Talk:List of Manchester City F.C. players

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Errors with Danny Tiatto's stats.[edit]

Hello, According to this page, Danny Tiatto played roughly 320 games for Man.City, and scored 140-odd goals. Now, soccerbase.com says he played 158 times (including substitute appearances), and scored 4 goals. That seems a bit more plausible to me. Should I amend? Artie p 09:13, 11 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I must have been using Francis Lee as a template for creating columns when I created the article, and forgot to change that one. Thanks for the spot, I've amended it. Oldelpaso 16:45, 11 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Player of the Year[edit]

Is there a list of Man City player of the year somewhere? Þjóðólfr (talk) 08:58, 14 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Better handling of inductees into national Halls of Fame[edit]

I would like to change the criteria for being listed in this article from the current "must have made at least 100 competitive first team appearance for the club OR have been voted Player of the Year by the fans" to "must have made at least 100 competitive first team appearance for the club OR have been voted Player of the Year by the fans OR must have been inducted into one or more of the three (MCFC, NFM or SFM) Halls of Fame." All of the 25 current MCFC HoF inductees are already on this list, as one would expect (note: to easily verify them all simply hit the sort button twice at the top of the "HoF" column), so if we extended the criteria to include just the MCFC HoF inductees nothing would change (and that is indeed another option to consider).

