Talk:List of football clubs in England by competitive honours won/Archive 4

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Another new proposal

@Madshurtie: @Mountaincirque: @Davefelmer: Much like Davefelmer and Mountaincirque, I feel uneasy including cups like Texaco Cup, Watney Cup and Anglo-Italian Cup, mainly due to them not being open to elite teams. Although the same could be said for Europa League and Intertoto Cup, I agree with Mountaincirque when he said "My take on Intertoto and Europa is that they are ratified UEFA tournaments on the continental level, any competitions of this level and ratified by an official body should be included". However I also agree with Madshurtie with including the Anglo-Italian League Cup as this was for elite teams (cup winners).

Therefore, I have come up with the following proposal: The page will include competitive competitions organised by the FA and EFL for(/open to) elite teams, and all competitions organised by UEFA and FIFA, as well as predecessors for all these tournaments.

Using this proposal, the following tournaments would be included: League, FA Cup, EFL Cup, FA Community Shield, Sheriff of London Charity Shield, Full Members Cup, Football League Super Cup, Football League Centenary Trophy, Anglo-Italian League Cup (assuming it was co-organised by the FA or EFL), UEFA Champions League, UEFA Europa League, Inter-Cities Fairs Cup, UEFA Cup Winners' Cup, UEFA Intertoto Cup, UEFA Super Cup, FIFA Club World Cup and Intercontinental Cup. Thoughts guys? Hashim-afc (talk) 16:40, 8 October 2017 (UTC)

@Hashim-afc: Two comments:

• Having different criteria for UEFA/FIFA gives us more flexibility on the Europa League/Intertoto problem, so it might be a good idea.
• For the FA/EFL, I think I preferred the thinking behind the previous proposal. My problem with this one is the only things excluding some of these controversial cups are the words 'competitive' and 'elite teams', when it's not entirely obvious to the reader how these are defined (or even whether they do exclude them). I think it's better if we use something that's indisputably true, like "had participants from the top division" or "no competitions where the club could have qualified for a higher competition instead". For example, if "elite teams" meant something like "had participants from the top division", we would still have to include Texaco Cup, because it was a competitive international trophy run by the EFL with top division teams. If it meant the no-runners-up-cups, that would keep it out. Madshurtie (talk) 20:12, 8 October 2017 (UTC)

@Madshurtie: You make a very good point. Thus I would change my proposal to: "Competitive competitions organised by the FA and EFL (not including competitions where the participants could have qualified for a higher competition instead) and all competitions organised by UEFA and FIFA, as well as predecessors for all these tournaments." It's a bit wordy, but it is worth it if we can all agree to this. However, I'm not sure what we would do with the first edition of the Full Members Cup in this case, as the top teams played in the Football League Super Cup instead of the Full Members Cup that season so it does not meet the criteria. Hashim-afc (talk) 21:15, 8 October 2017 (UTC)

@Hashim-afc: I think that works. It might even be the best solution. The Full Members' Cup should be OK: we can just put a sentence in the Key mentioning that season (although I don't see a citation on its page about the season, so we'd need to find one first). If the AILC is FA/FL organized, it would qualify, and possibly the Watney Cup and the four professional seasons of the AIC? Madshurtie (talk) 21:40, 8 October 2017 (UTC)

@Madshurtie: I agree that the AILC would qualify if it was FL organised. The Watney Cup I think was only open to teams who had missed out on European qualification so I don't think that qualifies. If we were only to include some seasons of the AIC and not others, then I don't see why we shouldn't do the same with the Full Members Cup don't you think? (Unless I misunderstood what you meant by putting a sentence in the Key). Hashim-afc (talk) 21:35, 9 October 2017 (UTC)

@Hashim-afc: Ah, you're right, the Watney Cup would be excluded. With the Anglo-Italian Cup, I'm not entirely clear if it's all one cup, or various incarnations under the same name. If the professional bit is its own cup out of several Anglo-Italian Cups, then it might be worth considering? Incidentally, we're only including the pre-1908 SLCS winners on this page, and there's a sentence in the Key to that effect. Madshurtie (talk) 08:07, 10 October 2017 (UTC)

@Madshurtie: Looking at the teams who were involved in those four seasons of the AIC, it seems to be an invitational cup rather than one that an elite team could 'qualify' for, seeing as there were 6 English teams in each season and none of them seem to be any of the top English teams. If those seasons were invitational, I don't think we can really include them as it needs to be a cup you can qualify for (perhaps this should be made clearer in my proposal). By the way, when you mention adding a sentence in the Key for the 1985/86 Full Members Cup, are you suggesting we remove that season from the list and add a sentence explaining why it's removed, or we keep it on the list and add a sentence just to provide that information? Hashim-afc (talk) 15:31, 10 October 2017 (UTC)

@Hashim-afc: This is going back to the previous proposal. The things is, near every cup has to be "qualified" for in some way (the club has to qualify for the league system, etc.). We need a much more narrow description of qualification criteria, like in your new proposal. If we can come up with an alternative wording that excludes this AIC, that's cool, but I'm cautious about excluding cups ad hoc.

