Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/1920–21 Burnley F.C. season/archive2

1920–21 Burnley F.C. season

 * Nominator(s): BigDom (talk) 07:42, 29 May 2022 (UTC)

I originally submitted this article for FAC just over 12 years ago. Sadly, it didn't pass that time and I kind of forgot about it for a decade or so. But the recent FA promotion of Burnley's other title-winning season in 1959–60 prompted me to have another go at this one. Since last time, I've managed to access the archives of an alternative local newspaper, which allowed me to add a bit more detail about the team's playing style and some more context around some of the matches. These kind of articles might not be to everyone's taste, but hopefully I have addressed the main concerns from the first nomination, so here we go! BigDom (talk) 07:42, 29 May 2022 (UTC)

Comments from ChrisTheDude

 * "Burnley's chairman, Harry Windle, had been elected to the position in 1909, and manager John Haworth was marking his 11th consecutive year in charge." - source?
 * Added
 * "The team's last competitive match had ended in a 0–2 defeat" - I would say that by far the most common way to report a football score is with the larger score first, irrespective of the outcome e.g. this source says "Liverpool lost 1-0 to Real Madrid", not "Liverpool lost 0-1 to Real Madrid". I would reconfigure any score shown like this one to show the larger score first.
 * I thought I'd caught all these to be honest, thanks for spotting this one!
 * Shouldn't the bit about Moorwood joining in October and the bit about Bamford leaving in September be in the paragraph starting "Transfer activity continued after the season began"?
 * Rejigged
 * "Bradford City, who had finished 15th in the league in 1919–20" - source?
 * Added
 * "Burnley moved to the top of the table on goal average" - link GA?
 * Done
 * One solitary league attendance is unknown?
 * Yep, not given in Simpson. I had a look at the match report in the Burnley Express archive (where I presume Simpson also looked) and the Lancashire Daily Post (Preston's local paper) but no luck. As you probably know, attendances weren't officially recorded in those days so they weren't always reported in the newspapers.
 * Fair enough -- ChrisTheDude (talk) 07:38, 30 May 2022 (UTC)
 * "drawn against Queens Park Rangers at Turf Moor in the Second Round." - no reason for caps on second round
 * Or third round
 * Have changed these in the prose, left them capitalised in the table (but can also change here if you prefer, I tried it and didn't like the way it looked)
 * "the Charity Shield, then known as the Dewar Shield" - are you sure this is true? Our article on the Community Shield makes no mention of it ever having that name, and RSSSF says "The FA Charity Shield was introduced in 1908 to succeed the Sheriff of London (Dewar) Shield"
 * Must have been the Burnley Express correspondent using the old name, deleted that subclause.
 * The tables need row scopes
 * Forgive my ignorance, but what does this do other than just turn the cell grey? (done, by the way)
 * It's to do with visually impaired site users who use a screen reader, it makes the screen reader read the contents of the table out correctly....or something..... -- ChrisTheDude (talk) 07:36, 30 May 2022 (UTC)
 * The "Players having played at least one first-team match" table doesn't include the Lancs/East Lancs Cup games, which earlier you categorised as first team games - are the line-ups not recorded for these?
 * I will have to go back to the library to check the newspaper reports, might be after the bank holiday before I get chance though.
 * Managed to get to the library for an hour last night. I've added the ELCC and LSC apps/goals to the table and updated players' goals totals in the prose where appropriate. Even managed to get the attendances for the two ELCC games from the local papers (double checked the Preston league game though and definitely wasn't reported). BigDom (talk) 06:30, 31 May 2022 (UTC)
 * In the aftermath section you use the inflation template in conjunction with currentyear, but the documentation for the former explicitly says not to do this
 * Changed to the way you have used it in 1990–91 Gillingham F.C. season
 * That's what I got - great read overall! -- ChrisTheDude (talk) 21:17, 29 May 2022 (UTC)
 * Thanks for having a read through! I've addressed most of these, I think, just need to do a quick library trip to check again for those missing lineups. Cheers, BigDom (talk) 06:28, 30 May 2022 (UTC)
 * Support - great work! -- ChrisTheDude (talk) 07:31, 31 May 2022 (UTC)

