One man more than any other has the power to shape the entire football season in Britain. And he isn’t a player, a manager, chairman or owner.

This mighty football potentate is a mild-mannered IT techy named Glenn Thompson, and he compiles the fixtures for the Scottish Football League, the English Premier League and Football League, as well as the Conference, Ryman League and Reserve and Academy Leagues. He is the British game’s match-maker par excellence, and has been for the last 12 years.

It might sound like a fairly routine, and possibly dull, task to carry out — but there is far more to the job than typing the names of all the teams in each division into a computer and waiting for it to spew out a fully formed fixture list. There are hundreds of factors that have to be taken into consideration to create a calendar for the season that is acceptable to everybody.

The fruits of Thompson’s laptop will be revealed today, when the fixture lists come out. And the annual summer ritual marks the end of a long, complicated process for Thompson, a Darlington supporter who is based in Edinburgh.

“It all starts in November the previous year when Fifa and Uefa release their calendars of dates for the following season’s European and international games,” he said. “That gives me a framework in which to fit all the Scottish Football League and English League games.

“The real hard work kicks in in May, when you know which teams will be in which divisions. Then the adrenalin is really pumping in the weeks leading up to the deadline for the fixture lists to be published. Then I’ll be working 70 hours a week easily to get them finished, and to get all the different Leagues to accept them.

“I was in the office until 2.40am the day I had to submit the list to the English Football League, and I have rarely left the office before midnight every night for the last couple of weeks. It’s hard work.

“It’s so complex because if you change one fixture, it has knock-on effects across the whole League. So you can be close to completing the puzzle only to reach a dead-end, and you have to start back at the beginning.”

The compilation methodology is based on pairing teams up, so wherever possible they don’t both play at home on the same day. Local rivals like Montrose and Brechin, and East Stirlingshire and Stenhousemuir are pairs, for example, and they give Thompson his working template.

But then come the myriad local factors that need to be taken into consideration. Ayr United have to play away when the town’s race-track stages the Ayr Gold Cup or the Scottish Grand National. Raith Rovers like to avoid playing at home when Kirkcaldy’s traditional Links Market is open for business. And towns across the country have local holidays that must be factored in to Thompson’s mind-melting equation.

“The police have their say as well,” he said, “but not as much as they do in the English Premier League.

“The crowds in the Scottish Football League tend to be smaller, and the matches are more low-key, so the police tend to have fewer problems. But their opinion has to be taken into consideration.

“There are also golden rules you have to follow: no team will have more than three games either home or away on the run. And in the Scottish Football League the clubs like their traditional local derby games on January 2, so they have to be planned in.”

Thompson, happily, gets few complaints about his handiwork. But every year he hears some grumbling from Premier League managers in England who have to play League games on the back of away ties in Europe, but Thompson insists it’s not his fault.

“They always blame ‘the fixture compiler’ or ‘the fixture computer’, but it’s not right,” he said. “The fixture list is published long before we know who is going to be playing where, or when, in Europe. You can’t take criticism personally, though.”

The day after the fixtures are released Thompson breathes a big sigh of relief and goes back to his normal job as a technical architect for IT services company, Atos Origin. But today will be the highlight of his working year. “Despite all the hard work, it is incredibly satisfying,” he said.

“To see the list, and to know that you have had such a big influence on the way the season will shape up, and what it will mean to millions of people, is an incredible feeling.”