I was suggesting keeping the FMC season and adding a sentence to the Key about it. That seems less controversial, and that season was part of the only incarnation of the cup. Madshurtie (talk) 08:35, 11 October 2017 (UTC)

@Madshurtie: When I say qualification criteria I don't really mean what I meant in the last proposal. What I mean is, an invitational cup is not open to elite teams, it's simply open to teams that were chosen to be invited. Thus, when you say that the list should not include competitions where participants were able to qualify for a higher competition, the AIC doesn't really meet this as teams didn't qualify anyway, they were just chosen (assuming it was invitational which it seems). Sorry if I have explained badly. Hashim-afc (talk) 10:09, 11 October 2017 (UTC)

@Hashim-afc: Didn't Swindon Town participate because they recently won the League Cup? I'm guessing the other clubs were invited though. So if we exclude invitational cups, what sort of wording would we use? Is there a precise definition of invitational cups? Madshurtie (talk) 15:58, 13 October 2017 (UTC)

@Madshurtie: I would say an invitational cup would be one where elite teams don't get the option to participate / participation is not open to all elite teams, simply open to teams that have been chosen for invite. A bit hard to explain; For example, in the 1970 Anglo-Italian Cup, the highest-ranked English team in the cup was West Brom who came 10th in the league that season and didn't win any trophies. The teams that finished above them, or won trophies, didn't refuse to participate like in the Full Members Cup, they simply weren't able to as they weren't invited, so that's what I consider as invitational. The wording could be: It includes honours run by national and international governing bodies, and precursors of those honours. It does not include FA or EFL run honours where a club could have qualified for a higher alternative competition or where clubs participated on a purely invitational basis. or something similar to this? Hashim-afc (talk) 16:33, 13 October 2017 (UTC)

@Hashim-afc: Sounds good to me. I might edit it in, since it better reflects the trophies in the article right now. Does this mean we're including the Anglo-Italian League Cup then? Madshurtie (talk) 16:46, 13 October 2017 (UTC)

@Madshurtie: Yes I would say so, I can't see any reason why the AILC shouldn't be included and no one else seems to object to it. Hashim-afc (talk) 16:57, 13 October 2017 (UTC)

@Hashim-afc: Added the new wording, and the AILC. However, we never confirmed that it's FA run. It looks like it is, because it involves the FA Cup winner and cooperation with the Italian Football Federation, but we don't have a source confirming it.

One other thing about the wording, because it allows FA and EFL predecessors, I don't think the Southern Professional Floodlit Cup is excluded. Either it fails on one criterion I've missed, we should include it, or we should adjust the wording. Madshurtie (talk) 19:52, 13 October 2017 (UTC)

@Madshurtie: Was the Floodlit Cup run by the FA or EFL? If it was, we need to add that only national honours are included, as the Floodlit Cup was only for Southern teams. Hashim-afc (talk) 22:24, 13 October 2017 (UTC)

@Hashim-afc: If it wasn't run by them, we alternatively could not include precursors of EFL/PL/FA comps, since the SLCS and stuff were directly run by the FA. I'll see if I can find out more about it.

On another note, we might need to tighten the UEFA/FIFA criteria. By including all competitions, we don't exclude amateur, youth, or women's comps (the UEFA Regions' Cup, UEFA Women's Champions League, and UEFA Youth League). Rather than adding a load of specific criteria, the simplest way might be just to give UEFA/FIFA the top-division participants criterion, since the top division of the English football league system is implicitly not youth, amateur, or women. I think this was why I suggested it in the first place, but then forgot about those UEFA cups. Madshurtie (talk) 10:13, 4 November 2017 (UTC)

What about the phrasing "Competitive top division honours organised by the FA and EFL, as well as all competitions organised by UEFA and FIFa, including their official precursors." Seems less wordy, and fits the bill.Davefelmer (talk) 19:45, 9 October 2017 (UTC)

@Davefelmer: I don't think "Competitive, top division honours" is enough to exclude the non-elite cups like Watney Cup, Anglo-Italian Cup etc because they were competed by top division teams in a competitive format, the problem was that those cups weren't available to the elite teams. Whereas "Competitive competitions organised by the FA and EFL (not including competitions where the participants could have qualified for a higher competition instead)" clearly excludes those cups and only includes cups open to elite teams. Hashim-afc (talk) 21:33, 9 October 2017 (UTC)

Agree with Hashim-afc. Could this be a more concise wording with the same effect? It includes honours run by national and international governing bodies, and precursors of those honours. It does not include FA or EFL run honours where a club could have qualified for a higher alternative competition.' Madshurtie (talk) 08:13, 10 October 2017 (UTC)

That seems like a good way of wording it to me. Hashim-afc (talk) 15:34, 10 October 2017 (UTC)

Featured list candidacy

Since I got involved with it half a year ago, I've done a fair bit of work on this page and I can't think of many more obvious changes to make to it. I noticed it failed featured list candidacy back in 2008, and have been hoping to get it up to the standard where we could resubmit and pass. The article has had major changes since then regarding content, formatting, accessibility, link rot, etc. Looking at that FLC discussion, it seems the reason it failed was because it was titled "major honours won" but was completely unclear about what a major honour is. After Hashim-afc helped come up with new inclusion criteria, the article now addresses this, by having the lead paragraph carefully state the inclusion criteria, as per WP:LEADFORALIST.

So firstly, does anyone have any advice about restarting the featured list process? Should we go through peer review before resubmitting? Or is that unnecessary since it already went through peer review years ago, and we're now building on the comments from the previous featured list candidacy?

Secondly, does anyone have any specific changes the article could do with? I know there's two things I'm slightly unsure about:

Two potential areas of improvement

Have we chosen the right inclusion criteria? We could have chosen something simpler like competitions run by national and international governing bodies, with participants from the top division of the English football pyramid, and any precursors to such competitions, rather than having different criteria for UEFA/FIFA vs FA/EFL/PL. We opted not to so as to keep inclusion narrower and keep out some lower profile competitions such as the Texaco Cup/Anglo-Scottish Cup/Football League Group Cup and Watney Cup. Or did we not think of some better criteria entirely? I used a template-formatted list for the Key for semantic correctness, accessibility, etc.; as per MOS:GLOSSARIES. Should it be in alphabetical order as described in MOS, or is this one of their alternatives, were we can use a roughly categorical order? Similarly, should the Key have section headings or not?

