Talk:2008–09 Football League

Colouring on tables
It is at best meaningless, at worst misleading, to have promotion and relegation zones coloured before the season has even begun. Can we simply have a list of the teams, rather than a league table? Kevin McE (talk) 16:44, 24 May 2008 (UTC)
 * I don't think there's anything wrong with it.  --   Grant  .  Alpaugh  16:54, 24 May 2008 (UTC)
 * I also don't see a problem. It's standard behaviour to mark the promotion and relegation zones in on tables from the very start of the table, just as we mark the European slots on Premier League tables. If anything, I think it would confuse to remove them, since most people are so used to them, and the Football League more than the Premier League is quite non-obvious, in that most people don't know how many promotion slots there are in each division - it's not the same in each. Falastur2 (talk) 19:53, 24 May 2008 (UTC)

I agree that the colour coding is useful on a league table. My point is that, at this stage, a league table is inappropriate: no match has been played (and formally speaking, many of the teams are not yet in those divisions): a simple list is the only information that we have to convey. Kevin McE (talk) 23:34, 24 May 2008 (UTC)

All in one article?
I'm not specifically trying to start something here - I probably don't edit this article enough, or at least have enough of an interest in these leagues, to do this myself - but I was curious about public opinion. Many other leagues following a similar structure to the Football League have their own individual 2008-09 season articles - 1. Bundesliga, 2. Bundesliga, 3rd Liga, Serie A, Serie B, Serie C1 and C2...even the Eccellenza below even Serie D got an article last year and probably will again - in fact I think that the Italian pages are better than those on the English leagues, but that's beside the point. The French and Spanish leagues are the same; the Montenegrin Second League got an article for the 2006-07 season, and the previous season and this upcoming one will probably be done in due time. I'm not advocating breaking down everything into individual tables - I think the Conference article with all three leagues in one article is fine as it is, at present - but I wonder if we ought to start thinking about giving each of the three leagues in the Football League their own article. I'm sure we could find enough information which hasn't been added here to pad them properly - managerial changes, stadia information, results tables perhaps, and even a diagram of the teams mapped onto a map of England as the Premier League article for this season just recieved. Existing articles on other leagues provide countless examples we could use as templates here. It sounds like a lot of work - and if we tried to convert former articles into three articles apiece, it would be - but if you think about it, adding the base information is a very short job even for one person, and the results etc can be done one fixture at a time, as the season progresses, making it a much easier job.

As I say, I'm not trying to push this - although if something comes of this, great - but I'm interested to see if people are in favour or opposed to this. I was going to add a straw poll for interest's sake, but I think Wikipedia frowns on using straw polls for any purpose other than reaching a consensus, so I'll hold off. Anyway, anyone and everyone, please comment, as I'd be interested to know if other people agree that this is a good idea. Falastur2 (talk) 01:30, 27 July 2008 (UTC)

By the way, I encourage a debate to start here if there is a difference of opinions, so do please check back and engage each other in conversation here. Falastur2 Talk 09:29, 29 July 2008 (UTC)


 * Yeah, I think this is a good idea. I think the individual Football League season articles should remain, but with links to more detailed articles about each division. – PeeJay 23:11, 28 July 2008 (UTC)
 * I reckon it is a good idea to replace the existing page as we wont really need this article after the seperation as we have and can expand the information on the english football season page which includes the premiership. The only reason i created this page like this is because it followed suit from previous years and once we have the seperation estamblished we can gradually work backwards to fix the others. MotorSportMCMXC (talk) 23:23, 28 July 2008 (UTC)


