Wikipedia:Peer review/List of managers of the England national football team/archive1

List of managers of the England national football team


This peer review discussion has been closed. Well, I could barely believe that this article (or one like it) didn't already exist so I knocked this up. I'm hoping for it to make WP:FL in the future, based loosely on the List of Manchester City F.C. managers which placed as much importance on the history and prose as it did on the stark reality of the facts in the list. I'm sure, yet again, it's riddled with issues, two solid days of work on it means I'd like to float this out to the community for any comments or advice. As always, thanks in advance for your time. The Rambling Man (talk) 12:27, 15 February 2008 (UTC)

Comments from PeeJay

 * I haven't got time at the moment to look into this in great detail, but I will say one thing: perhaps the title of the article should be changed to "List of England national football team managers". I will take a better look later, but this is the thing that stuck out for me straight away. – PeeJay 12:33, 15 February 2008 (UTC)
 * Hi PeeJay, yeah, that had crossed my mind as well. Since List of England national football team managers doesn't exist yet it shouldn't be a problem to move it over. The Rambling Man (talk) 12:36, 15 February 2008 (UTC)
 * Well, I've had another look, and I'm really struggling to find anything wrong with this list. I really like the amount of detail in the managerial history section. Some might say it's a bit too much, but I think it looks good. – PeeJay 11:15, 16 February 2008 (UTC)
 * Hey. Thanks for taking the time.  I agree that some may find the history section a bit big - it's halfway house between article and list, but there you go!  We'll see what happens when I take it FLC in the future! The Rambling Man (talk) 11:18, 16 February 2008 (UTC)

Comments from Struway2

 * Very briefly, will review it properly later (my list of what to review properly later is getting out of hand). At first glance it's a terrific piece of work, though I definitely see it as an article with a very helpful summary table at the end rather than a list. MCFC managers had 2 pages history and just shy of 4 pages list, yours is pretty well the reverse. I like it, whatever it is! cheers, Struway2 (talk) 12:35, 16 February 2008 (UTC)
 * Thanks for that. I guess if it's an article it'd need a bit of breaking up into sections?  Dunno.  But I'd appreciate your review when you can find the time!!  The Rambling Man (talk) 12:40, 16 February 2008 (UTC)

Comments from Koncorde

 * There's a couple of repeated bits of information (I think you mention the fact Winterbottom was the longest serving manager twice for instance within a relatively short space of time, as well as the Ramsey World Cup thing) and its current format is a little 'wordy' due to the use of the 'full name' of every event/club (such as "Uruguay national football team instead of Uruguay).
 * Some bits of the prose is clunky, but that's just a feature of the fact it's trying to include a pocket bio in each.
 * Breaking at each change in manager, and perhaps a summary at that point would be useful for navigation.
 * Walters bio in this is actually more complete than the one in his main article, which really needs looking into (I'll see what I can do for him). Also Walters bio suggests he was a professional (if only for a short time) with Man Utd.  I don't know who is right, but possibly a couple of fact checks need to be done on what's in the article.--Koncorde (talk) 15:10, 16 February 2008 (UTC)
 * Koncorde, thanks for taking the time to have a look at the article. I've addressed the "national football team" bit (I forgot to pipe a few as you spotted!) and will look at the repeated information.  Interestingly I originally intended the article to be a list, not an article, but there turned out to be quite a bit to say about the managers so it now looks like I'll need to address this as a potential FAC.  Thus I'll need some sections so hopefully that'll iron out the breaking/summary issue you've noted.  As for improving the prose, that's something I'd like this peer review to help with.  Finally, the Walters bio, I didn't even look at it funnily enough.  But I will have a scrabble around to see what his prior experience was.  I was going by a single secondary source for that bit of info so it could be that there's a mistake with it.  Thanks for pointing it out.  The Rambling Man (talk) 16:34, 16 February 2008 (UTC)
 * Sorry to butt in. If you break after every manager, that could in fact make it more of a list than an article, if you'd still prefer to go down that route. And the table could be just as much a helpful summary at the end of such a list as it would have been at the end of an article. Just a thought. cheers, Struway2 (talk) 17:24, 16 February 2008 (UTC)
 * Hmm. I like that.  I wonder if that would be a half-decent precedent for this type of article?  I'll have a play... The Rambling Man (talk) 17:35, 16 February 2008 (UTC)
 * See the History of West Ham United F.C. for what I did. With each individual section dedicated to a managers tenure, and links at the end of each tenure to relevant competitions within wikipedia, plus their own articles.  I know you mean this to be a list - but for me there is a great article waiting to come out of this.--Koncorde (talk) 18:52, 16 February 2008 (UTC)
 * That's a fair article but I'm looking for an overview here really, rather than a history of England football. So something in the middle I guess.  The Rambling Man (talk) 18:59, 16 February 2008 (UTC)
 * Having looked for the repeats, do you mean the stuff in the lead is repeated in the main body? I can't see any other repeats.  If that's the case then there's no problem as the lead should provide a summary of the article which will inevitably result in some repeated information.  If not, can you point me to exactly where there's an issue, cheers!  The Rambling Man (talk) 16:39, 16 February 2008 (UTC)
 * It's the way in which it is said repeats itself. If you're going to say Winterbottom was the longest serving manager, then you need to find two ways of saying it so as to not end up saying "Winterbottom was the longest serving England manager" twice.  Basically just repeated 'language' and sentence structure.--Koncorde (talk) 18:49, 16 February 2008 (UTC)
 * Well, in the lead I have "The first, Walter Winterbottom also held the position for the longest" and in the main section I have "He remains the longest serving manager of England." - they say the same thing in different ways. Sorry if I'm being obtuse, I'm not sure what you're getting at - repeated "language"?  It's typical for the lead to summarise the article and potentially repeat detail.  The Rambling Man (talk) 18:56, 16 February 2008 (UTC)
 * Both essentially say the same thing. There's "summarise" and then there's repeating.  For instance the below would be the main text in the body:
 * Walter Winterbottom was the first manager appointed, in /year/, and served for a total of /x/ years as manager.   His /x/ years in charge remain the longest period for any England manager so far (with his successor, Ramsey, behind on /x/ years).  During his tenure he successfully lead the team to their first 4 World Cup finals.
 * And this would be a summary:
 * Walter Winterbottom served as manager for longer than any other."
 * Don't mean to nitpick language, but just making a point that parts need fleshing out or structured in such a way as to stay fresh.--Koncorde (talk) 19:27, 16 February 2008 (UTC)

