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Ha ha, yes, personalise the game, add a bit of a fantasy element - that's what gives me the kicks! My chairperson is my wife - I blame her every time she shuts the purse! I'm actually a complete numpty when it comes to modding. I've never made anything except player pics for my own starter-kids. For the stadium effects all I do is methodically follow the instructions the genius dudes write in the thread (remembering to keep back-ups of the folders you delete until you're sure everything works). Oh and don't delete - keep a copy of the folders of modified stuff. When Steam updates it sometimes restores the original files so you need to put your modded ones back in.

A challenge, yeh. Neither easier nor harder - just different. Basically to start as low as you can go and see how far you can get with the same group of kids, starting aged 14-15 through to their retirements (never got that far yet!). In my gameworld my club is a kind of quasi-cult, where the players and staff are happy to be paid peanuts, never leave, no one arrives, and they idolise the boss. I began a few years ago by making every starting/incoming kid PA200 but that got too easy. I've honed it over the years to have a long-lasting challenge that's a bit tougher, but at the moment I'm still getting promotions too easily. Having yourself as manager with CA1 seems to make bugger all difference though. Btw, the 'leave at the end of contract' is a trick to stop the players demanding to leave. I can always extend the contract expiry date to keep him indefinitely. It only fails when the chairman sells a player from under you. Nb. I always use an add-on lower league file. I previously started at level 22-23 but even with CA1 players that's too easy. This time I started in a non-relegation level 12 division. It's still too easy! If i can keep going we'll hit the Premier League before my original squad has passed their peak.

Faffing about with the stadium files has really enhanced my game. I created my own park-football youth team, populating it with 15 year-olds at the start, and putting the team in a fantasy division of made-up teams from villages and islands with populations of 100 or so. With attendances in single figures it just didn't look right playing in multi-leveled stadia in urban environments. By following the tips in the linked thread I have not only got rid of the stands, but also changed the scenes outside to trees rather than housing estates or shipping containers. Bear I mind what you change doesn't just affect your own stadium - it affects all those in the same categories, and you can't really know which ones they are. For example, in the folder for the smallest clubs, named 0-10000 (being the maximum capacities) there are 6 sub-folders named 'a' to 'f'. You can't know which clubs belong to which. Having said that, after I created my home stadium to have a capacity of 5000 (looking forward to a rash of promotions) whilst not altering my rivals', I have managed to retain 2 stands that hopefully will fill up in time whilst having trees and fields behind the goals. Other local clubs have no stands at all. Into my 4th season the crowds are still in double figures; whenever they increase to over 5000 I've given myself a bit of a problem but I'll either just use FMRTE to increase the capacity to 10K or fiddle about and try to restore the stands I deleted. Then when we exceed that it'll be time to extend the stadium or build a new one. We'll move into the second folder of 10-20K which I haven't touched, but I'll still alter the outside scenes to a rural feel.