 * I disgaree, the current situation seems sensible to me. By the way, there are not three "leagues" in this article, only three "divisions" of the same league. - fchd (talk) 06:10, 29 July 2008 (UTC)
 * The word "division" slipped my mind. But thank you. Falastur2  Talk 06:55, 29 July 2008 (UTC)
 * Does that case not also apply to La Liga in Spain? Since La Liga covers the Primera División and the Segunda División, by your logic, La Liga 2008–09 should cover both divisions. Same goes for Lega Calcio in Italy, which should have one article covering both Serie A 2008–09 and Serie B 2008–09. – PeeJay 09:13, 29 July 2008 (UTC)
 * Well the articles under La Liga really should be moved to Primera División, and still, if this article is to be split, would that mean split all the 100+ season articles of the football leauge? &mdash; chandler &mdash; 10:42, 29 July 2008 (UTC)
 * I was going to suggest only starting from this season, or at most a few seasons back, to be honest. If we go much further than two decades back at most, a lack of information and citable sources will prevent us from having enough information to make splitting the articles worth it in my opinion, whereas there is now so much available that we could easily fill an article on each division every season. But if others want to roll back the previous articles and split them too...well I certainly won't get in their way, but that wouldn't be my decision. Falastur2  Talk 12:19, 29 July 2008 (UTC)
 * I disagree with the need for splitting the articles - we can fit all the detail we need into one. I would also say that the individual Scottish Football League articles need to be merged back into the main ones. пﮟოьεԻ   5  7  12:53, 29 July 2008 (UTC)
 * I also disagree with splitting the articles, unless enough evidence is provide on this article page. At the moment, the size of last season's page is not enough to split into separate articles. Unless more prose and more details are provided, there is no need to split into three separate pages. Peanut4 (talk) 18:54, 29 July 2008 (UTC)

Personally, it's my opinion that splitting the articles would encourage the extra information to be added by users. And time and again I've seen proved the theory that when one person makes a table (i.e. a table of managerial changes), other editors will add to it themselves without provocation or encouragement, when more information becomes available to add. That's not to mention that I find the argument "there wasn't enough info. last season so there won't be this season" to be a weak one - no offence, of course. It's self-evident that the amount of information on Wikipedia articles increases almost exponentially every year - I believe it's a matter of time until it's routine for these leagues to recieve the amount of information that the Premier League articles regularly get - in fact, I don't believe that to manage that would even require much work. I feel myself becoming attached to this idea and, encouraged by the support for my proposition I've seen above, I honestly believe that I could maintain these articles with the required level of information - the additional managerial changes, a results table, the stadia information etc. Most of it would require only a one-time insertion of information which would take a handful of hours only, the others could very easily be maintained on a day-to-day, week-to-week basis as the season progresses, and I honestly and truly believe that enough other editors will jump on the bandwagon to make this idea very practical. And in case you might suggest simply adding all that information to this article - well, it's a possibility but I truly believe that doing such would clog this article up horribly and make it a monstrosity to read, especially for the casual reader. As for the argument that the Football League divisions should share an article - I honestly don't see why that needs to be so. No other nation that I'm aware of (on the English wiki) has their leagues sharing an article, and I've linked many examples of this already, and to the average Joe, the divisions in the Football League have just as much individuality as the Premier League has from those divisions. There's no Wiki guideline I'm aware of that says that a league must group all of its divisions together in any season article, and I believe that these leagues deserve the individual attention - I truly believe that if we start the work then it will encourage others to continue it for us; I see no reason why we should fail to make articles which warrant being seperate. Man I tend to go on... Falastur2 Talk 20:15, 29 July 2008 (UTC)


 * Maybe, I'm a bit late here, but, I think each of these 3 divisions could have good individual articles. As you said, if someone starts, others will follow and add information. Maybe The Football League 2008-09 could remain as a resume (no tables, just a resume) of the league that could help some readers to find each division. Also, I believe there is no need to redo past The Football League season articles. What's in the past it's in the past. --ClaudioMB (talk) 13:52, 31 July 2008 (UTC)


 * I've had a bit of a think over this and I'm supportive of actually going through with this. Anyone still reading this? Anyone want to help me? Anyone want to present an argument against if you disagree? Falastur2  Talk 13:48, 4 August 2008 (UTC)
 * By the way, I've made this page as an experiment for layout and generally to see how it looks, regardless of whether we go through with this change or not. If anyone wants to contribute, feel free to edit at will, or use the talk page there to discuss changes. Falastur2  Talk 14:01, 4 August 2008 (UTC)

