Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/2003–04 Manchester City F.C. season/FA Cup Fourth round replay

The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposed deletion of the article below. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was Delete. Arguements for deleting have stronger basis in policy, guidelines, and general practice regarding single-game articles. As well, there is very little support for keeping this as an article. Jayron32 04:25, 23 April 2011 (UTC)

2003–04 Manchester City F.C. season/FA Cup Fourth round replay

2003–04 Manchester City F.C. season/FA Cup Fourth round replay (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) – (View log)

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Not notable. Previously deleted at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Tottenham Hotspur F.C. 3–4 Manchester City F.C. and Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Tottenham Hotspur v Manchester City (FA Cup 2003-04). Jmorrison230582 (talk) 18:02, 12 April 2011 (UTC)

• Note: This discussion has been included in WikiProject Football's list of association football-related deletions. GiantSnowman 18:25, 12 April 2011 (UTC)
• Delete - non-notable match, as two previous AfDs show. GiantSnowman 18:26, 12 April 2011 (UTC)
• Keep - quite clearly meets WP:GNG. This match has plenty of reliable sources that address the subject "directly and in detail". In addition, as I said in the first AfD "I quote from the Guardian "This may well be as great a comeback as English football has ever known" and Kevin Keegan "They'll talk about this game long after we're dead and gone"". The first AfD closed as merge not delete. However, the merged material is not there now so a standalone article now seems the best way to go. TerriersFan (talk) 22:46, 12 April 2011 (UTC)
  • Comment - You could say that about a lot of games. Alex Ferguson described United's 4-3 win over City last season as the greatest derby win ever, but we don't have an article about that game even though there are masses of web sources about it. If we had an article for every game with decent coverage, we'd have hundreds! Anyway, we already had an AfD for an article about this very game, and the consensus was to delete. Why on earth does User:Mancini's Lasagne invite to Harry seem to believe he is completely above the rest of the community? – PeeJay 22:58, 12 April 2011 (UTC)
    • Response1 - Perhaps you should have read this, WP:AFDEQ and WP:NPA before you made your comment? You also clearly seriously misunderstand the AfD process. Each review discussion is a separate process because the previous AfDs were for different articles. If deleting an article simply because "another article on this topic was also previously deleted" was a valid reason for voting that way on the current one, then it would be impossible to ever improve an article. Prior deletion of poor articles has nothing whatsoever to do with any article currently being reviewed for AfD. This process is also intended to prevent people with personal agendas banding together to repeatedly suppress article material that they don't personally like simply on the basis that they had previously managed to successfully "play the system" in order to reject it. Thus an argument that an article on the same topic was previously AfD-ed is quite irrelevant. It may also be indicative of an agenda. Mancini's Lasagne invite to Harry ^Talk 01:53, 13 April 2011 (UTC)
    • Response - "If we keep this then we will have ooo's of others" is never a good argument. Firstly we never do because we don't have the editors prepared or interested to write many such articles. Secondly, even if many other articles on other notable or unusual matches as well written and sourced as this one are produced so what? We are not paper and can accommodate as many such articles that people are prepared to write. I have yet to see a policy-based deletion argument here - what we have are "I don't like it". TerriersFan (talk) 23:21, 12 April 2011 (UTC)
    • Response2 - WRT your comments about the 4-3 derby game, it may well be one if the best derby games ever between the two clubs. We don't know that though. Because pundits, journalists and bloggers don't keep publishing "best of" lists of Manchester derby games every few months with that one featured on it. It is not the Kevin Keegan quote that matters (by itself) it is the fact that whenever comeback games are now mentioned, the Spurs-City game is always one of the first ones mentioned. For instance, it was mentioned in a comparative fashion when Newcastle drew with Arsenal 4-4. There is no rational explaining of zeitgeist. That's the difference between those two 4-3 games. Mancini's Lasagne invite to Harry ^Talk 02:51, 13 April 2011 (UTC)
• Delete per previous AfD. Btw, if this article is kept, it will need to be moved, as we do not allow subpages in the mainspace on the English Wikipedia. – PeeJay 22:58, 12 April 2011 (UTC)

• Comment - agreed about the page move but that can be accomplished quite simply. TerriersFan (talk) 23:21, 12 April 2011 (UTC)
• Comment - I also agree. The background to why and how the article was created has already been explained. Mancini's Lasagne invite to Harry ^Talk 02:19, 13 April 2011 (UTC)

• Delete as nominator and per WP:NOTNEWS. None of the lengthy comments above address that fundamental point. Nothing has substantially changed to make this game more or less notable since the previous discussions. Jmorrison230582 (talk) 05:52, 13 April 2011 (UTC)
  • Comment - No one is claiming that anything has changed WRT the notability of this game. The match is still as highly notable as it was during the last AfD discussion. What HAS changed this time around is that the notability of this game is much better supported in the article with RS citations (amongst other improvements). Vote / comments such as this one (which was typical of the last AfD) no longer apply: "Delete: the match has not received coverage other than routine reports in the days following the game. No indication that the match is notable enough for its own article." WP:NOTNEWS is a completely bogus reference here. That guidance refers to situations such as someone creating a Wikipedia article about, say, a game between Wolves and West Ham in the Premier League just because all the news media that regularly provide reportage on Premier League games covered that one too (which they would as a matter of course). This match is notable because of how it is regarded in the consciousness of football fans, not because over two dozen RS references have been cited for it. The cited sources serve testament to the game's obvious notability; no one is claiming the game is considered notable merely because citations exist. Your reasoning is completely backwards on this issue. Mancini's Lasagne invite to Harry ^Talk 17:58, 15 April 2011 (UTC)

• One of your new cites is a Daily Mail article listing its 50 top FA Cup matches. This match is ranked #38. In the 31 to 40 page, there are seven other non-FA Cup Final matches (Arsenal v Millwall, Liverpool v Havant & Waterlooville, Cardiff v Leeds, Man Utd v Portsmouth, Southampton v Spurs, Liverpool v Barsnley and Bournemouth v Man Utd) - NONE of which have an article on wikipedia. I'm sorry, but this match is not objectively notable. I mean for pete's sake, Man City lost in the next round anyway. Big deal. Jmorrison230582 (talk) 18:13, 15 April 2011 (UTC)

