Talk:Southampton F.C. Under-21s and Academy

Merger proposal
I propose that Southampton F.C. Under-23s be merged into Southampton F.C. Academy, with the article also ideally renamed to Southampton F.C. Under-23s and Academy or similar to reflect both aspects of its content.

The Under-23 side is one team within the academy setup. The fact that there are so many U-18 players on the U-23 squad list shows their close level of integration. Both have the Football academies in England category.

Both articles are also fairly weak in terms of external sources and a combined article would provide a stronger basis for demonstrating their notability for being retained in the encyclopedia. Recent discussions at WP:FOOTY have indicated that reserve and/or youth team articles which are unconvincing in terms of notability or verifiability may be considered for deletion - see here (or here if archived). I don't support any blanket removal of youth/reserve articles but I think one to cover the whole system for each club would show a more credible argument for being kept.

Merging the articles would also follow the more common model used in respect of English clubs - current exceptions being Reading (1) / (2), Charlton (1) / (2), West Ham (1) / (2), Spurs (1) / (2) and Arsenal (1) / (2) which will also have this merge suggestion applied. It would probably make it easier for interested editors to keep the current information updated if they are monitoring the same article rather than there being two articles containing overlapping information (WP:OVERLAP) being maintained separately.

PS I nominated one article to 'remain' and one to 'go' purely on the basis of which had existed longer. My intention was not to offend any editors by suggesting the article they created/maintain should be deleted due to being inferior to any other, just that I don't think any more than one article on this topic is necessary.


 * I have also created a discussion on WP:FOOTY regarding these mergers here if anyone wants to make general points, counter-arguments etc. Thanks.Crowsus (talk) 13:41, 25 February 2017 (UTC)