Pinging active editors who've made substantial contributions to the article (@Mountaincirque: @Hashim-afc: @PeeJay2K3:) and active editors who participated in the old feature review (@Struway2: @The Rambling Man: @Matthewedwards: @NapHit: @Dweller:). Madshurtie (talk) 16:55, 8 November 2017 (UTC)

Happy to support this where possible. The article has improved significantly over the past 3-4 years, hats off to Madshurtie for spearheading the recent tidying and clarification. I'm still not 100% sold on the partial totals section, I wonder whether having columns for 'Tournaments' and 'Supercups' would make the data easier to decipher. I'm sorry but I don't have time to work on major edits though currently. Mountain^{cirque · Join the Karate Task Force?} 10:53, 9 November 2017 (UTC)

@Mountaincirque: Do you mean rename the "non-super cups" column to "tournaments"? Sounds like a good idea. I can reword the summary paragraph to accommodate the new wording too.

Do you know whether the best move is to submit for featured candidacy or peer review first, since as it's already gone through both? It seems like peer review has less activity, but I don't know if resubmitting for FLC will be premature. Madshurtie (talk) 18:34, 9 November 2017 (UTC)

I'm not an expert on featured articles I'm afraid so will bow to the knowledge of the previous editors who worked on this article last time (if they are still active). Yes, using 'tournaments' would be more intuitive to me and I can see you have implemented that already which is an improvement I think. I also meant could you have a column for tournaments with sub-columns for Ongoing/Discontinued and a column for Super-cups and sub-columns for Ongoing/discontinued. It depends if you are trying to contract ongoing/discontinued more rather than tournaments/supercups. It is looking better now anyway for me :) Mountain^{cirque · Join the Karate Task Force?} 11:07, 10 November 2017 (UTC)

@Mountaincirque: I think I did the sub-columns that way around literally just to save header space (the Ongoing/Discontinued/Ongoing-and-discontinued headings have longer words than the Tournaments/Super Cups/Total headings). I've never done a featured review before, but if no one else comments here, I might just add the FLC template and see how we go? Madshurtie (talk) 14:36, 10 November 2017 (UTC)

@Mountaincirque: Just letting you know I've now started the process. :-) Madshurtie (talk) 14:39, 12 December 2017 (UTC)

Requested move 5 February 2018

The following is a closed discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review. No further edits should be made to this section.

The result of the move request was: no consensus to move the page to the requested title at this time, per the discussion below. Dekimasuよ! 20:13, 12 February 2018 (UTC)

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List of English football clubs by elite honours won → List of English men's clubs by FIFA, UEFA and FA honours won – This article has now failed FLC twice because of its controversial title and inclusion criteria. I think this request resolves the issues raised with the article so far, and better fits the following naming criteria:

• WP:NPOVTITLE. This article has had three titles so far: List of football clubs in England by major honours won; List of football clubs in England by competitive honours won; List of English football clubs by elite honours won. Each is somewhat POV because there isn't universal agreement over what a major/competitive/elite honour is (I've seen plenty of reliable sources that include different honours from each other). The endless arguments over the talk archives and edit history are eye watering.
• WP:PRECISION. The three titles of this page so far are ambiguous about what honours should be included. Unfortunately English football has involved a long list of discontinued honours, lower level honours, County honours, friendlies, etc. These cannot all feasibly be included on one page, so the title must be precise about what is included.
• Consistency (as per WP:CRITERIA). The featured list, List of UEFA club competition winners, defines its title and inclusion criteria by whether the honours have been organized by the body UEFA. It's an article that "exemplifies our very best work" and the only list of honours I know of that overlaps with this one. The requested title for this article would be more consistent with it.
• WP:RECOGNIZABLE. The three associations will be almost universally recognized among football fans, so the title should be immediately understood when visiting the page. Madshurtie (talk) 16:51, 5 February 2018 (UTC)

Survey

Feel free to state your position on the renaming proposal by beginning a new line in this section with *'''Support''' or *'''Oppose''', then sign your comment with ~~~~. Since polling is not a substitute for discussion, please explain your reasons, taking into account Wikipedia's policy on article titles.

• Support name change, against restructuring of article. Davefelmer (talk) 19:53, 5 February 2018 (UTC)

• Oppose There are other honours that aren't related to FIFA, UEFA, or FA, especially the older honours so the naming convention you propose wouldn't work. Govvy (talk) 20:43, 5 February 2018 (UTC)

@Govvy: To be clear, are you proposing this article include every honour ever held, including the hundreds of County honours and thousands of friendlies? I considered an alternative title that would let us mention County honours, but actually including them seemed a bit unwieldy. Madshurtie (talk) 21:16, 5 February 2018 (UTC)

@Madshurtie: I am not proposing anything, I am simply saying that the title you want to change the page too doesn't work. It doesn't take into account the older competitions to which the more modern ones evolved into. Govvy (talk) 21:32, 5 February 2018 (UTC)

@Govvy: Sorry, I misunderstood because you mentioned other honours. I'm almost certain every trophy on this page expect the ICFC (mentioned on page) was founded by one of these three organizations (+ the FA's subsidiary leagues) and didn't originate from any omitted trophy, so I'm not sure your point is accurate? Madshurtie (talk) 21:49, 5 February 2018 (UTC)

• Oppose - yes the current name is pants, but the proposed one isn't much better, and if anything is clumsier and more ambiguous. GiantSnowman 09:23, 6 February 2018 (UTC)
• Oppose List contains non-FA honours such as the Football League titles. "major honours" might be better though as I think that's widely accepted to to be restricted to league titles, FA/League Cups and European/world cups. Number 57 09:58, 6 February 2018 (UTC)

@Number 57: The FA has a governing role in the EFL and Premier League, so not sure this point is relevant? It could easily be noted in the lead those bodies are considered along with The FA. "Major" is used inconsistently among the RSs I've seen. Madshurtie (talk) 10:17, 6 February 2018 (UTC)

Discussion

Notifying editors who made substantial contributions over the last year and the two who participated in the FLC: @Davefelmer: @Hashim-afc: @Mountaincirque: @ChrisTheDude: @The Rambling Man: Madshurtie (talk) 17:19, 5 February 2018 (UTC)

Note: This discussion has been included in WikiProject Football's list of association football-related page moves. Hhhhhkohhhhh (talk) 06:33, 6 February 2018 (UTC)

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The above discussion is preserved as an archive of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page or in a move review. No further edits should be made to this section.