However, if we extend the criteria to include inductees of any of the three HoF (as I'm suggesting) then the only addition to the current list, as far as I can determine, would be Denis Law. Although he achieved the greatest portion of his football notoriety on the other side of Manchester he was hardly "chopped liver" in his two stints with the Blues. He is not the greatest nor the most iconic City player by any means, but according to the first sentence of that article, it "is a list of notable footballers who have played for Manchester City." It strikes me that Denis Law is a VERY notable footballer that has played for Manchester City (not once, but twice) so his omission from that list is a bit bizarre IMO. Your thoughts please. Mancini's Lasagne invite to Harry Talk 22:10, 1 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I'm neutral either way, but I think the question you should ask yourself is this: do you want to add Law because you want to change the inclusion criteria, or do you want to add a criterion so that you can add Law? While we should strive to create a list that shows all of City's notable players in general, what makes an individual player notable or not is more than a little bit POV, and while I agree with the idea that Law is a notable City player, I could make cases for other players to be added to this list that your new criterion does not solve. The danger with that is you then set a precedent for inventing new criteria every time you think someone else should be on the list, and eventually that could well boil over and turn into one of the many hundreds of arguments debates on what or who counts as worthy of adding to list. To cite just one case which I have a personal involvement in, check out how massively over-expanded List of association football club rivalries by country has become - so bloated that it has been forced into name changes twice and has been put under AfD votes several times for failing to serve its original mandate and becoming more of a data-dump - not to mention constant accusations of POV. I'm not saying that will happen, nor that it will ever get so bad as that horrible article, but that's the risk to my eyes. I won't oppose adding this criterion so long as we don't later decide that the list of criteria is still insufficient and that another 100 players should be added...
(This is only a reply to the firts paragraph of your comment; I will reply to the rest of your post later as time permits.) First off, let me state at the outset that I'm neutral on this topic too. Meaning that I'm neutral on the issue of whether Law is ultimately added to this article or not. I don't need to ask myself your suggested question because I don't have a hidden agenda here - or maybe that should be a not-so hidden agenda, or perhaps even a blatantly obvious agenda - since I am the one that clearly pointed out the consequences of changing the criteria.
My recent efforts WRT adding the NFM and SFM HoF information into the main MCFC article were intended, in large part, to redress a possible neutral reader's perception of a City fan bias POV behind ONLY documenting the MCFC HoF in that article. As was stated in my first post on the topic of national HoF over on the main MCFC article Talk page, I hold the view that it is more meaningful to be acknowledged at a national level by, in principle, all football fans in a country (with a corresponding induction into the NFM and/or SFM HoF) rather than to only be acknowledged by Blues-biased City fans (with a corresponding induction into just the MCFC HoF).
For example, if you take a player, such as Colin Bell or Francis Lee, who has been inducted in a HoF at both the club and national level, surely the much more important or significant or meaningful (I'm not certain what exactly the right word is that should be used here) of those HoF inductions is the NFM one ... because that requires the votes and appreciation of many football fans outside of just hard core Manchester City fans in order to occur. IOW, a national HoF induction implies that those players have a wide appeal to MANY football fans whose primary allegiances lie with other clubs, rather than that they just have a somewhat tautologically obvious appeal to only the hard core fans of the club (or clubs) for whom they played.
If you read my first post above carefully you'll see that there are three implicit options contained in it:
(1) maintain the status quo and keep the current inclusion criteria unchanged (which is the option that you are arguing for);
(2) extend the inclusion criteria to also include just the MCFC HoF inductees; (which, if I correctly understand Oldelpaso's post below, is the option he prefers); and
(3) extend the inclusion criteria to also include inductees in any of the three HoF (which is the option that I'm suggesting).
Options (1) and (2) involve no change at all to the current list of notable players, while option (3) would only add Denis Law and Peter Schmeichel (correction to original post above). I hardly think this is the "disaster just waiting to happen" that your rather hyperbolic arguments make it out to be. There is no similarity at all between my suggested minor modification to the current criteria and your quoted example of what happened WRT the "List of association football club rivalries by country" article. Please don't make such a mountain out of a mole hill and use the topic at hand to soapbox your opinions on completely unrelated issues. The issue here is literally this simple - let's try and all agree on option (1), (2) or (3).