Support from Eem dik doun in toene
I had already posted my thoughts/comments on BigDom's talk page, and the article has only improved since then. It's a well written article which deserves FA status. Well done! Eem dik doun in toene (talk) 11:08, 1 June 2022 (UTC)

Images are appropriately licensed. Nikkimaria (talk) 03:08, 26 June 2022 (UTC)

Source review
Footnote numbers refer to this version. Links are all good, and I see no other formatting issues. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 23:08, 12 July 2022 (UTC)
 * Not necessarily an issue, but why do you have the website/work parameter included for the two 11v11 web citations ([17] and [50]), but not for the other two web citations ([44] and [63])?
 * I think because they were "borrowed" from another article. It makes sense, I think, because the website name and the publisher are quite different, and naming the publisher (the Association of Football Statisticians) helps to give some credibility. I've added it for [63] too (website=givemefootball, publisher=Professional Footballers' Association). I don't really see the point for the remaining one, since the web address and the publisher (the Football League) are basically identical.
 * Both the book sources appear to be published by Burnley themselves. What makes these reliable?
 * True, they were. The Clarets Chronicles at least has been used in several other featured articles (e.g. Burnley F.C., History of Burnley F.C., Turf Moor, 1959–60 Burnley F.C. season) so there is precedent there. Its author, Ray Simpson, was the club's official historian so presumably counts as a subject matter expert. Both books are mostly based on contemporary newspaper reports, Football League records (team sheets, match reports, etc.) so I don't think there's much reason to doubt their veracity. In my experience, although these kind of books are often produced by the clubs themselves in the UK, I'm not really sure they're the kind of thing that WP:SPS is taking aim at (e.g. vanity press publications, blogs, and so on).
 * What's the thinking behind linking to the Gale version of the Times archive? I have a Times subscription, and was expecting to be able to check these easily, but instead it goes to the Gale link.
 * Pretty much the other side of the coin. I have access to the Gale version (through the Wikipedia Library) but am not a Times subscriber, so the only way I had access was through that. I don't mind if the URLs are changed to the Times version, but I don't have the access to be able to do it.
 * Thanks for the review, I've replied above. Happy to make more changes if needed. Cheers, BigDom (talk) 06:09, 15 July 2022 (UTC)
 * Your answers address my concerns. Source review is a pass. Mike Christie (talk - contribs -  library) 11:32, 15 July 2022 (UTC)

