In the UK alone, for every professional football web site there are probably half a dozen amateur and fan sites and for every proper historian there are hundreds who keep track of their football teams history for personal reasons. Add to this the fact that other people such as programme (matchday magazine) editors for smaller clubs would find it useful and Amateur Leagues would be able to use it to provide professional-level statistics, the potential user-base is quite large.

If any of these people want to generate in-depth statistics or compare data over many years they would either have to pay for software that would do the job, or develop an advanced knowledge of SQL/MySQL/Access.

In my role as programme editor and fansite webmaster for my local club I have tried to do both and found that when I have paid for software it has still not given me everything that I need and when I have tried to get my head around relational databases (which, believe it or not, I have been trying for ten years!) I always get lost! I have tried again recently as I have agreed to take on the redevelopment of the clubs Official site and wanted to make it fully interactive and easy for everyone to update but after many more wasted hours I was no further along and I am sure that I am not the only one who has not been able pick it up.

Most of these people also do these tasks in their spare time without any financial reward (well I certainly do anyway!) so if any piece of software could cut the time spent on collating information it would be more than welcomed. Personally, I spend around 30 hours on each programme, about 10 hours a week on the web site and any time that is left is spent creating new spreadsheets to collate information from several other spreadsheets in an attempt to try to get the information in a useable format. On top of a 50 hour working week this does not leave much free time and, once again, I am certainly not the only one who goes through this just to help their local club.