Merger proposal
I'm proposing merging Football League Championship 2008–09 into this one. Despite the arguments above, most of what I'm seeing at Football League Championship 2008–09 is just duplication of stuff in this article. If you have a daughter article, you should summarize it in the main article, not just duplicate tables. I do however appreciate that it is very early in the season, so the article is still taking shape. I would therefore suggest that if a separate article for the Championship is required, that it would be useful to create 2007–08 (or another completed season) alongside it, to provide a template to work towards. --Jameboy (talk) 20:11, 14 August 2008 (UTC)
 * I have to agree. When I proposed creating daughter articles for the three divisions, I intended them to replace this article, not to coexist. It's conceivable to me that this be kept just as a basic article, but really it just seems so much more sensible to leave it as three articles and not have this one lying around too. Falastur2  Talk 20:18, 14 August 2008 (UTC)
 * Edit: That said, if we go through with the merger, I think it's more sensible to merge this article into Football League Championship 2008–09, rather than the other way around. Falastur2  Talk 20:21, 14 August 2008 (UTC)


 * I agree with Jameboy, I've never seen any point in having separate articles for any individual divisions, particularly on a per-season basis. The Football League 2008-09 article seems to be the perfect size and form for an article, and there appears to me to be need to split. Support the merger proposal. - fchd (talk) 20:30, 14 August 2008 (UTC)
 * fhcd, I think Jameboy's proposal is just to merge the Championship article in here, so we have one article per division and no overarching article for the whole league. I don't believe he plans on eliminating the other divisions too. Falastur2  Talk 21:38, 14 August 2008 (UTC)
 * I too agree for the reasons I cited above and the reasons Jameboy gives. Separate articles should be created when the info here gets too big. You can add Football League One 2008-09 and Football League Two 2008-09 to the mergers too. Peanut4 (talk) 20:50, 14 August 2008 (UTC)
 * I support the idea of condenscing four articles to three (as stated) but I should point out that I am opposed to reducing them back to one. I think that this article is now growing "too big", and to be quite frank, if we added the information contained within the seperate division articles to this article in a re-merging, it would become monolithic - especially at the end of the season, when we have a season of managerial changes, top scorers, seasonal awards, etc that could and quite frankly probably will be added. Each division on its own can, and probably will, have an article the same size as that of the Premier League, and to be frank, I think having one single article for the Football League at three times that length is a frightening prospect. Falastur2  Talk 21:46, 14 August 2008 (UTC)
 * I know I started this debate but I'm now withdrawing - sorry!. I've just started doing a bit of work over at 2007–08 in English football, particularly with regard to links to other season articles. I now think that working on a completed season is the way to go. If we can get that article and its related articles up to a decent standard, it would form a good blueprint going forward (and backwards). As the 2008-09 articles will be very much works in progress and probably attract many more recentist edits, I've decided to leave them alone. I'm going to drop my merger proposal for now and concentrate on the 2007-08 articles. If you still wish to continue the merger discussion, please do so, otherwise I will remove the merger proposal template from the two articles. --Jameboy (talk) 23:47, 14 August 2008 (UTC)
 * I don't think there is a need to merge these articles. As I said in previous discussion, an article for each division is perfectly acceptable, each one of them is a competition with more than 20 teams and there is information enough to make a individual article. However, this article could be useful as a resume of the season for the whole Football League. By resume, I mean, something like no tables, important events and the results of the season.--ClaudioMB (talk) 17:50, 15 August 2008 (UTC)
 * The individual articles have been developed enough to work as stand alone articles. I agree with ClaudioMB - the "umbrella" article can serve as a quick-glance page linking to the individual pages. 03md (talk) 22:27, 27 September 2008 (UTC)

I don't agree with doing it right now. I highly reccomend doing it once this season has finished The C of E (talk) 11:55, 4 April 2009 (UTC)


 * Totally disagree with the merging proposal. Merging makes the article looks too long to read. Combining a total 72 teams altogether? How long the article would be? The teams aren't in the same division (although they are in the same league). I would like it to be separated. Arteyu ?  Blame it on me !  19:49, 11 May 2009 (UTC)

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Small note (24/04/09)
This is only applicable possibly for the next few hours, but I thought I'd explain why I just reverted. Leeds and Millwall are confirmed to reach the play-offs in League One as Scunthorpe and Tranmere have to play on the final day, meaning both cannot get the 78 points that Leeds have. See here and here. --Pretty Green (talk) 13:11, 24 April 2009 (UTC)

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