• Possibly we should just remove that reference; I didn't much agree with that list of games myself. But that will still leave two dozen minus one (or whatever the number is now) references left. There is a tendency in these sorts of situations - meaning one where a game that is clearly notable to many people is dismissed out of hand by others - for the defenders to gild the lily a bit in trying to establish what they feel should be obvious to others. Picking on that one reference does not make your case. It probably just means the reference in question should be removed. The fact that the team that played in a notable game did not go on to win the respective competition is irrelevant. This game is not in the collective consciousness because it was part of a successful cup run by City that year, but because of how the events in the game played out. For instance, Charlton Athletic did not go on to win the Second Division in the 1957-58 season after playing in this game. Maybe you wish to delete that article too? Mancini's Lasagne invite to Harry ^Talk 20:13, 15 April 2011 (UTC)

• No, because that match set a competition record. Jmorrison230582 (talk) 20:50, 15 April 2011 (UTC)

• And the Spurs-City game also set a record. It is the only comeback by ten men winning an away fixture in the FA Cup. It's kind of ironic how you are now defending the existence of that article because it was created on 12 August 2010 as a direct consequence of some comments made by me on 11 August 2010 during the previous AfD (see paragraph starting: "OTOH, that 1957 Charlton Athletic - Huddersfield Town game is indeed a notable game .."). It appears that you simply post whatever arguments suit your own agenda - there's no consistency to them. :) Mancini's Lasagne invite to Harry ^Talk 21:37, 15 April 2011 (UTC)

• Excuse me. Who is it that is not assuming good faith and making personal attacks? Pray tell, what "agenda" do I have here? I don't support an English football club. I'm not particularly interested in English football. Stop imagining things. Jmorrison230582 (talk) 21:43, 15 April 2011 (UTC)

• Alright, then take the source from The Independent. There are three other matches in that top ten FA Cup comebacks list that weren't finals, and guess what? None of those have articles either! Jmorrison230582 (talk) 20:55, 15 April 2011 (UTC)

• Just because an article on a similar / related topic does not already exist is NOT a sound argument for claiming that a newly created article on some topic should also not exist. That is a completely spurious reasoning. For example, at some point in Wikipedia's past there were no articles in existence documenting any of the FA Cup finals. Once someone created the very first FA Cup final article, if another person such as you had come along and slapped an AfD on it claiming that it should not be an article because all the other FA Cup final games also did not have articles, and people had listened to such baloney, we still would not have any FA Cup final articles today. Your argument above is totally irrelevant. Mancini's Lasagne invite to Harry ^Talk 10:59, 19 April 2011 (UTC)

• A Daily Mirror article listing 10 great comebacks is cited. There are five other non-cup finals listed (#10 thru #4) and none of those have wikipedia articles. One of those matches was a very similar match a few years beforehand where Tottenham blew a 3–0 half-time lead against the other Manchester club. Jmorrison230582 (talk) 21:03, 15 April 2011 (UTC)

• Yes, but the point you have conveniently chosen to ignore is that the other Manchester club performed its comeback with a full complement of players, NOT with ten men and missing its main striker. That comeback is therefore not as noteworthy - because the level of adversity from which United recovered was not as severe. Consequently, that comeback is no longer talked about anywhere near as much as the one by City, despite the fact that United scored one more goal in achieving it. Another difference between that game and the City game is that going into it United were the favorites to win (viz. when that game was played they were the reigning PL champions and were once again in the top three places of the PL challenging Liverpool and Arsenal for a repeat title), so Spurs' emphatic 3-0 lead at half-time was somewhat unexpected.

Thus, when United turned things around in the second half they were only perceived to be re-establishing normalcy. OTOH, when the City game was played City were in a relegation scrap at the bottom of the PL, so going into that cup tie replay they were the underdogs. Before the game, nobody would have expected City to have been quite as outplayed by Spurs in the first half, but Spurs going in at half-time with a lead would have been what many neutral observers would have predicted before the game started. That situation makes City's second half comeback quite the opposite of United's - because while United only restored normalcy with their fight back, City pulled off what no one saw coming at all, even their own manager. You have to understand the context of each comeback game in order to understand why some games have gone into the collective football consciousness - the zeitgeist - as remarkable comebacks while others haven't. Notability is NOT purely a function of the score line (although the score line involved in any comeback is indeed a factor). Mancini's Lasagne invite to Harry ^Talk 10:59, 19 April 2011 (UTC)

• The Soccernet article listing 10 great games of the decade is cited. Again, none of the other non-cup finals have articles. I have now gone through all the retrospective cites for this match. None of them cover the match in any great depth, it's just passing description lifted from the contemporary match reports. I've established below that the match had no lasting significance. It just isn't a notable event and therefore falls under WP:NOTNEWS. It is worthy of mention in the Man City season article, which should be expanded accordingly. Jmorrison230582 (talk) 21:03, 15 April 2011 (UTC)

• That is not true at all. Some of the citations might fit that description, but to say that ALL do is pure hyperbole and you are clearly trying to mislead the reader with such a broad falsity. You haven't established AT ALL that the match has no lasting significance ... you've ONLY established that it has no lasting significance to YOU. For a game to have "lasting significance" it does not necessarily have to lead directly to a competition being won ... case in point, Charlton's 7-6 victory over Huddersfield did not lead to their winning the Second Division that season, nor did it lead to Charlton even achieving promotion. A game can also have "lasting significance" because it has social significance - such as people still talking about it many years after the fact (for whatever reason). The Spurs-City game only occurred seven years ago but the fact that people still talk about it in the manner that they do whenever the word "comeback" is mentioned means that it does fit that general profile of "social significance" (or zeitgeist). Once again, I am not arguing that the game is notable because the cited references exist for it. My argument is quite the opposite; it is that those kind of articles only exist for that game because it is notable. In this regard, you keep putting the cart before the horse.