Comments from Mike Christie
Generally this is in excellent shape. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 14:31, 17 July 2022 (UTC) Support. The remaining two points are minor research questions that may not change the article. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 10:48, 6 August 2022 (UTC)
 * "The team went into the match against Everton on 23 April 1921 needing a draw to clinch the league championship": might be worth mentioning this is an away match? And say how many games were left when they clinched the title?
 * Done.
 * I see the attendance for the game against Preston at Turf Moor is not given; is there some reason it's unavailable? Same question for the missing attendance figures in the non-league match table.
 * Football League attendances only started to be officially recorded from the 1925–26 season, so before this you have to rely on the numbers being given in the match reports in the local newspapers, sports papers, etc. Simpson's book doesn't give an attendance for these missing games, and I have also checked local papers from both teams through the British Newspaper Archive to see if I could find them myself, and got a couple that weren't there before (the ones with their own cites), but not the last few unfortunately.
 * I should really have mentioned this in the source review above, but I didn't notice the fchd.info link in the "Final league position" section. FCHD came up in this review, and the nominator was able to replace it there; can you give additional information about its reliability, or find another source?  I can see it's one of those "labour of love" websites, and I have no doubt it's very accurate and thoroughly researched, but I'm not yet convinced it meets our standards for FAs, since it's the work of a single person who is not a professional in the field.
 * The table that was in there was a straight transclusion from 1920–21 Football League, source and all. I've updated the style of the table to that used the existing FA 1959–60 Burnley F.C. season and changed the source to 11v11 as used elsewhere in the article.
 * A separate point: whether we keep FCHD or replace it, I don't think it's good style to have the external link in the middle of the article. An alternative would be to have a sentence there saying "Data sourced from FCHD" or whatever the source ends up being, with a footnote giving the source and external link. Or you could do it the way the match tables do it, with the footnote attached to the subsection heading.
 * Now formatted as a regular inline reference.
 * Only one match in the East Lancashire Charity Cup is mentioned. There's no link (is it worth a redlink?) so I can't check; was this one of those cups like the Charity Shield that only involved two clubs?
 * This is a good question that I don't immediately know the answer to. This one will involve a library trip, I think.
 * I see Birchenough was acquired in August 1920, and Dawson was injured in the opening match but returned after missing only two matches. Was Birchenough acquired because of Dawson's injury?  If the sources don't say then we can't comment, of course, but since Birchenough was let go again later in the season it seems plausible.
 * Like you say, seems likely. Should be able to find a newspaper clipping announcing his signing which should say one way or the other.
 * Again I should have raised this in the source review: what's the source for the player table data? The only citation is for the "Other" column.
 * Added.
 * - just to make sure you didn't miss this. Hog Farm Talk 19:25, 23 July 2022 (UTC)
 * Thanks for the reminder, I'd seen the comments but then forgotten. I'll hopefully get some time to address them in the next couple of days. BigDom (talk) 05:50, 24 July 2022 (UTC)
 * Hi both. Really sorry, work has been hectic so far this week and I'm away Friday to Monday so it may be next week now by the time I get round to editing again. I haven't forgotten and I really appreciate you taking a look, Mike. Cheers, BigDom (talk) 17:13, 27 July 2022 (UTC)
 * Have addressed most of these, I'll try and fit in a library visit sometime this week to have a look into the others. Let me know if you spot anything else. Cheers, BigDom (talk) 07:33, 6 August 2022 (UTC)
 * Just to follow up on my library visit:
 * East Lancs Charity Cup: this was interesting but not sure if there's anything worth putting in the article. So the cup was founded in 1882 and originally had four clubs. The teams taking part changed over the years, with Burnley joining in 1890 after Blackburn Olympia folded, and eventually the tournament expanded to six and then eight clubs as local semi-professional clubs were invited. Seemingly sometime during WWI the cup fell by the wayside until a short entry in the Lancashire Evening Post on 1 May 1920 mentions the "recently revived" ELCC giving both Burnley and Blackburn Rovers a chance of winning some silverware in the forthcoming season (little did they know...). Like I say, not sure we should have an East Lancashire Charity Cup article unless some more in-depth coverage turns up somewhere. Any article I could create would be cobbled together from very short (usually 1 paragraph) articles a few times a year in the local papers.
 * Frank Birchenough: turns out he wasn't signed to replace Dawson. The Burnley News 14/8/1920 announces the signing of the new goalkeeper Birchenough on amateur terms for the reserves after impressing during a trial match the week before. It also mentions how Dawson is set to be fit for the start of the new season in two weeks' time.
 * So nothing to add to the article, but an interesting trip nonetheless. BigDom (talk) 17:10, 15 August 2022 (UTC)
 * Interesting; thanks for doing that research! I would bet that somewhere there is enough information for an ELCC article to be written, but perhaps not yet.  Thanks for the update! Mike Christie (talk - contribs -  library) 17:25, 15 August 2022 (UTC)
 * Thanks, appreciate the support. BigDom (talk) 17:10, 15 August 2022 (UTC)

Just a heads up that there aren't any outstanding comments left on this nomination. Looks like there are 3 general supports and the source and image reviews have both been passed, let me know if there's anything else required. Cheers, BigDom (talk) 17:10, 15 August 2022 (UTC)
 * Hi, it's not clear to me how the tables in the Transfers are sourced -- can you help me (and the article) out? Cheers, Ian Rose (talk) 09:40, 17 August 2022 (UTC)
 * Hi, yeah I'll get on it. I don't have my books with me at the moment so will have to get hold of someone who has a copy to confirm the page numbers. BigDom (talk) 08:28, 20 August 2022 (UTC)
 * Sorry that took a while but the Transfers table is referenced now, thanks to for providing the relevant page numbers. BigDom (talk) 09:12, 1 September 2022 (UTC)


 * Ian ? Gog the Mild (talk) 15:20, 9 September 2022 (UTC)
 * Tks guys, I overlooked the earlier ping... Cheers, Ian Rose (talk) 17:09, 9 September 2022 (UTC)

Ian Rose (talk) 17:10, 9 September 2022 (UTC)