Cool, no worries, nitpicking is good... I'm still stuck in the midst of working out if I should reduce the flesh a bit to focus on a list or expand further to make an article. Or both. Or neither (and just stick to Ipswich articles!). I think there's loads of scope for similar national coach articles (at the very least Scotland would easily have enough for something similar) so I'd like to get this right. What's the way forward, article with summarising table for FAC or brief intro and expanded table for FLC? The Rambling Man (talk) 19:30, 16 February 2008 (UTC)
 * I'd say there's an equal call for both. Looking at a few of the managers bio's they rarely focus on the England career (even in the case of Winterbottom) so there is clearly scope here to not only improve their biographies, but to also create a full "International" collection of pen-bio's, history and events.  I would say this article should focus on provided the data and pen-bio's, facts and other managerial information you wont find on History of the England national football team.
 * Meanwhile a lot of the info, references and detail you have picked up on clearly should be incorporated into History of the England national football team which is pretty much empty of references in a rather atrocious way.--Koncorde (talk) 19:39, 16 February 2008 (UTC)
 * Okay, so focussing on this article, at least initially, would you suggest I concentrate on making this more article-ish? I get the overall feeling that it seems the best way forward (I didn't imagine how much information there was really, poor foresight) and I'm prepared to do more work to expand it.  As for the existing England pages, I've not really looked into them much, I know the England national football team page stinks.  That's one of the reason I decided to create a half-decent (in my opinion) fork for the managers.  If someone wants to back-incorporate info here that's fine, I'm currently concentrating on this article!  The Rambling Man (talk) 19:44, 16 February 2008 (UTC)
 * Actually I think you should concentrate this into more of a database to which the articles for the individual managers and National team etc would plug into. Perhaps condense down the history and get it watertight for each one (the Man Utd managers one is pretty tight on the history with little wasted repeating of information and limited links).  The vast amount of info really should go into the England History and the Managers own bio's and it'd be good to get some of your links and cites referenced over in the other articles.
 * I'm going to 'adopt' the England history article and start working it into something more suitable.--Koncorde (talk) 21:41, 16 February 2008 (UTC)

Comments from Oldelpaso
I think we're in article territory here rather than list - there's enough out there about "the Impossible Job" itself to merit it. To this end, I think the article would benefit from a section about the role itself as opposed to the incumbents and their actions. In particular, the intense media scrutiny associated with position is worth covering, and things like the reasons for the appointment of a full-time manager. It might be worth seeing if your local library has a copy of Niall Edworthy's The Second Most Important Job in the Country, which I hear is the best of the books about the England job. Actually, having just looked it up on a well known site named after a water feature I might buy that one myself, it'd be useful for when I finally get around to having a stab at getting Joe Mercer to FA, and second-hand copies are going for a penny. Oldelpaso (talk) 14:04, 17 February 2008 (UTC)
 * Definitely the way my mind is heading with this. I think the role, its history and the guys involved are worthy of a summarising article, along the lines of England national football managers.  I'll have a look for that book as well!  I'd like to get this conceptually right as I think it could be expanded across to other national manager articles.  Cheers!  The Rambling Man (talk) 14:27, 17 February 2008 (UTC)


 * A script has been used to generate a semi-automated review of the article for issues relating to grammar and house style. If you would find such a review helpful, please click here. Thanks, APR t 02:49, 18 February 2008 (UTC)