You appear to confuse Wikipedia with the Guinness World Records where for any topic to gain an entry in that book it has to be superlatively significant - viz. the world's biggest, smallest, heaviest, lightest, etc. But Wikipedia doesn't work like that. If we applied your same reasoning to the consideration of, say, which authors get their own Wikipedia articles, only authors that wrote more books than other authors, or sold more books than other authors, or wrote longer books than other authors, etc. would be considered eligible to have an article. However there are authors that have Wikipedia articles that only wrote a single book - but it had great social significance. Similarly, a football match is not notable ONLY because the number of goals that were scored in it set a record for the sport, or because the victorious team then went on to win the respective competition. It can be notable for other reasons too, in the same manner that an author that only wrote a single thin book can be more notable than one that generated a whole bookcase full of them. The Spurs-United game had one more goal in it than the Spurs-City game and United went on to finish third in the PL that season, while City finished two places above the drop zone and were eliminated in the next round of the FA Cup. Yet whenever comebacks are mentioned it is the City game that continually gets talked about and NOT the United game. Your defining parameters for what has "lasting significance" are unable to account for that basic fact because they are too simplistically restrictive an approach and are wrong. It is YOUR interpretation of WP:NOTNEWS that is false, not mine.
Mancini's Lasagne invite to Harry ^Talk 10:59, 19 April 2011 (UTC)

• Your interpretation of WP:NOTNEWS is false. The policy states that "routine news reporting on things like announcements, sports, or celebrities is not a sufficient basis for inclusion in the encyclopedia.. That means routine individual professional sports matches are not notable, mainly because they do not have lasting significance. We allow cup final articles as standard because they have an obvious lasting significance: the winner won the relevant cup. By your interpretation of the policy we would have articles on just about every football match ever played! There are 380 matches played in a single season of the Premier League, which is but one division of one country. Considering Wikipedia:Notability (events), this match had very limited lasting effect. As I noted above, City were knocked out in the next round. Both clubs continued on their merry way with no real lasting consequences. Unlike, say, Chelsea beating Liverpool on the last day of the 2002–03 season to win a Champions League place, which then attracted the investment by Roman Abramovich (source). The retrospective coverage also lacks depth. Jmorrison230582 (talk) 18:37, 15 April 2011 (UTC)

• If, as you claim, a game has to have a "lasting effect" in order to be considered notable, then this article and this article also need to be AfD-ed because both those games fail to meet your criterion. These games were not notable for their score lines (0-0 and 2-0) nor the fact that they had any "real lasting consequences" on the Premier League results in their respective seasons. They are noteworthy mostly for the overall poor conduct and lack of sportsmanship demonstrated by almost all of the players and managers concerned. At best, the notability of those two games is based on their "social significance" which has caused those two games to be talked about, rather than forgotten, in the intervening years since they were played. Which is exactly the same situation that pertains to the Spurs-City game, except it is not remembered for how badly all the players behaved during and after the game, but is remembered instead for the high quality of its goals and the very unlikely nature of City's comeback. Mancini's Lasagne invite to Harry ^Talk 03:54, 21 April 2011 (UTC)

• Comment and delete Since I never saw the original versions, I'd be hard pressed to know what significant additions were made to the article to make it "more notable". But from what I see so far, I'd have to go with the fact that this is WP:NOTNEWS. And to MLitH, it would do you good to simplify your arguments. No one wants to read massive essays on why you think this is notable, or for any counter-arguments here or elsewhere. Digirami (talk) 16:01, 13 April 2011 (UTC)

For reference, a copy of the version deleted at the last AfD is in User:Falastur2's userspace. This revision is how the article looked at the close of the AfD. Oldelpaso (talk) 16:25, 13 April 2011 (UTC)

• Merge to 2003–04 Manchester City F.C. season. Matches like this one elicit a wide range of opinions from the community. There is near-unanimous agreement that things like national cup finals merit articles, but that routine fixtures do not. This match was not a final, but nor was it routine, and so falls into the area in the middle, where advocates of all positions could probably find an AfD precedent somewhere in this list. I was one of those calling for a merge to 2003–04 FA Cup in the first AfD. 2003–04 Manchester City F.C. season did not exist then, and I now consider that to be a more appropriate merge target. When the match is more notable in the history of one team than the other, I think a merge to that team's season article can work well. This was the outcome for Stevenage F.C. 3–1 Newcastle United F.C., which was merged to 2010–11 Stevenage F.C. season, where I think it is a good fit. Oldelpaso (talk) 16:25, 13 April 2011 (UTC)
• Delete. Per previous AfDs. It was not a cup final and no records were broken. It was just another good comeback, much like this one. Argyle 4 Life^talk 18:05, 13 April 2011 (UTC)
• Comment. There appears to have been an attempt to post this article in the main space, while deliberately not adding categories to the article to avoid it appearing in other places. I only came across the article because I was providing assessments to unassessed football articles, and another user had added the WP:FOOTY tag to the article talk page. I don't think this is particularly good behaviour. Jmorrison230582 (talk) 11:13, 14 April 2011 (UTC)
  • Response - Read Background. There appears no such thing. I am the person that actually categorized this article because bots kept flagging it as needing categorization, so I hardly think there was a "deliberate attempt" to avoid it appearing anywhere. I strongly recommend you revert that comment because it too is a veiled personal attack that fails to assume the "good faith" of another editor. Otherwise we need to get an admin. involved here because I'm getting a little tired of all these personal attacks.
    Mancini's Lasagne invite to Harry ^Talk 12:18, 14 April 2011 (UTC)
    • You deliberately removed an uncategorized tag with this edit, stating that "it is not an article", which it patently is. Now you are arguing it should be kept as an article!?! Jmorrison230582 (talk) 12:58, 14 April 2011 (UTC)
      • What is so difficult about this single "Background" paragraph for you to understand? I removed the "article needs to be categorized" tag because I believed the article was internal to the actual season article I had linked it to as a subpage and I didn't want a page that was NOT in article space being misclassified by a bot with possibly faulty logic. I did this twice. The third time I did it the author of the bot posted on my Talk page and said that everything in article space had to be categorized (which the bots normally do) or flagged as requiring categorization (by a human). It was only THEN I realized I had ALSO put this subpage into article space when I created it. Once created, a page can only be moved within article space but NOT deleted by a user.