The question you have to ask yourself is, why do the current criteria for inclusion in this article work for all the other City HoF inductees except for Law? Meaning that he is the only former MCFC player inducted into one of those three HoF (in fact, he is in two of the three!) that is NOT considered notable enough to be included in this article. Even if Law was inducted into the MCFC HoF as well as the other two HoF, the current inclusion criteria still dictate that he should not be listed in this article (because he was never selected as a City "Player of the Year" and he made less than 100 appearances for the club). So what you need to focus your attention on is the reason for the disconnect between sufficient "notability" to be listed in this article and sufficient "notability" to be inducted into three HoF (because let's, for the sake of this argument, assume he is also already in the MCFC HoF as well).
Ask yourself this. Does the reason for this disconnect lie with the inclusion criteria being used here or does this disconnect simply lie with the player? I obviously believe the former, which is why I made my initial suggestion. It appears that your own belief - with a statement such as, "we shouldn't kid ourselves that his time with City earned him that HoF place," - is that the reason for Law's omission from this article lies solely with the nature of the player himself (and conversely there is nothing wrong with the current inclusion criteria). You appear to believe that although Law may have won over the hearts and minds of the football fans in three nations (because the NFM HoF represents both England and Wales) he did so solely on the merits of his performances away from Maine Road, and thus he is not a notable enough City player to be included here.
If that is indeed your opinion, then I will state here now that it only reveals your own lack of knowledge about this player and perhaps also suggests an anti-United bias on your part. I could go on and prove why that is the case but this post is already very long and I want to first give you a chance to revisit your position on this issue.
Mancini's Lasagne invite to Harry Talk 23:40, 2 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]
I should add that I'm also not convinced (though I don't feel strongly enough to move from my "on the fence" neutrality) that players who earned accolades for their time playing with other clubs should be added here for those accolades. City have had a lot of players over the years who were famous because of who they used to play for, and while Law will always be a legend for something he didn't actually do ;) we shouldn't kid ourselves that his time with City earned him that HoF place. We could add quite a few more players for such things. A good case in point is the (brief) inclusion of Ryan Giggs to the main article because he played for our youth team. We may have nurtured him for a while, but he did not become anything special while with us, and it's worse that he's most famous for his time with our bitter enemies. I wouldn't want to think that we were cashing in on players we were only ever a bit on the side to. It might be a bit like emblazoning our pages with "Fowler is God".
Food for thought anyway. Falastur2 Talk 22:44, 1 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]
On inclusion criteria, I agree with what Falastur says. I like using the club hall of fame as it indisputably refers to achievement in Manchester City colours, and does not require us to make a judgement call. Denis Law's record transfer and backheel are major parts of his career, but Peter Schmeichel's single season at the age of 39 is a minor part of his career. The event that springs to mind in debates like this is the last match before George Weah walked out. He and Shaun Goater were both on the bench. Weah may have been a former World Player of the Year, but it certainly wasn't his name that was being sung. As it stands, we are including a manager possibly regarded as the worst in the club's history, and another who fans commonly call "Judas".
If I understand your post correctly, you would be happy to change from option (1) to option (2) but not to option (3) (all options as defined in my response to Falastur2 above). I really don't understand why you believe any of these three options require a "judgment call" ... because all three criteria are equally objective, they are just different (and therefore could possibly return different results). What you are really saying is that you personally don't like the result that option (3) returns - Law is possibly OK in your eyes but not Schmeichel - therefore it would require a subjective judgment call from you in order to suppress Schmeichel if we used option (3). But Schmeichel is a very notable player within the sport who has also played for City, which is EXACTLY what this article claims to be listing. Why should it matter where and how a player achieved his notability? Only the players currently on this list that spent their whole career playing for the club can claim that whatever football reputation they achieved in their careers came 100% from their performances for the Blues. Every other player on the list (the vast majority of them) built his ultimate reputation by playing at a number of clubs before and after their stint at City, so only a certain percentage of that reputation can be attributed to their performances for this particular club.
Dennis Tueart's reputation at Sunderland was huge before he ever transferred over to City (he was the Black Cats' star player) - hence he only subsequently enhanced his fame and reputation at City, he didn't create it there. Ditto Rodney Marsh and QPR. Ditto Joe Royle and Everton. Ditto Asa Hartford and WBA. Ditto Brian Kidd and Carlos Tévez and Manchester United. I could go on and on. Most people would associate David Wagstaffe with Wolves whom he joined after leaving City, so by having him on the list are we effectively including someone based on "accolades that he really earned for his time playing with another club" (as Falastur2 would probably phrase it)? Your argument for not including Peter Schmeichel, if applied equably and objectively across the board, should possibly also disclude Joe Royle and Brian Kidd (to name just two off the top of my head) from being on the list. Why do you feel that a City player being voted "Player of the Year" by a bunch of City fans is a significant and objective criterion WRT gauging that player's reputation, yet a City player being inducted into a national Hall of Fame by fans of many different clubs is some kind of arbitrary and insignificant honour not worth noting?
