When we first built “Football Chairman Lite”, our aim was to make a football management-style game that was really quick and simple to play.

In order to do that, we created a simplified version of the real-life structure of English football. In real life, the top seven divisions have varying numbers of teams taking part – from 20 to 24. So we chose 22 teams for each division of our game.

The main benefit of each league having exactly the same number of teams was that the structure of each season would be identical, no matter which division you are in. So you’d have the same number of league fixtures to play, the same number of promotion and relegation slots, and the same weekly calendar across all the divisions.

We felt this made the game easier to play – if it’s week 40, then you know you’ve got 2 weeks of the season left, no matter which division you’re in.

Over the last few years, as we’ve added more depth and complexity to the game, people have often asked why we haven’t changed the game structure to make it match real life.

Firstly, we still believe that the consistent structure makes the game simpler, and it definitely keeps it faster to play because it cuts down the amount of code needed to create each season’s calendar.

But what it also does is allow users to compare their club and player records, no matter what datapack they’re using and what division they are in. If we every create highscore tables (which we’re hoping to do soon), this will be invaluable.

And one final thing to think about…

By the time most people get to the top flight of the game, it’s probably roughly the year 2050, or something like that.

So how do any of us know how many teams will be in each division by 2050 anyway? There might be a European Super League (or an Intergalactic League?) by then!