doing. This current one is the biggest I’ve ever tried creating with the number of divisions in each Level.”

What are the best and worst parts of editing?

“Best part is when you have to verify the database to see it works – and it works fine! Worst part is finding team information, especially the lower levels; finding correct club colours, nicknames and years founded is extremely difficult but it’s worth it in the end.

“The FA Full Time website, Wikipedia and Twitter are my best friends when editing. Twitter is the best place to look for club information for me. Hardest one for me was the Crook and District League. There wasn’t much information on the league and 75% of teams aren’t on social media (or they haven’t updated it for a number of years).”

How long does it take to edit a division – and what do you have to do?

“It probably takes me 45 – 60 minutes to do a division. That’s adding new towns, longitude and latitude, new stadiums then adding the kit colours.”

How can Devon fans show their appreciation?

Donations would be gratefully received at https://www.paypal.me/DanG1985

So how can you get started?

If you haven’t got FM20 yet, then the first step is to purchase the game from https://www.footballmanager.com/ or your chosen merchant.

At the time of writing this blog, Dan had released up to Level 14 of his epic task. For South Devon, that means Western League, Peninsula League, Devon Football League and the South Devon Football League down to Division Two are covered. If you fancy yourself as the Benitez of Babbacombe Corries Reserves or the Klopp of Kingsteignton Thirds, keep a tab on Dan’s updates for Level 15.

Here is the link to the download page for Dan’s free Level 14 database. Scroll down the list of leagues and you will see a download link: https://community.sigames.com/topic/498100-wip-fm20-e20-england-to-level-20/

What’s New on Clubnets?

If you have a free website with Clubnets you will notice that they are all now protected with SSL technology. In layman’s terms, they have the padlock icon in the browser bar and no longer trigger the Google ‘Not Secure’ warning. This means that all communication between the websites and the server on which they’re hosted is encrypted (scrambled).

We have also been in communication with a potential brand sponsor for the 2020/21 season and hope to launch our £5 Clubnets Classified ads service very soon.

We are also hoping to launch one or two new websites before the new season, whenever that may be.

Finally, we are very keen for fans or clubs in the Exeter area to get in touch if they fancy selling ads on Exeter-based club websites. For a very small monthly fee you get to keep 100% of the commission you make. Click the red button at the top of the page to find out more.

That’s it for now. Stay safe and thanks for reading!

Neil