It strikes me that the only reason you are happy to adopt option (2) instead of option (1) is that it currently does not produce any names that are different than the ones produced by option (1), therefore it is not really any kind of change. But if you accept the logic of option (2) - viz. that induction into a Hall of Fame is noteworthy - then you have absolutely no basis to reject the logic of option (3) ... other than that it yields results that do not fit your subjective preconceived ideas of who should be on the list. That is hardly an objective approach to determining who should and should not be be included.
"As it stands, we are including a manager possibly regarded as the worst in the club's history, and another who fans commonly call 'Judas'." I'm assuming "Judas" refers to Don Revie - who was exemplary as a player for City - but who is the manager that is possibly regarded as the worst in City's history that is being included?
Mancini's Lasagne invite to Harry Talk 06:22, 3 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Only my last paragraph was referring exclusively to this page, which is why I originally put it all at Talk:Manchester City F.C. At the main article, I think that the listing of Schmeichel, the spectacularly unsuccessful Alan Ball and the traitorously nicknamed Howard Kendall is undue weight. As this article is concerned solely with players, we have more room for manoeuvre. Obviously now the comments have been moved mention of managers is misplaced.
The "list of notable footballers" blurb ought to be rewritten. By Wikipedia's notability standards, pretty much everyone to represent the club at first team level is notable, but at 1000+ entries that would be prohibitively long. I shall modify the lead in line with some of the featured lists of this type (see also the topic below). Oldelpaso (talk) 08:42, 3 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]
I have an idea for a way of including the national halls of fame in the player list, I shall put it in a sandbox. Incidentally, even though they do not meet the criteria, we occasionally get edits from Costa Rican and Israeli IPs adding Wanchope or Berkovic to the player list. I once knocked up a sandbox version of the player list that included those with 50-100 appearances, which would render most of this moot, but unfortunately it proved unworkably large. Oldelpaso (talk) 15:23, 2 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Have you considered lowering the threshold for this current list from, say, 100 to 80? Would that also make some of the issues moot? I've no idea what Law's AppsStats are but would he make the list with such a lower threshold? How unworkably large is unworkably large? How long is a piece of string? If this was a list of "notable players" then a really long list would tend to undermine that concept. But you've now removed that focus - this is now just a list of players with 100 or more appearances for City (many of whom, it turns out, are quite notable too :) ). Why can this not be a list of players with 80 (or 75 or some other number) or more appearances instead? You appear to be determining that a piece of string can be too long in your POV. Is there some suggested Wiki-length for such lists that this article would be violating should you lower the threshold for inclusion a tad?
As stated earlier, I'm not trying to get Law on the list per se. You have to ask yourself what is the purpose of such a list and why would anyone want to look at it. When it claimed to be a list of "notable players" readers would most likely look at it to see where the players they personally considered notable sat in the whole scheme of things. When I first looked at it, what immediately stood out to me that made me question how arbitrarily the list was perhaps cut off, were that Wyn Davies, Mick Channon, Denis Law and Trevor Francis were all missing from the list. These are personal favorites and notable players in my own mind (for whatever reasons), while other people looking at the list will probably have their own mental list too. If this was still a list of "notable players" (with AppStats used as one of the justifications for their notability) one could argue until the cows came home as to who should actually be on the list or not, as Falastur2 pointed out. The arbitrary cutoff at 100 appearances would be a big factor in that discussion too.
With the issue of "notability" removed, I would say the issue has now been reduced down to: if a list of 100+ appearances ignores players X,Y and Z (such as those listed above) while most of these players appear on a list of 80+ (fill in your own number here) appearances, why don't we simply change the threshold for the list? I suspect that many of the players that people think should be on the list (but who made less than 100 appearances), such as Wanchope or Berkovic, all fall not too shy of that threshold anyway. But I'm certainly not suggesting that you reduce that threshold down to five or ten. Another approach might be to make the threshold for inclusion "100+ appearances or scored more than xx goals for City". If a player entered people's consciousness without making lots of appearances it is most likely because he scored a lot of goals in the relatively few appearances he did play (e.g., Tevez). Unfortunately, this approach favors strikers over GKs and defenders. Anyway, food for thought, I hope. Mancini's Lasagne invite to Harry Talk 20:53, 8 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]
I was thinking of a simple prose addition like User:Oldelpaso/Sandbox#National_Hall_of_Fame. As those in the club hall of fame are already indicated by bolding, this would make the additional column redundant. Oldelpaso (talk) 15:23, 2 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Push to make this a featured list?[edit]