Just prior to coming to that realization I started a new thread (the one you linked above) on Falastur2's Talk page to ask him what he thought and HE is the one that felt that this subpage should really be a standalone article, but that it must minimally address any failings that caused it to be deleted during the last AfD process (which was mostly due to people claiming "lack of notability" because that version of the article failed to clearly establish that point). I felt his arguments were sound which is why I'm now supporting that this page be kept as an individual article in its own right. There's nothing sinister going on here and if you had only bothered to read the "hang on" arguments that successfully overturned your initial unmerited attempt to speedy delete this article you would have known that. However, counter to clear WP:AGF guidance, you have now chosen twice to sidetrack this AfD discussion by assuming that the actions of other editors were not made in "good faith" and have instead gone out of your way to cast false aspersions on them here. Since you cannot conduct yourself in a more harmonious and mature manner I will now have to get a neutral admin. to intervene at this point. Mancini's Lasagne invite to Harry ^Talk 22:47, 14 April 2011 (UTC)

• The point is that there is no such thing as a "subpage". It's an article, which has been deleted twice before and you have deliberately recreated the article, and then tried to prevent it from showing up in other areas of the mainspace. There's no personal attack there - those are facts. Jmorrison230582 (talk) 05:37, 15 April 2011 (UTC)

• No, those are merely false speculations made by you in bad faith. When you state "there is no such thing as a 'subpage'" you are clearly in denial of reality. Look at the title of the article we are discussing. The page under discussion is a subpage of the associated season article. The TRUE facts are that every subpage I had created prior to this one was NOT in article space so I didn't expect this one to be either. It took me awhile to realize that this one was. What I did was deliberately create a subpage NOT an article. Once I realized it was an article too I made sure it was properly categorized. Furthermore, as explained in Response1 above the fact that there have been earlier manifestations of articles on this topic is completely irrelevant to this discussion which you are now obviously intent on sidetracking. You need to let go and move on. This article should stand or fall on its own merits, so let's please get back to discussing those. Also, I feel all of these interchanges on this topic best belong elsewhere and should be removed from this page since they add nothing constructive to the discussion of why or why not this current article should remain. Perhaps they should be moved to the Talk page of this AfD.
  Mancini's Lasagne invite to Harry ^Talk 17:29, 15 April 2011 (UTC)

• Comment. MLITH is also arguing this article should be kept because it would "skew" the content of the Manchester City 2003–04 season article. Yet presently there is no text whatsoever in the relevant section of that article, and only a passing mention in the season overview. The cart is being placed before the horse. Expand the season article with relevant information. If that one match then dominates the season article, then it may be appropriate to consider the need for a standalone match article. Not the other way round. Jmorrison230582 (talk) 12:58, 14 April 2011 (UTC)
• Merge to 2003–04 Manchester City F.C. season. I see no convincing evidence of the match in question being particularly notable of itself, but it does appear to be significant in the history of Manchester City. The relevant season article currently contains only a very few lines of prose, so the contents of this match article would enhance rather than overwhelm. For information, the software prevents creation of subpages in mainspace (see Wikipedia:Subpages), so this is an ordinary article which happens to have a slash in its name. cheers, Struway2 (talk) 16:05, 15 April 2011 (UTC)
  • Correction - The Wikipedia documentation states that but the software clearly works differently - it may be a bug tied to the history of subpages in main namespace. I created the subpage in exactly the same manner that I have previously created subpages in my personal space. If the documentation was strictly correct the system should have prevented me from doing what I did. But I knew none of this at the time. I only saw that subpage guidance AFTER I had done the deed as a result of Falastur2 pointing it out to me. When I created the subpage I believed I was creating a sort of topical hierarchy and thus it would be totally internal and subordinate to the season article. By the time I started my conversation with Falastur2 I was now quite confused about what I had actually done, but after reading Wikipedia:Subpages I became even more convinced for a while that I had not created an article in article space because it claimed I could not even create a subpage in article space, and the one thing I knew for sure was that I had created a subpage. This only added to the confusion. The pertinent text here is the very first line of WP:SUB: "Except in main namespace (article namespace), where the subpage feature has been disabled in the English Wikipedia, subpages are pages separated with a "/" (a slash) from their 'parent' page." (my emphasis added)
    Mancini's Lasagne invite to Harry ^Talk 19:09, 15 April 2011 (UTC)
    • Nothing you've written is inconsistent with the page in question being an ordinary article with a slash in its name. The software won't create subpages in mainspace; it won't stop us creating pages that we might think are subpages but aren't. It would certainly be helpful if the software put up a message if it spotted a slash in a pagename being created in mainspace. Something along the lines of "It looks like you're trying to create a subpage in the mainspace but you can't. Click 'Continue' if you actually want a mainspace page with a slash in its name". Doesn't matter, anyway; we've all learnt a bit more about subpages now, so it's been educational. cheers, Struway2 (talk) 20:08, 15 April 2011 (UTC)
      • No, it is indeed a subpage ... but without the backward link (the breadcrumb) on the page we're discussing (which I only noticed later when I went to use it and it wasn't there). Let's not get bogged down in semantics here. I created this page using the standard procedure for creating a subpage. If you go to the parent MCFC 2003-04 season article and click on either this heading or the link embedded in the last sentence of the text of the "Season review" section, the page forward links just fine. What Wikipedia probably did is "nobble" this feature rather than "disable" it. But saying that would not look very good in the guidance documentation. :)
        Mancini's Lasagne invite to Harry ^Talk 20:43, 15 April 2011 (UTC)

• You've totally misunderstood the meaning of Wikipedia:Subpages. None of the allowed uses of a subpage covers what you did. What you did is covered by #3 disallowed use: Using subpages for permanent content that is meant to be part of the encyclopedia. You meant it to be part of the encyclopedia because you say it was meant to be a subpage for the Man City 2003–04 season article. If you'd created an article called User:Mancini's Lasagne invite to Harry/Spurs 3–4 City, that would have been a legitimate user subpage under the #1 allowed usage. Jmorrison230582 (talk) 20:48, 15 April 2011 (UTC)

• No, I didn't misunderstand anything about that guidance. Because I didn't read it before creating the subpage. I didn't need to, I already knew how to create subpages. As I've stated, I only read it later but by then the deed was done. Once again you are in obvious violation of WP:AGF. May I suggest you stop trying to score points off of me like an immature adolescent and stick to the discussion in hand. For all your supposed concerns about unnecessary text on this page as per your sarcastic struckthrough comment, most of the irrelevant text to the discussion that readers have to plough through has been generated because of your "bad faith" posts WRT the actions and motives of other editors. Mancini's Lasagne invite to Harry ^Talk 21:08, 15 April 2011 (UTC)

• The facts of the case give no reason to assume good faith. Having realised your error, why didn't you blank the page and request speedy deletion? Jmorrison230582 (talk) 21:39, 15 April 2011 (UTC)

• The facts of the case are right there for everybody to see in the discussion on Falastur2's Talk page that I started and you posted a link to up above. If you had been smart enough to actually read that conversation before posting the link to it, as if it was some sort of smoking gun aimed in my direction, you'll see that I started it by presenting four options, of which I considered only the third one viable, and that my concerns were over the ramifications of categorizing an internal subpage as a fully blown article. The second option I listed was creating another article for the game which I initially dismissed out of hand. You can see that I was very surprised when he suggested that one and I initially questioned whether we could even go that route. As the conversation pursued he won me over to his viewpoint because, unlike you, I listen to the people I converse with rather than just try and win points off of them. Since he wanted to resubmit the article and I had already unknowingly created it, there was nothing more to do (other than go improve the article).