Football League Centenary Tournament

@Madshurtie: Hey Madshurtie, what's the reason for Football League Centenary Tournament now being on this page? The page titled "List of football clubs in England by competitive honours won" but this tournament was not competitive, it only had 40 minute matches. Great work on the whole by the way! Hashim-afc (talk) 23:23, 17 February 2018 (UTC)

@Hashim-afc: Long story, but basically it seemed simplest. I was hoping to promote this article to a featured list, but in the review, the convoluted inclusion criteria and the vague title were controversial (for example, one reviewer made the point that it's really not up to Wikipedia to determine what an "elite" honour is). So my current edits are attempting to make the article much simpler and less controversial by just allowing all honours officially organized by a governing body, splitting out County honours, and dividing and splitting out the national domestic honours by just one of the earlier criteria (top-eligibility). A bit like the consensus solution on the Arsenal honours section. The FLC Tournament only seemed to fit the top-qualification category, and didn't seem that big a deal because it's only one honour for one club. I agree it's not a very notable tournament and it has unusual rules, but having carve-outs and convoluted criteria for specific trophies was just something I wanted to avoid. As for whether the title reflects this, I think this title could do with tweaking, but reverting to this one seemed OK for now. Madshurtie (talk) 17:34, 19 February 2018 (UTC)

@Madshurtie: I fully understand where you're coming from not wanting convoluted criteria for specific trophies. The thing is though that the Centenary Tournament was a full-on friendly cup. 40 minute matches played over 2 days. Whereas that can't be said for these other non-notable cups like Full Members, Texaco etc etc. Before, this page used to have a note saying: "The sister tournament, the Football League Centenary Tournament, is not included here because of its unusual match rules, such as 40 minute matches" which I think was good because it was simply explaining why the tournament was not listed on a page for 'competitive honours' (rather than excluding it based on a criteria that we chose which is what you want to avoid). let me know what you think. Aside from that I think you've organised everything else perfectly. Hashim-afc (talk) 17:43, 20 February 2018 (UTC)

@Madshurtie: Also, if we are allowing all honours officially organized by a governing body, technically that would include the Premier League Asia Trophy wouldn't it? I'm assuming that's not on the page because it is not a competitive tournament, and if that's the case, the same should surely apply to the Centenary Tournament and neither would be on the page. Hashim-afc (talk) 17:48, 20 February 2018 (UTC)

@Hashim-afc: Do we have a source saying the Centenary Tournament is a friendly competition? It certainly has unusual rules (I suspect it isn't the first competition with unusual rules, though 40 mins is very unusual), but does this automatically classify it as a friendly?

My justification for not including the Premier League Asia Trophy was because I thought it's organised by ESPN, but it looks like it has Premier League referees, so maybe that was a weak justification. On my sources point above, I've got one source here with two quotes specifically saying the Asia Trophy is not a friendly. Wikipedia calls it a friendly, and I'm sure it's controversial, but I'm guessing both these trophies might be borderline cases.

One other thing to consider is that there are other pre-season competitions with official status, such as the Community Shield, which is often described as a glorified friendly.

So overall I have no idea what system we should use with these trophies. If we can find a source calling the Centenary Tournament a friendly and add it to a note saying why it's excluded then I don't have a big issue with excluding it. Madshurtie (talk) 16:51, 23 February 2018 (UTC)

OK this is a bit silly. Of course the Premier League Asia Trophy should be excluded as they are unofficial, friendly games. Plenty of sources show that, if a player scores in the tournament the goal is not officially recorded as part of their total for the season, while the Community Shield, as a non pre-season and official super cup, does see your results and goals recorded. The occasional description of the Community Shield as a glorified friendly does not take away its official status, in the same way teams looking down on the League Cup or European Super Cup wouldnt take away their status, which seperates it from the Asia Trophy. Davefelmer (talk) 02:30, 26 February 2018 (UTC)

@Madshurtie: I've found a source that says it is a friendly tournament, here. It says: "The Football League Centenary Trophy was the second of two competitions held to celebrate the League's 100th birthday, the first being the Football League Centenary Tournament, this was also sponsored by the Mercantile so was more commonly referred to as the Mercantile Credit Football Festival. This however was a "friendly" tournament held on 16th and 17th of April 1988 at Wembley Stadium. With it being a "friendly" the stats are not included in this site." I'll be WP:BOLD for now and exclude it, if anyone has any issues feel free to post on the talk page. Hashim-afc (talk) 19:46, 26 February 2018 (UTC)

@Hashim-afc: That'll do, good work. It's nice to just use the existing friendly exclusion and not create a new one. I've restored the note letting readers know why only the Centenary Trophy is here. Madshurtie (talk) 17:49, 2 March 2018 (UTC)

Revamp based on FLC feedback

So the article didn't attract immediate support during the new Featured List Candidacy. The objections were all title/inclusion related; one objection was that Wikipedia shouldn't be trying to define what an elite honour is. Although the article tried to clarify its scope in the first paragraph, the vague title was still controversial. Because those inclusion criteria are too complex to put in the title, I don't see any way around this using the current structure. The Rambling Man made two suggestions: we include all domestic and European trophies, but separate them into two lists; or we based the lead criteria around reliable sources. I'm not sure the second is viable because RSs are inconsistent over trophy inclusion and rarely state their actual criteria. However, I think the first is the way forward. It resembles the approach in the existing featured list List of UEFA club competition winners.

I drew up a new version of the article based on this suggestion. The FA/EFL/PL trophies create the main problem because they vastly outnumber the UEFA/FIFA ones. So rather than make two separate, asymmetric lists, I've tried separating them within the same list, and splitting the FA/EFL/PL honours along the lines of our existing criteria. This way all less notable domestic trophies are included but buried. This system also replaces the ongoing/discontinued separation, and allows a simple and objective title. I propose this title: List of English men's clubs by FIFA, UEFA, and FA honours won. The association names make the word "football" in the old title unnecessary, although "men's" should have been there already.

