Phil Bardsley
association football player (born 1985)
Phillip Anthony Bardsley (born 28 June 1985) is a former professional footballer who played as a full back. He also played international football for the Scotland national team.
Bardsley began his career with Manchester United where he made 18 appearances in five seasons at the club. During that time, he was loaned to several clubs, including Royal Antwerp, Burnley, Rangers, Aston Villa and Sheffield United.
He joined Sunderland in January 2008 for an initial fee of £850,000. Bardsley established himself as a regular at the Stadium of Light under Steve Bruce and Martin O'Neill and he won the player of the year award in 2010–11. He lost his place in the team in 2012–13 after a falling-out with manager Paolo Di Canio, before returning to the first team under Gus Poyet. Under Poyet, Bardsley helped Sunderland to avoid relegation in 2013–14 and reach the 2014 Football League Cup final, in which they lost 3–1 to Manchester City.
After his Sunderland contract expired in June 2014, Bardsley joined Stoke City on a free transfer. He spent three seasons with the club before joining Burnley in July 2017.
Begin with the source’s own compact description: “Phil Bardsley” is association football player (born 1985). The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Phil, Bardsley and association, not as a finished interpretation.
Why this record matters
The phrase “association football player (born 1985)” supplies a clear boundary for inquiry. It also exposes the unanswered questions: who defined that boundary, when it became stable and which sources sit outside it.
Chronology provides the most reliable spine for this subject; interpretation should follow only after identities and dates are secure. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 9, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q69965. The first chronological checks are 1985, 2008, 2010 and 2012.
Public reputation and documentary evidence do not always develop together; absence from a summary is not evidence of historical absence. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
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Three-step research path
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Questions for further research
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This entry incorporates text from “Phil Bardsley” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.