Your whole demeanor on this page has suggested that you believe that recreating previously AfD-ed articles is the worse possible sin and that I am the Devil Incarnate for having done so. But you are wrong (although you'll probably never admit it nor apologize - people like you never do). There is absolutely no rule against recreating an article in article space if you believe it has merit as per my Response1 above. Recreating material that has been deleted (usually with a PROD or a SD) for legal reasons (such as copyright infringement or pornographic content, etc.) is not permitted, and you appear to confuse the two situations, all the while accusing others of not knowing what they are doing, or even of doing it with the most evil of intentions. IMO you need to step away from your PC and spend a couple of days reading WP:AGF because you clearly don't understand what it says. I am not going to discuss this issue any further - because you have already totally hijacked this AfD discussion with your silly zealous pursuit of a technicality. I made a mistake and I freely admit it, but your mistake is an order of magnitude greater than mine, yet you don't even acknowledge it and continue to pursue it. Mancini's Lasagne invite to Harry ^Talk 22:43, 15 April 2011 (UTC)

• You made a mistake and have refused to correct it. You repeatedly make false accusations against other users of not assuming good faith and making personal attacks on you, yet you then go and do exactly that. "you believe that I am the Devil Incarnate"; "if you had been smart enough"; "your silly zealous pursuit"; "people like you"; "your agenda" - your words, not mine. Jmorrison230582 (talk) 22:59, 15 April 2011 (UTC)

• "There appears to have been an attempt to post this article in the main space, while deliberately not adding categories to the article to avoid it appearing in other places." <-- Accusation (and in this instance, a false one, because I'm the person that categorized the article. The bots were tagging the article as "requiring categorization" which meant that, until I categorized it, it would only show up on a list of articles needing categorization by humans.)

"you have deliberately recreated the article, and then tried to prevent it from showing up in other areas of the mainspace." <-- Accusation (and once again, also a false one). It is my categorizing of the article that permitted it to show up correctly in mainspace rather than just appear on a humungus list of articles that the bots were unable to automatically categorize.

"You've totally misunderstood the meaning of Wikipedia:Subpages." <-- A false presumption of what I knew beforehand and/or know now.

"The facts of the case give no reason to assume good faith." <-- Another false accusation - a more reasonable person would not come to that conclusion.

"You made a mistake and have refused to correct it." <-- Yet another false accusation. No correction of the technicality was needed once the decision to recreate the article was made. It was already established on the very first day of this AfD that moving the page can be accomplished quite simply. That should have been the end of the matter.

There is no assumption of "good faith" in any of the above statements. In fact, they all rabidly assume "bad faith" in violation of WP:AGF as I have continually pointed out. Those are all your words, not mine. Hence I was erring on the side of heavy understatement when I called your words a "silly zealous pursuit of a technicality"! And exactly how is referring to myself as "the Devil Incarnate" a personal attack on you? LMAO. Mancini's Lasagne invite to Harry ^Talk 13:22, 19 April 2011 (UTC)

• I shouldn't really have started this discussion here, but we may as well try and get the technical bit right now I have. If you go to my userpage, there's a bare link of the form [[/Sandbox]]; that link is blue, functional, and goes to the subpage User:Struway2/Sandbox. If you add a link of the same form [[/FA Cup Fourth round replay]] in the article 2003–04 Manchester City F.C. season, and preview your edit, you don't get a link to the article of this AfD, you get a redlink. Click on it, and you get to the standard creating-a-new-page form for a page called /FA Cup Fourth round replay. If subpages worked in mainspace, you would get to the article of this AfD. cheers, Struway2 (talk) 21:50, 15 April 2011 (UTC)

• Your explanation is well noted. However, since I always use full path names for links (because I copy and paste them so as to avoid typos) I would never have discovered the nuance you just pointed out for myself. This whole discussion is a case of locking the stable door after the horse has bolted. Hopefully not relying on too many farmyard analogies here ... if something looks like a duck, waddles like a duck, and quacks like a duck, then it probably is a duck. Similarly, if something looks like a subpage, creates like a subpage, and links like a subpage, and what you intended to create was a subpage, then it is a perfectly reasonable assumption to believe that it is a subpage. Wikipedia strongly recommends that users first prototype anything but trivial editorial changes in "user space" (sandboxes) before applying them to articles in "article space" so as to avoid royal screwups. In almost every other aspect of Wikipedia what works in your sandbox will also work exactly the same way in "article space" (which is why you should practice there first). Except in THIS CASE where exactly the opposite applies.

Because subpages work in "user space" but don't work in "article space", and that fact (as you yourself have pointed out above) is poorly documented and implemented. So why is that error in Wikipedia MY fault? You are blaming someone for falling down a hole in the middle of the road when the real person responsible is the stupid twit that dug the hole there in the first place! Furthermore, as you have said yourself, none of the discussion you started, nor any of Jmorrison230582's false accusations as to my motives in creating this article (read: in falling down a hole that should never have been there) is the slightest bit relevant to the discussion of whether the Spurs-City game merits its own article which is the only issue this AfD should be discussing, which is why I feel all of that text should be moved elsewhere (such as to the Talk page of this AfD) where it can serve as background detail to the main discussion here. Mancini's Lasagne invite to Harry ^Talk 20:38, 22 April 2011 (UTC)

