Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/1920–21 Burnley F.C. season/archive1

The following is an archived discussion of a featured article nomination. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the article's talk page or in Wikipedia talk:Featured article candidates. No further edits should be made to this page.

The article was not promoted by Karanacs 16:39, 18 May 2010 [1].

1920–21 Burnley F.C. season edit

Nominator(s): Big Dom 22:22, 8 May 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I am nominating this for featured article because... I feel that after a Peer Review in which some image-related problems were found and addressed, it meets the FA criteria. If promoted, this would be the first Featured Article to fall under the scope of WP:SEASONS, and for some time now I have been working on this article for that purpose. Currently listed as a Good Article, it provides a comprehensive review of the season in which Burnley F.C. became champions of England for the first time in their long history, amassing a 30-game unbeaten streak along the way. If you want to find out more about this historic campaign, click the link and start reviewing! Cheers in advance for your comments, Big Dom 22:22, 8 May 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Comment—no dab links or dead external links. Ucucha 23:23, 8 May 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for checking, Big Dom 11:49, 9 May 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Comment. I think this still needs some work on the prose front. It's certainly a lot better than many football articles, but there's still a bit of a tabloid feel about it, as in "with Bob Kelly netting four goals". A few more specific examples:
- On 25 September 1920, Burnley won their third home match in a row with four different goalscorers netting in a 4–0 victory over Chelsea." Apart from that "netting" again, the sentence is slightly ambiguous because of the poor choice of "with" as a linking word. Does it mean the third home win in which four different goalscorers "netted", or that four different goalscorers had "netted" in each of the previous two games and this one?
- "City were also challenging for the league title and eventually finished as runners-up, and several people were injured at the match as the stadium became overcrowded." What links these two ideas together (challenge for the title and injuries), that justifies them being in the same sentence?
- "However, the team suffered their fifth league defeat of the campaign on 9 April 1921 ...". A personal dislike of mine; "team" cannot possibly be plural.
- "... falling to a 0–2 away defeat at West Bromwich Albion." Can you "fall to" a defeat?
- "Following the win over Leicester City, Burnley were handed a Second Round match ...". "Handed a match"?

Malleus Fatuorum 18:36, 9 May 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for taking a look at the article, I've had a go at addressing your comments:

Have changed the wording in the "On 25 September..." sentence
Split up the Manchester City sentence into two separate ones
Changed "their" to "its"
Taken out "falling to" and completely re-written the sentence
Agree that "handed a match" is fairly poor and have changed it accordingly
Removed all occurrences of "netted", "netting" etc.

If there's anything else you find, I'll gladly make some more improvements. Cheers, Big Dom 19:35, 9 May 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Additional comments:

Citations

The Times ought to be italicised ({{cite news}} should be using the newspaper parameter instead of publisher).
All of The Times articles are in their digital archive, so urls would be good.

Background and pre-season

"No pre-season friendly matches were played." Is this saying that no team played pre-season friendlies, or just Burnley?
"Therefore, as the campaign began, the team had not played a match since 8 May 1920 ...". And how long ago was that?

League campaign

"When the league fixtures were released before the season, it was announced that Burnley's league campaign would start on 28 August 1920 ...". That reads really strangely. Surely it's obvious that the fixtures have to be released before the start of the season?
"... although the match did see eventual top scorer Joe Anderson notch the first of his 25 league goals of the campaign". I'm really not keen on "notching" goals.

Malleus Fatuorum 16:09, 10 May 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for the copyedits you've been doing. Here's my reply to your additional comments:

Changed the cite news templates
I didn't get the Times articles from the online archive so this one could take a very long time indeed but it's something to do tonight I suppose. ADDENDUM: Unfortunately, I don't have access to the Times online archives (I found the newspaper articles in the library) so will not be able to do this. I don't think it makes any difference since the newspaper pages still exist so they are still verifiable.
Clarified about pre-season friendlies
Added that it was almost four months since the team had played a match
Have removed the "before the start of the season" part of that sentence about fixtures
"notch" ---> "score"