It shouldn't be too much work to make this ready for a featured list nomination. However, there is one area that would undoubtedly be raised in that process – our sourcing for current players. Soccerbase is used, but the home leg of the European tie against Timisoara is missing from Soccerbase's figures. This affects the totals for Hart, Zabaleta, Kompany, Richards and Wright-Phillips. The previous experience of Wikipedians is that Soccerbase do not respond to emails offering corrections, so what other source can we use? Due to the sad passing of Steve Kay, mcfcstats.com is no longer updated. Each match programme gives career City appearance totals for all players, but is out of date as soon as the match has finished. Oldelpaso (talk) 08:42, 3 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]

BBC's stats for the recent players perhaps? Here's Kompany, as an example. For the record, I haven't checked to make sure all the stats match what we claim on Wikipedia, but I thought I'd throw it out there... Falastur2 Talk 14:42, 3 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Edit: Scratch that. Did a bit more research and BBC doesn't record players returning from loan or returning to an old club as going back to the said old club. It thinks they're at a new club for record purposes. It shows SWP having only 60 league appearances, for instance, because that's all he has since he returned from Chelsea - no reference to him playing for us before Chelsea. Perhaps BBC isn't such a reliable source. Falastur2 Talk 14:48, 3 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Other problems with the BBC Sport stats. is that the Beeb erases (it's probably only a choice not to display rather than actual erasure) stats. for PL players that move to the FL (e.g. Craig Bellamy). The individual player stats. the Beeb display for the PL players are more comprehensive than those for the players in the lower divisions (which are just the minimum of apps. and goals and they are displayed as a single PST type table in the club stats. record) so rather than be able to continue to display data such as "total club" or "last season" apps. and goals for Craig while he's at Cardiff, the Beeb just display the minimum that is required by the format required for Championship players. Should Craig return back into the City first team next season (which is probably very unlikely) or stay with Cardiff and play back in the PL again because Cardiff get promoted (much more likely), it will be interesting to see what his "last season" and "club total" stats. sections look like.
Having said that, the Beeb stats. are usually more accurate than the Soccerbase ones because the BBC Sport stats. for the players mentioned all showed one more game played for them (Richards also showed one more goal which, since he didn't score against Timisoara, I now assume is his "dubious goals" panel award from last season, but at the time I thought this was because the update for the Reading FA Cup game was still outstanding). I was simultaneously looking at both sources and I wanted to use the BBC ones in my update rather than the Soccerbase ones because they matched mine (the same as the ones in the PST) but I could not be sure that the reason for the difference was simply because there is a lag in how soon the Soccerbase stats. get updated. This was just a snapshot update for March (last one done in September according to the update comments) so one match either way did not matter. It certainly didn't justify my changing the defined source for those players stats. And the stated problem with SWP was the clincher ... I could not source everybody else from BBC Sport but him. So I opted to simply update the stats. from the Soccerbase numbers (assuming I didn't make any math errors) since anything else would have effectively been my POV or OR. Mancini's Lasagne invite to Harry Talk 02:44, 8 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Which are the correct stats. to display?[edit]