• Merge to the appropriate Manchester City season article. The match wasn't notable enough for a standalone article before, and it still isn't notable enough now. It didn't set any competition or comeback records, but it is certainly worth a mention in the Manchester City 2003-04 page. As an aside, MLITH's rationales above are entirely unconvincing, not least due to the fact that he claims to understand every WP guideline better than anyone else. BigDom (talk) 22:30, 15 April 2011 (UTC)
• Keep because the case for violating WP:NOTNEWS is an ass-backwards piece of reasoning. The comeback game is notable because people frequently mention this game whenever another comeback occurs. The repeated occurrence, almost every few months, of "lists of best comebacks" featuring this game that get posted on the web in both blog and news media articles simply serves as a testament to this game's intrinsic notability in the collective consciousness. Additionally, the elephant on this page that no one appears willing to address is TerriersFan's calling out of the paranoid mindset that clings to the fallacy that keeping such an article will somehow automatically open the flood gates for thousands of other similar articles to be generated that might possibly cause Wikipedia to become overwhelmed by such articles in the future. Reality, however, does not support such a negative viewpoint. What is much more likely to happen in these situations is that the editor(s) who created the deleted article(s) simply won't wish to fruitlessly waste any more of their productive time creating future Wikipedia articles. The consequence is always more likely to be a loss of good editors rather than an over-abundance of similar articles. Mancini's Lasagne invite to Harry ^Talk 13:22, 19 April 2011 (UTC)

• Comment - WP:MERCY and WP:EFFORT. Why don't you expand the Man City 2003-04 season article to include text from this article? There's no doubt that this was the most memorable game of that season for that club. Jmorrison230582 (talk) 05:51, 20 April 2011 (UTC)

• Response1 - WP:MERCY is not applicable here. I'm not the creator of this article. I'm just the person who inadvertently put it back into article space while trying to merge it in an elegant manner. Yes, I've since wordsmithed and reorganized pieces of it, etc., but the sum total of all my recent edits to it are still not significant enough for my opinion (that the article should be kept) to be considered to be only a POV based on pride of authorship. The reason I think the article should be kept is because it does not violate any Wikipedia policy guidelines that would otherwise require that it be deleted. The article only violates your interpretation of WP:NOTNEWS, but hopefully I've demonstrated that that is just YOUR interpretation and that it is an incorrect one. Your opinions are NOT Wikipedia policy. This article has as much claim to exist as this one the existence of which you defend. Those two games are frequently mentioned together whenever the topic of comebacks crops up and they both set records for the sport in their individual ways (see response to Szzuk below).

WP:MERCY states: "If you feel you need more time to work on an article you just created that has been put up for deletion early on, an option may be to request userfication, where you can spend as much time as you wish to improve the article until it meets Wikipedia's inclusion guidelines. Once this has been accomplished, you can reintroduce it into main article space." That is what for all practical purposes has happened with this article. It was previously introduced into article space with insufficient cited RS support for its noteworthiness and was AfD-ed after only four days in article space. The main author of the article should have requested "userfication" at that time in order to improve it but he didn't, so "userfication" was effectively forced on him by the prior AfD decision. The comments made repeatedly by you (and some others) on this page to the effect that to reintroduce a previously AfD-ed article into article space is in some way wrong or inappropriate indicates that you do not understand - or do understand, yet do not wish to accept - the perfectly legitimate Wikipedia process cycle of "article introduction - AfD or userfication - article improvement - article reintroduction". A vote by someone to delete this article because it (or some other article on the same or a similar topic) has been previously AfD-ed is simply a demonstration of that person's ignorance of this perfectly legitimate article development cycle. In quoting WP:MERCY at me you have merely undermined your own earlier arguments for deletion. Mancini's Lasagne invite to Harry ^Talk 19:03, 20 April 2011 (UTC)

• Response2 - WRT WP:EFFORT, my main argument in defense of keeping the article is primarily the one that is highlighted in bold above; and not because its deletion would cause the information to be lost. Your argument for deletion in a nutshell is that you feel the game documented by the article fails to satisfy WP:NOTNEWS guidance WRT notability and thus does not merit its own article. I have already demonstrated that that argument depends only on your own particular twisting of the intent of that guidance - a game does not have to be a cup final nor ultimately lead to one of the team's lifting a trophy in order to be significant or notable.

It is very interesting that you quoted WP:NOTNEWS at me - which is poorly written and can therefore more easily be misconstrued to be stating or implying something that it never intended to state or imply - rather than WP:NNEWS which is where item 4 of WP:INDISCRIMINATE ultimately links the reader, or WP:NOTE which applies to that WP:INDISCRIMINATE section in general. WRT to the former (WP:NNEWS), this article clearly satisfies the requirements of the WP:INDEPTH, WP:PERSISTENCE, WP:DIVERSE and WP:ROUTINE sections. In the case of the latter (WP:NOTE) guidance, this article also satisfies all the stated criteria of WP:GNG, WP:NRVE and WP:NTEMP sections. This guidance article ends up stating (WP:FAILN), " For articles of unclear notability, deletion should be a last resort." The worst case scenario for this article is that the exact extent of the notability of its subject matter is disputable (by the likes of you and I) NOT that it is "not at all notable". Consequently, deletion should be a last resort very much applies here. Mancini's Lasagne invite to Harry ^Talk 19:26, 20 April 2011 (UTC)

• I cited WP:MERCY and WP:EFFORT because you said that What is much more likely to happen in these situations is that the editor(s) who created the deleted article(s) simply won't wish to fruitlessly waste any more of their productive time creating future Wikipedia articles. The consequence is always more likely to be a loss of good editors rather than an over-abundance of similar articles. In my opinion what you said there is not a valid argument because of those guidelines in arguments to avoid in a deletion discussion.

Looking at WP:NNEWS, I believe this game does not meet the guidelines under WP:EFFECT, WP:INDEPTH and WP:ROUTINE. Jmorrison230582 (talk) 19:36, 20 April 2011 (UTC)

• I agree that this game does not meet the WP:EFFECT criterion since Man. City were eliminated in the next round of the FA Cup so the team's victory in this game was not the cause of later "effects" which themselves qualified as notable events in their own right (such as an FA Cup victory that season). But this game doesn't have to meet that criterion since it is already notable in its own right (as argued elsewhere). OTOH, contrary to your claim, this article most definitely does satisfy the WP:INDEPTH and WP:ROUTINE requirements. The vast majority of the two dozen or so references (note: I consider the "External links" and "Match report" links to also be references) are from the later years of this game's 7+ year history. The article would only fail the WP:INDEPTH and WP:ROUTINE criteria if, for instance, all two dozen or so links to external sources were ONLY to routine narrative match reports (which many editors consider to be primary sources rather than secondary or tertiary ones) written within 48 hours of the game being played.