I've edited in this new version, but if anyone has comments or objections, feel free. I'll leave a bit more time before changing the title. Madshurtie (talk) 18:21, 2 February 2018 (UTC)

Alternative proposed title: List of English wins of men's club honours run by football associations. Possibly simpler and doesn't require listing three associations. However it would also cover honours run by County FAs, which are far too numerous to list in this article, but this could be resolved simply by having a brief section mentioning the County honours and linking to the appropriate main articles. Not sure which title I prefer. Madshurtie (talk) 14:45, 3 February 2018 (UTC)

You are going too far with editing this article now. Who cares that it didnt make the list for a featured article? That isnt cause to revamp the whole thing. To answer your point about the title, it is fine to just call them honours without defining them as 'elite'. Most football honours pages share a general consensus for what they include, which is what we have already listed. At times, British publications turn to a count called 'major trophies' i.e. super cup exclusion but that doesnt matter because we address that in the total count table and the clue is in the name; 'major' trophies i.e. just a part of an overall trophy count that we define. Again, this is corroborated by virtually all the media sources that list total honours and not major trophies, as shown . It is also almost fully corroborated by clubs on their official websites, although a very few lower level clubs list county titles on occasion. In any case, a consensus can clearly be formed from the majority so that an outlier or two does not impact the trend. The fact is that county matches are not official honours, organised as friendly or reserve team lower-level games that wouldnt count as senior team trophies. Hence virtually no clubs that have won any list them as honours i.e. Arsenal . Thus, you dont have to skirt around county games to come up with all these long, drawn-out, convoluted titles and can instead list them as professional honours or first team honours. And you most certainly do not need to add 'men's' honours to distinguish between women's honours either, consensus from other articles indicates no need. Just stick to sources instead of trying to cover a bunch of absurd angles no reader is thinking of. Davefelmer (talk) 06:02, 5 February 2018 (UTC)

You haven't actually stated why a list of all FIFA, UEFA, and FA honours won in England is a bad thing. If that were the initial structure of the list, I doubt you would be deleting loads of honours. Nor have you made a case that a list of elite-y honours is a better list than a more comprehensive and clearly defined list.

Your comment here, and the long, drawn-out discussions you've had with me and other editors on various occasions seem to consistently take the perspective that if new honours are discovered/added, we should not consider them because they're "not honours". You make this point again with County Cups, which seems like nothing more than honour denial.

Your theory that media sources deliberately omit the word "major" to show they are including all honours ever to exist (rather than just the sources being lazy) is bizarre, factually wrong, and was repeatedly refuted the last time we discussed this. Your sources today accidentally include one that says major, and the other sources don't include all the same honours (for example, the all-time Sky source includes the Football League Super Cup, whereas the BBC doesn't), thereby refuting your own point.

I've tried to respond to the (second) FLC failure (and the accumulated years of argument over what honours are important enough) by re-categorizing this article into something objective based on the suggestion of another editor. Conversely, your response to it not making featured list is Who cares. You've now opposed and tried to obstruct all additional research or constructive edits various editors have added to this page this last year, and these massive discussions with you have been exhausting and circular for everyone involved. Please take this to WT:FOOTY or some other venue to get the perspective of other editors, because I think the conversation would be more constructive that way. In the meantime, I will unrevert your revert, because it seems very unconstructive to me. Madshurtie (talk) 14:09, 5 February 2018 (UTC)

The name isnt bad, its just unnecessary fluff. You dont need to emphasis that these are 'men's' honours and trophies through official governing bodies, people can see that. A list of 'English football club honours' is fine, down to the point and doesnt need to be revamped into huge convoluted titles. What is this comprehensive and clearly defined list? I thought the list up was exactly that.

That isnt my point, there must be a clear reason AND sources AND consensus for including new information into the list. You and one other editor just insist on making changes on a whim, often without any sources and it will get to the stage where it is just damaging to the list. I have spoken in defence of some honours you wanted to include and against some others, and ultimately didnt stand in the way of the latest adjustment to the page because I agreed, so why you are making me out as someone that opposed all your changes, I dont know. And what about honour denial? You cant pretend something is a trophy when it isnt. If no table, club or media outlet lists it as a trophy in a trophy count and its contested by youth and reserve teams every year of its history beyond the first view, then it in no way is a first team, professional honour. The sources I sent to you are all virtually consistent in their measures for what are honours. The fact that all agreed on all but one honour is still a clear consensus, to deny that would be nothing but being totally obtuse. The SKY Sports site includes both a 'major' and regular honour count, I included it to show the difference but that they are part of the same, total honours coumt.

What is unconstructive is you making mass changes to the page without any consensus or clear reason, which is exactly what you did. You just wrote on the talk page that you were changing it and went ahead and did it without anyone else weighing in. That is literally the definition of unconstructive. I am going to revert it back because I totally disagree, and 1-1 for and against doesnt equal consensus. On top of that, you've added a bunch of regional and reserve cups with no sources which dont belong on the page under the current title nor the one you are proposing. I suggest you not revert it again until we at least discuss the changes here or on the footy talk page with a multitude of editors, as wiki policy is that in the absence of an agreed suitable alternative, we maintain the status quo. Davefelmer (talk) 19:45, 5 February 2018 (UTC)

@Davefelmer: Having considered the reactions to the page move proposal, I've decided to abandon the new article version I created and think of new ideas. In reply to your comments.

Could you please stop saying there were no sources and these trophies are regional or reserve. All of the trophies I added are national tournaments run by a national governing body, and first teams are fielded by almost of the participants in them. County Cups are regional, but I didn't add them. I put the sources in the keys, like with all the other trophies, and the sources state that these are national trophies organized by national governing bodies.