Thanks again for taking a look at the article. Big Dom 16:29, 10 May 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Comment I meant to mention this at the peer review and never got round to it, apologies for that. I think you'd be better referencing the details of the various matches (goal scorers, attendances etc) in the League campaign prose to your Burnley book, as you did originally, even if it is published by the club, at least for those matches where The Times didn't have a full match report. The Times articles cited all give the match score, but they don't always give the details that the citations appear to verify, which presumably your book source did. cheers, Struway2 (talk) 12:07, 11 May 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Have reinstated the citations that weren't fully covered by the newspaper articles. Seeing as most of the Times pieces are only used to cite scorelines, they're OK, but I've added references from the book for some of the goalscorer info, etc. Big Dom 19:16, 11 May 2010 (UTC)[reply]

The Match results table isn't explicitly sourced. Presumably it should be, perhaps to the Soccerbase general reference for the scores and a book page for the scorers/attendances?
When that table is sourced, would it be allowable to remove from the League campaign section those refs that only verify the match score/scorers? making the prose less cluttered with superscripts and stopping the reader getting irritated by following up a reference only to find it's just a list of football scores :-) Or must they all be sourced individually?
Noticed the nominator doesn't have access to The Times digital archive. I've checked the first half-ish of Times references online & noted here in my sandbox one or two that don't on their own verify their sentence, suggested alternatives for a couple, & mentioned the occasional fact/quote from them that the nominator might not have noted himself & might be usable to add detail to some of the matches. Also page numbers. If the extra stuff's of any use, I'd be happy to go through the remainder, otherwise I'll just check the rest of the refs tomorrow. I'm afraid I can't work out how to supply urls that work outside my own session, they just lead to a login page... cheers, Struway2 (talk) 17:50, 12 May 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I have added a general reference for the table, to the page in the book that contains all results and scorers. The Soccerbase is a general ref, so that covers everything in the prose regarding match scores, just to avoid them being directly cited 40-odd times. Beacuse of this, and following on from your comment, I have removed the citations that only verified the match scores, etc.

That work you've done on The Times sources is great and much appreciated. Unfortunately, I was only able to retrieve those sources from a cursory glance at the library and I haven't got access to the online archives. If you don't mind going through the remainder of them, I will gladly continue what I've been doing this evening. I don't think you can provide URLs because they want people to pay in order to view the archives so like you, I just get taken to a login page. Big Dom 19:44, 12 May 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Can confirm that The Times citations now verify their sentences, assuming the Simpson book provides general verification for scorelines, scorers' names and attendances. Not sure there's any real need to include newspaper sources just for the draw of FA Cup rounds: it's probably reasonable to assume that if they played Hull in a particular round then that's who they were drawn to play, but it does no harm. One exception: you need a source for it being "the first Charity Shield match to be contested between the league champions and the FA Cup winners". cheers, Struway2 (talk) 13:51, 17 May 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Have removed the references to the FA Cup draws, since I agree with your logic. Couldn't find a source to say it was the first Charity Shield match between the league champions and the Cup winners, so have cropped that sentence to simply say that they qualified for the Shield. Should be OK now, if you want to have one last check. Big Dom 16:10, 17 May 2010 (UTC)[reply]

So many sporting articles use copyrighted logos for decorations, the badge used during this period is (presumably) free, why is it not used? Fasach Nua (talk) 14:50, 11 May 2010 (UTC)[reply]