Where is there a clear definition of what is considered to be a competitive match versus a friendly match? The Community/Charity Shield is usually considered to be a competitive match rather than a friendly - it's the first official match of every new season - while, for instance, the Texaco Cup was always considered to be a close season friendly competition. Not much different than, say, the New York Football Challenge which City participated in this last summer. You continually lump these two sorts of games together in "Other columns" in your tables of goal scoring stats. I don't believe goals scored in the Texaco Cup, Anglo-Italian Cup, or Watneys Cup, etc. should be included in official match goal tallies. But goals scored in the CS tournament should be. This same argument also applies to tallies of match appearances. For instance, you just included those sorts of "unofficial appearances" in the numbers for Alan Oakes that you just added to the introduction to this article.

This issue affects, for example, the goal scoring ranking of someone such as Colin Bell. Is he the club's sole third goal scorer with 153 goals or the joint third goal scorer with 152 goals. The difference between these two numbers is an "other" goal - but if that "other" goal is a Charity Shield goal then his official tally is 153, while if it is a Texaco Cup goal then his official tally is 152. So which is it? Mancini's Lasagne invite to Harry Talk 22:35, 3 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]

We can only go by what our sources tell us, as those sources are what we are creating the article from. The most authoritative statistical volume about the club is Gary James' Manchester City – The Complete Record. This includes the Charity Shield, Anglo-Italian Cup, Anglo-Scottish Cup, Texaco Cup, Tennant-Caledonian Cup, Full Members' Cup and Associate Members' Cup in its "other" column (City never played in the Watney Cup). The statistics section of the book is an update of an earlier volume of the same title by Ray Goble and Andrew Ward. I don't own a copy of this version but know people who do and can check it if necessary. The annual Manchester City F.C. Official Handboook series published in the 1980s and 1990s includes all of these competitions in its "other" column, but has occasional omissions or errors. Mcfcstats.com, a fansite but a very comprehensive one, also includes them all. If all the comprehensive sources view these as official first team matches, we need to too in order to accurately reflect our source material.
The other area of ambiguity is players from the Ardwick era. Some sources count the Football Alliance, some don't. That doesn't affect this list as no-one who played for Ardwick in 1891–92 reached 100 appearances by any measure. However, if we decide to follow the Gillingham precedent and create a separate list for players with less appearances, it will come into consideration.
I will check all the figures with a minimum of two sources. Not all at once as it will get very dull, but I will check them all in due course. When the article was first created, sourcing standards were less rigorous than they are now, and I used this page as a source. As that contains no "other" competitions at all, it is likely that there are inconsistencies dating from early revisions. Oldelpaso (talk) 17:45, 4 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]
You state above that since all of your 3 main sources lump the CS games (which I have always understood to be "other official" appearances/goals) in with the Texaco Cup, Anglo-Scottish Cup, et al (which I have always understood to be "other unofficial" appearances/goals) that we have little choice but to go with that arrangement. It all sounds a little revisionist to me but I cannot fault the logic. If it's only possible to source the information that way then we have little choice with presenting it in like manner, otherwise the numbers presented will technically be original research. You still have that problem when you have discrepancies occurring between the 3 sources, because your arbitration of those discrepancies will be your own original research (or POV) too.
But I'm now confused by your "adjust for 30s Charity Shields and make sure no 1939/40 apps are counted" edit. Some of the numbers are going up (I assume these are the CS adjustments) whilst other numbers are going down (I assume these are the 39/40 exclusions). Am I right in thinking that you are now effectively going through the numbers (starting with the 30s) and modifying the "official" apps. and goal tallies to include CS games where before they did not (and thus that you agree with me on this issue)? If so, how do you reconcile what you are doing with the claim that these adjustments are OR?
BTW, you have taken this issue way off on a tangent from what I initially wanted to know - which was whether Colin Bell's official goal tally was 152 or 153. Looks like I may have opened a can of worms by asking that question. :) Mancini's Lasagne invite to Harry Talk 01:51, 8 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, I am including Charity Shield games where they were missing, and agree that they should be there. I mistakenly thought until it was raised here that they were already included. Generally, yes, up was the addition of Charity Shield and down was the removal of the expunged matches. There are also a couple of errors that have crept in, mostly from the MCVITA source which only has League/FA/LC/Europe, but also the odd purely typographical error, such as George Smith's entry. I am working my way through the list from top to bottom, armed with Complete Record and Handbook 1997/98 and checking that the figures match in both. There haven't been any disagreements between the two in the period up to 1947. Complete Record has full line-ups for all the "other" matches (and indeed all matches in all competitions) so the reason for any discrepancies should become obvious. I am informed that the line-up data in Complete Record is based upon the teamsheets submitted by MCFC to the Football League et al, at least from the year some time in the inter-war period that it became mandatory.
Now, the Colin Bell figures (Complete Record, p. 160): League 393 + 1 sub, 117 goals; FA Cup 33 + 1 (9 goals); League Cup 40 (18); European Cup 2 (0); ECWC 16 (7); UEFA 5+1 (1); Charity Shield 4 (1); Anglo-Italian 2 (0); Texaco 3 (0). Total 498 starts, 3 sub, 153 goals. Oldelpaso (talk) 16:42, 8 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]
So my original intuition was correct. That missing "other" goal was in the CS and thus an official goal changing his total goals tally (as you currently have him in the list) to 153, and making him the club's SOLE 3rd highest goal scorer (with 153 goals) rather than the club's JOINT 3rd highest goal scorer (with only 152 goals). Unless, of course, that table still requires adjustments to Joe Hayes' numbers. But if you are up to Alan Oakes already with your numbers-checking that doesn't sound like that is going to happen. Please confirm.
My previous questions re OR were based on the fact that you had led me to believe in your initial reply (please go reread) that all of your sources lumped the CS numbers in with all the other unofficial games' numbers in a single column of numbers in such a way that it was now impossible to separate the one from the other. From your last reply I learnt that the Complete Record does clearly distinguish between the various "other" games (and one would hope that a book with such a title would!) so "dislumping" those "other" totals is quite feasible (and it is, in fact, what you are doing). Consequently, never mind about the OR question. Except, how are you resolving conflicts in numbers between the 3 sources. Are you treating the Complete Record as the definitive source in all cases? The reason I ask is because I frequently see sources quoted in Wikipedia articles for information that is actually derived from elsewhere ... in which case, it is not the sole source, and that editor (or group of editors) are fibbing and just going through the motions in claiming that it is.
The same issue also applies elsewhere in this article WRT the issue of Soccerbase as the source of the stats. If we have to correct those numbers for "dubious goals" amendments and missing Europa League appearances then it's NOT the sole source of the numbers, and any amendments to correct those deficiencies need to be very carefully annotated and sourced themselves. Right now, neither the sourcing nor the stats. are correct for the current players with 100+ appearances. Or maybe that should really be, the sourcing is now correct because I just broke the stats. in order to align them with Soccerbase, mostly because I did not know what specific amendments I had to perform in each case in order to adjust the Soccerbase numbers to reality - or even an alternative source, because I fully realize reality has no meaning on Wikipedia! :) As you pointed out above, you are effectively caught between the Devil and the deep blue sea with this issue - if the stats. are right then your sourcing is wrong; if you align the stats. with the source then your stats. are wrong. Which looks like a big problem for you right now. Mancini's Lasagne invite to Harry Talk 19:42, 8 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, I'm into the Mercer era numbers-checking wise, so Hayes has been checked. Discrepancies have been mercifully few so far. The main area for confusion is Handbook 1997/98 counting the Anglo-Italian Cup in the column for European competition, which looks like a discrepancy on the surface but has no effect on the overall total. Complete Record is the source I place most trust in, but my intent is to do as I have done for Pardoe and Crossan whenever there is a discrepancy - use the figure from Complete Record in the table but point out the disagreement between sources in a footnote. The Soccerbase issue is indeed awkward, but first I'll concentrate on getting everything up to 2006 in order. Oldelpaso (talk) 14:50, 10 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Ordering[edit]