There are only three such primary sources used in the whole article. Manchester Evening News and Guardian matchday reports of the game (written at the time it was played) are used in the "Details" section because they are the best written / most detailed of the nearly dozen or so reports of that ilk available, while the similar BBC Sport matchday report (reference #14) is used as a corroborating RS for the quoted comments from Kevin Keegan. All of the other cited RS used in the article are from later years (most of them from the last two or three years) thus supporting the argument that this game's noteworthiness was NOT just in the immediate aftermath of when it was played with the game having long since been forgotten. Please note that there are quite a few other readily accessible web articles which discuss this game that were not cited in the article - additional matchday reports were not referenced because they are effectively primary sources and thus carry no weight in supporting the games's notability, while there were a number of other secondary sources omitted because it was felt that there were already more than a sufficient number of them already cited. Mancini's Lasagne invite to Harry ^Talk 22:37, 20 April 2011 (UTC)

• Comment re the “merge” option - BTW, it was an attempt to include the text of the previous incarnation of this article into the corresponding season article that was my point of entry into this whole "AfD adventure"! The AfD "merge" option sounds like a wonderful win-win solution where people can vote to keep an article from being its own entity while also not losing all the information contained in that article from the encyclopedia - it will just be conveniently incorporated into an existing article instead. In reality, the "merge" option in many cases is just a panacea, and what actually has to happen in order to effect the desired "merge" is that 10-20 paragraphs of text (or however long the AfD-ed article happens to be) have to be thrown aside and replaced instead with one or two newly written paragraphs that enhance rather than overwhelm the new host article. To my mind that is simply a "deletion" of the information in the AfD-ed article by another name, and in most cases a vote to "merge" is simply a Catch-22 option. Mancini's Lasagne invite to Harry ^Talk 07:02, 21 April 2011 (UTC)

• In principle, that could be a problem. In practice, this article has 10–20 sentences of text, which wouldn't come close to overwhelming the amount of prose one might expect for an article about a whole season. cheers, Struway2 (talk) 10:04, 22 April 2011 (UTC)

• Yes, but you are arguing hypotheticals while I'm arguing reality. The text may indeed "not overwhelm the amount of prose one might expect for an article about a whole season" but the actual season article in question does not contain all your theoretical prose. So my claim that the text would overwhelm what is currently there is a perfectly valid one. Very few of any of the extant club season articles contain a lot of prose, and those that do read much more like fanzine blogs than encyclopedia articles. The majority of club season articles just contain tables and match reports with some introductory overview text, and the MCFC 2003-04 season article is very typical of the majority of the season articles that actually exist (as opposed to might theoretically exist).

Although the "Season review" section for the 2003-04 season is currently deficient in text - I am the editor that added the banner to that section stating that it requires expansion - even when it is completely flushed out it won't be much longer than eight or ten paragraphs at most (because the longest season review in all of the extant City season articles is currently arounnd that length of text). The writeup of the Spurs-City game is currently 11 paragraphs long plus it contains all the kit graphics, teamsheet details and significant quotes, etc. So even with a fully developed season review the writeup of this single game would still completely overwhelm such a section if it were added to it. Unless, of course, it was reduced down to be, at most, only a couple of paragraphs. However, if that course of action was chosen that would not be a true "merge" of the current text ... instead, it would effectively be a "delete" of the current article text followed by a complete rewrite. Which is why I claim that a vote to "merge" the text into another article is, with possibly a few exceptions, no more than an euphemism for deleting it. Mancini's Lasagne invite to Harry ^Talk 20:38, 22 April 2011 (UTC)

• Delete. A fab match, I watched it, great great great! They don't come much better. But its still a delete, like the other times because being a great match isn't the same as being a notable match. Szzuk (talk) 20:26, 20 April 2011 (UTC)

• Comment - But it IS notable in its own right. There is no other instance in English football that I'm aware of where a team with one less man has come back to win from a 3-0 deficit in an away fixture. Many comebacks occur because the team performing the comeback is the team with an extra man advantage (e.g., Newcastle's 4-4 comeback against Arsenal) or because it is the home team with the "twelfth man" advantage of a vociferous crowd lifting it (e.g., Newcastle again). Also, there is a big difference between coming from behind to win the game rather than to just tie it. Both situations are classified as comebacks, but in the latter case the comeback team only restores parity while in the former case it turns the result on its head, so the former are much more significant comebacks. Make a list of all the comeback games ever played and remove all the "only restored parity" cases, and then all the cases where the comeback team had an equal or greater number of players on the pitch, and then all the home team comebacks, and you are left with only this game. That makes it statistically significant (highly unusual) and thus very notable. Mancini's Lasagne invite to Harry ^Talk 21:21, 20 April 2011 (UTC)

• Response - In sport records are broken all of the time. A great love of mine is Test Cricket, every match the statisticians pop up with a few new records for something or other. Are any of them notable? No. They're interesting always, exciting rarely, notable never. This football match falls into the intresting, exciting and non notable category. The length of your paragraph to explain the record that has been broken on this occasion also says something. It's not really a sporting record. Szzuk (talk) 22:08, 20 April 2011 (UTC)

• You start your comment with a false premise and then build your argument upon it. Given a false premise you can prove anything you want, including your own false conclusion. Your false premise states: "In sport records are broken all of the time." That is simply not true in association football. For instance, Manchester United established the Premier League scoring record in 1995 with their 9-0 victory over Ipswich Town. It took another 15 years before that record total was ever equaled by Tottenham Hotspur with their 9-1 win over Wigan Athletic in 2009, and even that game isn't considered to be its true equal because Tottenham conceded a goal while scoring their nine. Charlton Athletic's 7–6 win over Huddersfield Town in 1957 has never seen the equivalent since. That's 53 years and counting. So your initial claim "in sport records are broken all the time" on the surface has a certain ring of truth to it, but in reality it is quite false, at least WRT association football.