Adding content and research to Wikipedia is constructive almost by definition, and it's encouraged by official policy. This page doesn't have much activity, especially since Mountaincirque hasn't been active recently, so it's hard to get responses on anything, let alone consensus. The only discussion involving this article in the last three months was the Featured List Candidate discussion, where the current article was deemed inadequate and an experienced editor suggested splitting domestic and european honours. I proactively responded to that by researching and creating the new version, and left a two paragraph explanation on the talk page explaining the reasons to any other editors.

I'm sorry I called your reversion unconstructive. It seemed that way because I tried to address a legitimate NPOV issue raised by two other editors, and you immediately started saying it was absolute nonsense, you are going too far, and who cares. You also seemed to be rehashing arguments I had repeatedly responded to during our discussion months ago, and rehashing is considered WP:TENDENTIOUS behaviour.

As for the trophy issue, I'd note that two of the sources you provided aren't completely relevant because they only consider a few clubs: only the most recent seasons of Chelsea and six rivals; and MUFC and Liverpool. Of course they aren't going to list the Intertoto Cup, Anglo-Italian League Cup, Texaco Cup, or FA Trophy for example, because those clubs didn't win them. But that doesn't tell us whether they'd list the cups if they compared more clubs.

One final point, look at this template used on loads of articles throughout the project. The trophies listed include the FA Trophy, FA Vase, and the list of County Cups. So the whole WikiProject Football has considered them trophies for years, and plastered them all over tons of pages. They might not be considered major/elite/whatever, or even worth listing here, but clearly there is a consensus against the position that they aren't any sort of trophy at all! Madshurtie (talk) 18:21, 6 February 2018 (UTC)

@Davefelmer: Just letting you know I've opened a move request. Maybe try to avoid any edit wars until the request is closed, though feel free to oppose the request (try to keep any reasons concise so we can hear the voices of many editors). With any luck this can get us some more opinions and finally resolve the issue. :-) Madshurtie (talk) 17:02, 5 February 2018 (UTC)

While I am fine with the name change (although we could do without 'men's'), the structure of the article is fine. There is no way we can include amateur and regional games that youth and reserve teams play as senior honours, as they dont even appear in any official media, governing body or club sources. Also, if we are to make distinct lists of European and domestic trophy tables, the total trophy table should be first and not at the bottom, as that is what readers will come to see on an honours table. Davefelmer (talk) 19:53, 5 February 2018 (UTC)

@Davefelmer: I had thought of putting the totals table first, but thought it might be less confusing to have the individual trophies listed first. Aside from all of the discussion above, would you have a problem with switching to the ongoing/discontinued tables split to domestic/european if the combined totals table were shown first?

I'm also wondering if a good compromise for this article would be to only list roughly the trophies that are on the page at the moment, and then right at the bottom have mini-sections linking to main articles on other minor trophies, with a sentence or two of context. It would be similar to the the structure at the Arsenal page, which successfully resolved a long-running argument over what trophies were allowed by spinning out the controversial minor trophies while still linking to them on the main page. Then the article could just be called "clubs by honours won" or "clubs by official honours won". Madshurtie (talk) 18:39, 6 February 2018 (UTC)

What do you mean with the switching to the ongoing/discontinued tables part? Not sure I get what you mean but if you wanna explain, I'd be all ears. As for the second suggestion, I don't exactly feel good about including that. Look, I'm not trying to say county games and stuff dont exist or are the equivalent to Sunday park games. I know they are organised and such but the issue is that they are and have been for 90% of their history played by youth and reserve teams. We could include stuff like Man United's Lancashire Senior Cups and Manchester Cups etc but what would be the point when they are not senior level games? It would just clutter all the tables and bloat numbers like crazy by including games of every age group. What about the name 'official senior honours won'? That takes out friendlies as they arent official and county games that are played by reserves. I think thats a fair balance and correct description of the page. Davefelmer (talk) 18:59, 6 February 2018 (UTC)

@Davefelmer: I'll start with your senior suggestion, because I think we might have both had some confusion. Turns out you're right that big teams field reserves in the Lancashire Senior Cup and Manchester Senior Cup (I didn't know that). But that's not the case with all County Cups. For example, the London Senior Cup and Kent Senior Cup involve the senior first teams of smaller clubs from the region, and top division clubs stopped participating a century ago. I didn't realize that wasn't the case for some County Cups, so possibly we've been talking crossed wires here. :-( So the word senior doesn't exclude all County Cups. It also doesn't exclude lower division cups like the FA Trophy, where clubs play their main teams.

Responding to your first bit, you said earlier if we are to make distinct lists of European and domestic trophy tables, the total trophy table should be first and not at the bottom. I'm saying what if we do that. At the moment the article has too many trophies for one table, so there's a separate table for discontinued cups. So instead of keeping that split, we split it European/domestic like I tried to do, but have the combined totals at the top like you say. It would mean the honours like the Cup Winners Cup are in the same category as the ongoing UEFA honours. I'm not saying list the lower tier cups again.

On the links to other honours thing, I didn't mean actually including lower tier honours and County Cups in tables, or listing winners on this page. I just meant add a couple of sentences at the bottom of this article mentioning what they are, with a link to the already existing articles for County Cups and lower cups. That way the reader can see why they aren't on this page, and the interested reader can click through to find out winners, but the average reader doesn't have them bloating the page. Madshurtie (talk) 21:38, 6 February 2018 (UTC)

No problem with the county cups thing, it does appear we got confused with each other's points but thats what I was trying to say in regards to them (perhaps the fault is with me in not making it clear enough). Looking at the county cups teams that do field first teams, it appears to be a select few very small, usually non-league teams, which excludes the term 'professional'. The FA trophy is also played for by semi-pro sides, so maybe the phrase 'professional senior honours won' or 'official professional honours won'? Is that closer to what could incorporate everything? We could try the one proposed before and see if that sticks, and if not then try this one.