It's just come to mind that this list is ordered by year of appearances whereas the 25-99 and >25 articles are ordered by number of appearances. Should we not be ordering them both by the same criterion? I'd prefer by number of appearances, personally, but either way, shouldn't they both be ordered the same? Falastur2 Talk 13:06, 25 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]

When I created the other two lists I realised the scope of them meant ordering by appearances made more sense. They were modelled on the Birmingham lists created by Struway2. My ideal version of this list looks quite different from what we have now, but as evidenced in threads above, not everybody has felt the same way. If it was solely up to me, it would be ordered by appearances, and I'd get rid of the national hall of fame tables (replaced with some prose relating to that. Maybe here, maybe in another article). I'd also consider moving away from assigning players a nationality in favour of just listing the highest level of international recognition gained. In the other lists this has included the number of caps gained while at MCFC, but that has proved difficult to source well, particularly as Transfermarkt is not deemed a reliable source. Oldelpaso (talk) 14:27, 25 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Why has the list been split in two?[edit]

To start with - I can see for myself why exactly the list was split in two by tracing the edit history of the article, but that is not really the question I am getting at. More rather, I am not convinced that this list should have been split in two in the first place. Why are we dividing the figures up between those sourced from a book and those sourced from soccerbase? Yes, I acknowledge that the two are not necessarily equally authoritative and that some reference needs to be made to the idea that the information has come from several sources, but are we trying to claim that one source is inherently less reliable than the other? Or that "contemporary" players are somehow more tangible or distinguishable than previous players, which feels somewhat akin to the way people talk about football being invented in 1992?

By splitting the list we create an unnecessary divide between the two sets of players - it becomes hard if not impossible to seriously compare the stats of two players from different lists, and we risk suggesting that the club or the fans view the two sets of players as separate from each other, especially since the article makes no reference to why they have been divided up. This style is not how any other team presents its list of players - they all consolidate in a single list - and while I want to encourage anonymous users to help us in this project by editing and updating information, I feel compelled to point out that these edits were made by an unregistered user who has not returned to Wikipedia since he (or she) made the changes half a year ago, and they were made with no forewarning nor attempt to poll for opinions from other users.

Personally, I'm ill at ease with keeping the current style and would like to suggest we revert it to the previous, single-list, format. Does anyone have any comments? Falastur2 Talk 02:57, 17 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]

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