As far as I'm aware, the club did not use a badge at that time. The kit for the 1920–21 season certainly didn't have a badge on it, and the Burnley book I have gives no indication that they used a crest back then. Big Dom 18:03, 11 May 2010 (UTC)[reply]
The team photograph shows quite clearly that Burnley had no crest on their shirts for the 1920–21 season. The club didn't regularly have a crest on their kit until 1935. Until then they'd sometimes used the Royal Crest of the Prince of Wales, who'd visited the club in 1886. Malleus Fatuorum 18:17, 11 May 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Malleus, you're exactly right (as usual). Big Dom 19:16, 11 May 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Support. I think this is just about as good as an article on this kind of topic can reasonably be expected to be. It won't be to everyone's taste, but it's encyclopedic and well written, and meets the FA criteria in my view. Malleus Fatuorum 13:42, 12 May 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Comment: With the help of Struway2, I have now gone through all the references from The Times to ensure that they cite all the facts in their respective sentences. Also, I have taken out those references that simply confirmed a match score, since they were already covered by the table reference and the general Soccerbase ref. Hopefully, any problems with citations should now be fully sorted. Big Dom 16:58, 13 May 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Comment – Source reliability looks okay. Most of the sources consist of the Simpson book and articles from The Times. I was going to ask about Soccerbase, but when I went to look for an article here I saw that it has newspaper ties, so it figures to be all right. Looking forward to reading this one. Giants2008 (27 and counting) 20:13, 13 May 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Support - meets FA criteria Dincher (talk) 23:54, 13 May 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Object Why isn't there anything about this team's style of play or their strengths and weaknesses? What type of formation did they use? Did they attack in the air? Rely on counterattacks? Has there ever been a book written about this season in particular given that it was a recordbreaking team? Because there is not a lot in there apart from a proseform recitation of the scoreline. Is there any explanation about what caused the turnaround after the string of losses at the start of the season? Or likewise why they slumped at the end. YellowMonkey (vote in the Southern Stars and White Ferns supermodel photo poll) 05:43, 14 May 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I respect your opinion but this is a simple one to answer—there isn't any discussion about tactics/strengths/weaknesses because none of the sources discuss them so if I did write anything about them, I would just be making it up. During that season, Burnley used the same formation as every other team in the world (1 goalkeeper, 5 defenders, 5 attackers) so maybe I could fit that into the Player Details section. Unfortunately, there hasn't been any books published about the team, record-breaking or not, so it appears that either nobody knows why they played so well and ended the season so poorly, or nobody is bothered. Hopefully, someone will write a book on them in the future, but I think that this article is as comprehensive as it can be, given the sources that currently exist. Big Dom 06:07, 14 May 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Have you looked in a main library in the city, eg a public state or university library? They usually stock older books although run of the mill local council ones tend to throw out books after 10 or 20 years and bring in new stuff. Cricket is the main sport in Australia and one can easily find a general history book on every era, that has 10-15 pages on every year at least. A pity if this isn't the case. YellowMonkey (vote in the Southern Stars and White Ferns supermodel photo poll) 06:23, 14 May 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I would not be bothered if information about the personal life or outside work of an army officer or sportsman could not be found, as it is rather peripheral, but in the case of a any (let alone a record-breaking one) sports team I would have to object under any circumstances as it is rather a core piece of information that is missing. It just wouldn't be allowed if Pele, Muhammad Ali, Julius Caesar, Alexander the Great etc had their exploits written down but their tactics and abilities were not explained. YellowMonkey (vote in the Southern Stars and White Ferns supermodel photo poll) 06:30, 14 May 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Not if no-one knew about said tactics and abilities. It's not as if there are sources that BigDom has ignored; he seems to have mined everything available. If it's a genuine unknown, then we have to live with the fact that the article is as comprehensive as it can be. Assuming that's the case, would you consider striking your objection? Steve ^T • C 08:26, 14 May 2010 (UTC)[reply]

When I used the library to have a look at the sources from The Times, there wasn't anything in there and that library is in Burnley itself (although there was plenty of information about the team that won the championship in 1959–60). There's nothing in the WikiProject Football Booklist either. To be honest, in England I've never seen a book about the Football League in the 1920s or anything like what you describe about cricket. I know what you're saying about it arguably being a "core piece of information", but if there aren't any sources about it, then it can't be written about for verifiability reasons. Big Dom 08:40, 14 May 2010 (UTC)[reply]

In my experience of researching football clubs in that era and earlier, local newspapers devoted a surprising amount of space to discussing the local football team, probably more than they do nowadays. Does the main library in Burnley really not have access to an archive of the major local paper? if not, the librarian would be able to tell you where to find one, they're normally very helpful. In addition to matters raised above, the local paper would supply a bit of background as to how the success was received in the town, etc. cheers, Struway2 (talk) 08:48, 14 May 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, I suppose they would have an archive of the Burnley Express available. Now I just have to find the time to go there to go there and ask. I can't believe I didn't think of doing that when I was there before, you've made me feel a bit daft now. Big Dom 08:53, 14 May 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Support for 1a—quite well written. Can you enlarge the Turf Moor and team photo images? Actually, the Dawson image, at default, is kind of too big, given that it's an in-your-face portrait and has been poorly scanned. You could cut it to 200px? Tony (talk) 15:27, 16 May 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for having a read. I haven't forced the sizes of any of the images, but I will if you think it will improve the article. Big Dom 16:05, 16 May 2010 (UTC)[reply]

The above discussion is preserved as an archive. Please do not modify it. No further edits should be made to this page.