As for your suggestion on the structure, thinking about it I like it. It sounds like a good idea that could make all the data more processable. All for giving it a go. Lets impliment these and then look at the third point and how it would work and fit on the page. Davefelmer (talk) 05:38, 7 February 2018 (UTC)

@Davefelmer: I'm not sure how clear professional is because amateur status was abolished by The FA in 1974. Also, some of the clubs in the London and Kent Cups are described on Wikipedia as semi-professional, but others aren't. The Berks & Bucks Football Association states on their website that its senior cup involves professional and semi-professional clubs. As for some of the national cups, the Texaco Cup, EFL Trophy and a few other cups are only professional.

I'm not sure what you're referring to with we could try the one proposed before and see if that sticks, and if not then try this one? If you like the European-domestic split, then I'll implement it in a few days. Madshurtie (talk) 13:14, 8 February 2018 (UTC)

The professional teams involved in the senior cup you mentioned field their reserve sides, and the other lower level tournament dont qualify as top division honours. Perhaps that wording could then be implemented?

And yes, I would not be opposed to the new listing in the way you described it previously. Davefelmer (talk) 08:20, 12 February 2018 (UTC)

@Davefelmer: Two clubs from national leagues fielded reserves, but the rest of the Berks & Bucks Senior Cup clubs field first-teams. Listing only top division honours is a very simple idea (presumably honours that have some top division senior sides in), and we could probably then rename the article to "List of English football clubs by top-division honours won". However, I think the Texaco Cup, Anglo-Scottish Cup, Football League Group Cup, and Watney Cup would need to be added, because these all had top division sides. The Texaco Cup in particular was almost entirely top division sides. Let me know how comfortable you are with that.

That aside, I've implemented the split into European and domestic tables. Still slightly confused what you mean when you say I would not be opposed to the new listing in the way you described it previously. I'm not sure whether you're referring to this split or to the idea of having brief summary sections with main articles links. I've implemented both for now, so let me know what you think. I think this way is a good layout because it caters to both the interested reader who's wondering about all the other trophies, while also catering to the reader who only cares about the most notable ones. With this layout, I think the title should be changed back to "List of English football clubs by competitive honours won", forward to "List of English football clubs by official honours won", or just reduced to "List of English football clubs by honours won". Madshurtie (talk) 18:21, 12 February 2018 (UTC)

I'm sorry for the late reply, I've been away on business and didnt have the time to keep up. But the main issue is that the regional cups are again, competed for at first team level by non league clubs, and a lot (most by what I gather) still play reserve teams like the bigger clubs. again, we are getting into the situation of not clearly defining an 'honour'. Reserve and non-league games should not be on the same page as senior, pro honours, so I propose we remove the county section or make a seperate note about what they are but that they are contested by youth and reserve sides of pro clubs and often first teams of smaller non league sides. Davefelmer (talk) 01:47, 19 February 2018 (UTC)

@Davefelmer: No worries, there's no rush. :-) I agree with most of how you're describing the county cups (though no idea what proportion of participants play first teams), however, not completely sure about this, reserve and non-league games should not be on the same page as senior, pro honours. I think the template I pointed to earlier shows that the project has considered county cups a category of honour for a long time. Obviously they're a separate category, and there's no problem with listing them on their own page, but is it not fair to acknowledge them on this page? Acknowledging them but not including them just seems like a good encyclopedic compromise of both documenting all honours and omitting the less notable ones. Madshurtie (talk) 17:56, 19 February 2018 (UTC)

Looking through the list of county cups, I just can't see how this should be included. The vast, vast majority are almost exclusively played by non-league sides, the ones that arent are basically reserve and youth fixtures for EFL and EPL teams, they arent listed on official club honours pages on their websites, in mainstream sources etc so there is no justification for their inclusion. The template you pointed to was from 2006 and included listing friendlies and other things that have since stopped being included. Times change, and the consensus across the board with other articles would seem to indicate such a template wouldnt be approved now (we can always poll and ask if you want). It comes down to what truly is an 'honour', and the fact is that adding county cups to football league clubs is almost cheating because they are not competing with their senior teams in them. Maybe at the very beginning they did but the vast majority of their history sees them not being first team level honours. I think the section should be removed and we can stick to the lower level EFL stuff, and then make a note in the intro about how county games also exist and are organised and were played seriously at the start of the Football League but are now played by youth and reserve teams of football league clubs and often first teams of non league clubs. Davefelmer (talk) 09:32, 21 February 2018 (UTC)

@Davefelmer: Thanks for the reply. The honours aren't actually listed on the page, so is this a major issue? The problem with whether they should be added to the totals of clubs that play reserve sides is avoided here because there's no numbers provided. Dunno if removing the section from the article and leaving it in the lead is allowed, since MOS:LEAD says the lead should reflect the rest of the article and not provide new content.

As for whether the template would get changed, I'm pretty doubtful, but feel free to request the change. The consensus you're pointing to, with other articles not including friendly and county honours, seems to only be true for big Premier League clubs. The first five smaller club articles I clicked on all list regional trophies, and this article should surely be designed to reflect all the clubs on the page, not just the more famous ones.

A more recent example I can point to of opinions within the project is this discussion I was part of a couple of years ago, involving quite a few experienced editors. It was partially about whether the Arsenal main article should have all honours listed on it, and the general consensus was that all honours should be listed in a spin-out article and the main page should only list the most notable ones. Which seems to me the same approach taken in this article right now? Madshurtie (talk) 17:15, 23 February 2018 (UTC)

I get your points and what you're saying, although the articles you listed do mention that these are competed in by reserve teams, which I've noted in the article. I'll agree to your point that there is no harm in acknowledging them and what they are, so I won't argue their exclusion in the article and will leave it as is. I've just made a few style changes, such as moving the domestic part of the intro before the Euro part, as the domestic comps came first. I've also edited a few words to avoid what was a pretty crazy amount of repeating of the words 'honour' and 'top qualifying'. Its been left in the most important places which will establish the point but it doesnt need to be said everywhere. I also removed the link (not the section) at the top of the county FA part because the link itself had no sources and had a variety of issues listed at the top. The only thing I would think to consider further would be listing each competition in the combined sections rather than just as 'cups' and 'super cups' so distinguishing between the FA Cup, League Cup etc in the table. Or do you think that would require too much room? Apart from that, I am happy to leave it as is. Davefelmer (talk) 02:26, 26 February 2018 (UTC)