Your own understanding of the term "notability" is unduly restrictive ... there is absolutely nothing in Wikipedia guidance that states only the games (in any sport) with the highest score lines are notable. That's the equivalent of saying that only the longest books ever written are notable, or only people taller than 6'2" are notable. Your definition imposes an arbitrary measure of notability on the issue because it makes no allowance for social significance. WP:EFFECT specifically states that Hurricane Katrina and the 2004 Indian Ocean earthquake are considered notable because these natural disasters resulted in widespread destruction which led to "rebuilding, population shifts, and possible impact on elections." That is, they are notable due to the significance of their social implications, NOT because Katrina was the strongest hurricane ever (because it wasn't by a long chalk) nor because the 2004 Asian tsunami was similarly the strongest one on record (because it also wasn't). A game of football can indeed be considered notable because of its setting of some sort of scoring record, but that is NOT the ONLY criterion for establishing its notability. A game being repeatedly talked about or mentioned in the media years after it was played also meets the criterion of notability as defined by WP:NOTE and WP:NNEWS. Mancini's Lasagne invite to Harry ^Talk 00:08, 21 April 2011 (UTC)

• Merge to 2003–04 Manchester City F.C. season. An unusual and exciting game and well worth detailing in the season article, but not of lasting significance. Ilikeeatingwaffles (talk) 10:16, 21 April 2011 (UTC)
• Merge to 2003–04 Manchester City F.C. season. It may have been a cracker but that doesn't make it notable enough for a stand-alone article as it wasn't significant for the game of football as a whole. If the only reason for keeping it is because it was reported in the news, then we may as well have match reports for every game played in the Premiership! —BETTIA— ^talk 06:38, 22 April 2011 (UTC)

• Comment - Nobody is claiming that this game is notable or significant because it was a "cracker" (which indeed it was) or because it was reported in the news (as are all games in the top four tiers of English football). Mancini's Lasagne invite to Harry ^Talk 09:38, 22 April 2011 (UTC)

• Comment - sorry, but in all the words above there has yet to be a single, valid, policy-based argument for deletion. Editors saying "this game is not notable" is fine as an expression of their view but notability is not a reflection of personal views but is a question of whether the guideline WP:GNG is met; it is not a valid deletion argument. This guideline states "If a topic has received significant coverage in reliable sources that are independent of the subject, it is presumed to satisfy the inclusion criteria for a stand-alone article ...". It then defines terms including, "'Significant coverage' means that sources address the subject directly in detail,". This match clearly meets this requirement and no-one has argued to the contrary. The fact that many other matches without articles may meet this guideline is not relevant - we are dealing only with this match and this article. The only semblance of a policy basis for deletion is the badly worded WP:NOTNEWS guideline. That guideline is clearly intended to exclude events that get coverage at the time but are not referred to later (or else it would exclude all major events). This is not the case here; this match has been referred to years later in reliable sources. Take The Independent as just one example. On 23 January 2009, this match was selected as one of "The ten best FA Cup comebacks", here. I am afraid that most delete views are of the "I don't like it" nature. Sadly that is not a ground for deletion otherwise I could argue for the deletion of the thousands of articles on porn, cd listings, transient pop singers, episodes of soaps etc that I don't like :-). Like it or not (and I acknowledge that many don't like it) what we have here is an article that clearly meets the inclusion criteria. TerriersFan (talk) 22:43, 22 April 2011 (UTC)

• Then the other 9 matches in the FA comebacks list are entitled to their own wikipedia page. Where does that stop? Policy doesn't cater for articles like this, so we use consensus at afd. Szzuk (talk) 00:00, 23 April 2011 (UTC)

• The other 9 matches in the FA comebacks list are entitled to their own individual consideration as to whether they justify their own wikipedia page. TerriersFan (talk) 00:15, 23 April 2011 (UTC)

• The votes. There are 6 delete, 5 merge and 2 keeps. Szzuk (talk) 00:00, 23 April 2011 (UTC)

• The number of !votes are not relevant to the outcome of this AFD, only the strength of the arguments. TerriersFan (talk) 00:18, 23 April 2011 (UTC)

• Comment - Readers of this discussion should note well that according to the guidance of WP:EFFECT, events that are not normally considered to be noteworthy in of themselves can still merit their own articles because "events are often considered to be notable if they act as a precedent or catalyst for something else." Thus, for instance, none of us here are going to dispute that the upcoming Stoke City-Man. City FA Cup final game will ultimately merit its own article, even if the game is a dour and totally forgettable affair, because FA Cup finals are consensually considered to be "significant and notable soccer events". What WP:EFFECT effectively states is that if City win the FA Cup then the semi-final game against Man. United will possibly merit its own article too, because that game can be considered to be a precedent or catalyst for City reaching the final and lifting the cup.

And on that same basis, City's quarter-final game against Reading might also be considered to be a precedent and catalyst for their reaching that semi-final game against United, and one could follow that chain of reasoning all the way back to City's pair of third round games against Leicester City. Using that logic, every FA Cup tie City have played in 2011 would merit its own article because each of those games was a catalyst for the next one right on through to the true notable event of the FA Cup final victory. Jmorrison230582 and all the other deletion advocates here would doubtless argue that such a "chain of precedence" has to be immediately cut off at the semi-final game otherwise things quickly get out of hand and very silly, and I wouldn't disagree with that reasoning at all.

However, Jmorrison230582 is the person that brought up WP:EFFECT, not me, and he has argued for exactly those same "chains of precedence" working in the opposite direction when it suited his own “I don’t like it” agenda. I quote: "this match had very limited lasting effect. As I noted above, City were knocked out in the next round. Both clubs continued on their merry way with no real lasting consequences." IOW, he has argued that since City did not progress on to win the FA Cup that season, the Spurs-City game cannot possibly be significant or notable because it fails WP:EFFECT - the implication clearly being that if City HAD won the cup that season then they would have satisfied the criteria of WP:EFFECT and the game might possibly be considered to be notable.

In short, he believes in "chains of precedence" when it serves his deletionist purposes (viz. to show that the game against Spurs cannot possibly have a claim to notability since City broke the chain in the next round of the FA Cup in 2003-04) but I'm quite sure, without intending to put words into his mouth, that he (and others) will argue equally vehemently against "chains of precedence" should I now suggest that if City win the FA Cup in May, based on the importance he obviously places on WP:EFFECT guidance in his statements above, all eight of City’s FA Cup ties this season will merit their own Wikipedia articles. Mancini's Lasagne invite to Harry ^Talk 01:20, 23 April 2011 (UTC)

The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.