@Davefelmer: Agree with most of what you've said. I've made various changes to many of the recent edits by people, but I've tried to explain them in the edit summaries, so won't repeat here. A few comments:

• I reverted the lead paragraph order. Although I agree the domestic ones came first, and they may even be more notable, the lead should reflect the structure of the article, as per MOS:LEAD. Having the trophies listed in a descending hierarchy of governing bodies (European>Domestic>Regional) is logical and looks more organized to me.
• The reason I called the domestic super cups "shields" was just that I thought it would be a more familiar term to most readers. A lot of readers might not think of the community shield under the category super cup. However it does look neater your way, so I'll leave it.
• Well done removing some of the repetition of "honour". To keep it consistent, I've taken the word out of the other headers too. In the combined totals table, I think we need to state "top-qualifying" because the specific trophies aren't in the headers, so some readers might be misled into thinking it includes totals from the lower-qualifying section. I'd also note you removed the phrase from the abbreviation designed for screen readers but left it in the table header for screens. I see your point about repetition of an awkward phrase, but I think it needs to be in this table at least.
• I'm afraid we need the main article link for the County FAs. Official policy in WP:SUMMARY says we should link to a main article when giving a quick summary. Otherwise readers don't know where to go if they want to find out more about the competitions and their winners, for example. I agree with you the page has a load of issues and needs improvement, but that should be solved by improving that page, not removing all links to it.
• I have considered your suggestion of listing all competitions in the combined table, because it seems less confusing to the reader. But, as you say, it would require a lot of room. I reckon giving every trophy a column would make the table two or three times the width of most screen sizes, and then readers might not even realize there is a total column on the right. Previously the discontinued trophies were grouped into one column, but that wasn't ideal either. I've previously considered using things like Template:Scrolling table, but that doesn't seem to work well on mobile. One advantage of the current approach is people can see the partial totals if they don't think super cups are very important, for example. If you have any other suggestions though, I'd like to hear them. Madshurtie (talk) 18:55, 2 March 2018 (UTC)

Sorry for the late reply, again work took over and I did not have much time to keep up our discussion but fortunately I am in the clear now. Looking at your recent edits though, and I cannot say that I agree with them. You have effectively just reverted everything back to the way you originally wanted it listed, a format that I did not envision when I suggested you restructure the page to the way you described it to me and we see how it looks. Firstly, as this is a page for English clubs and their trophies, as well as the fact that they were competing domestically for over half a century before European competition even began, I think its reasonable to list the domestic side first, in both the intro and combined table. Secondly, I don't like the heavy emphasis of county honours on the page as if they are equivalent to first team competitions like the rest. As we already discussed, sourced and established, they are reserve and youth team comps for professional football league sides for the majority of their history, and really dont have a major place in the list in the same way that the national reserve league doesnt. Not to mention that you didnt like the fact that this article failed the featured article nomination before, but there's no way it will pass when linked to such a poor article as the county cup one. When you factor in how poor that article is and their general irrelevance to first team honours (bar a few notes of their original importance which I tried to include without too much emphasis on them), I don't see how they can be included at all. The information about them should be kept to several lines in the introduction and the section about them should be removed since it is unsourced and linked to a poor article. Finally, on a more minor note, I do think we should include the record holder of each comp in the intro, as that is descriptive detail readers could want to know but may not, and there are easy sources for them all (United for the CS, Liverpool for the EFL Cup, etc). Davefelmer (talk) 19:22, 15 March 2018 (UTC)

@Davefelmer: No worries, again, no rush. There were quite a lot of edits made to various parts of the page by a few editors, each with different justifications, but, just to check I've understood fully, you're mainly concerned with the European/domestic order and the inclusion of a section for the County Cups? On those two:

1. I do agree with you that the domestic honours are older and this raises their notability, and I did say this in the edit summary and on the talk page. I made the point that European honours are higher in the football heirarchy than domestic honours (they cover more than one country and only the elite Premier League clubs qualify for them), so listing in heirarchical order is logical, but you don't seem to have replied to this point? I'd also note in your actual edits you changed the lead order but not the section order, so it seemed sensible to revert the inconsistency. Whichever way we organize it, the lead should definitely be consistent with the body.
2. I don't like the heavy emphasis of county honours on the page as if they are equivalent to first team competitions like the rest. The honours aren't made equivalent to the other honours? The winners and the honours aren't even named on this page, and the article makes clear they are regional comps that have had varying historical importance and have often had reserve teams in. That information makes up maybe half the text about them. Based on the 2016 discussion I mentioned and the project-wide template, it looks to me the consensus is that county cups are honours, but can be spun-out where necesssary. If you want a mere summary section of them blocked from the page, I think you might have to ask the project to get a consensus change. Not to mention that you didnt like the fact that this article failed the featured article nomination before, but there's no way it will pass when linked to such a poor article as the county cup one. I don't know any wikipedia policy deeming an article poor quality because an article it links to is poor quality. For example the 13 March featured article Winter War has at least four different main article links to pages with quality tags at the top. The information about them should be kept to several lines in the introduction and the section about them should be removed. It's official policy that the lead is meant to summarize the article, so we can't have info only in the lead.

On the minor point, I agree with you it would be good to mention each record holder in the lead, since the lead is meant to reflect the rest of the article, and the tables are the focus of the article. However there's too much text in the lead to just add a sentence for each trophy, so the lead would have to have a lot of text trimmed and moved to the keys. I've been thinking of doing it when I have time. Madshurtie (talk) 19:11, 16 March 2018 (UTC)