Facts check out — the verdict (reported 25 Sep 2026) and Pulis’s BBC column are both real. Article below.
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Yaya Toure’s shot squirmed under Thomas Sorensen on 74 minutes at Wembley on 14 May 2011, and 88,643 people watched Manchester City win their first major trophy in 35 years. Fifteen years on, the man in the Stoke City dugout that afternoon has a question for the Premier League.
“When do we get our FA Cup?”
Tony Pulis, writing in his BBC Sport column, says that is what Stoke supporters have been asking him since it emerged on 25 September that Manchester City had been found guilty of the overwhelming majority of the 115 charges brought against them by the Premier League — reportedly all but one. “I still feel cheated,” Pulis wrote. “Whatever happens next, we won’t ever get that day back and the chance to celebrate around Stoke-on-Trent with the cup and medals we so honestly fought for.”
The best day of a 50-year career, reconsidered
Pulis describes taking Stoke to the 2011 final as “one of the highlights — if not THE highlight — of my 50 years in football as a player and a manager.” It was the club’s first FA Cup final in a history stretching back to 1863. They had reached it the hard way and then the emphatic way: 2-0 at Cardiff after extra time, 1-0 against Wolves, 3-0 past Brighton, 2-1 at West Ham, and then a semi-final at Wembley in which they dismantled Bolton Wanderers 5-0.
The final itself was a mismatch on paper and close to one in practice. Pulis sent out Sorensen, Wilkinson, Shawcross, Huth, Wilson, Pennant, Whelan, Delap, Etherington, Jones and Walters. City answered with Hart, Richards, Kompany, Lescott, Kolarov, de Jong, Barry, Toure, Silva, Balotelli and Tevez. Pulis’s point is about the economics behind those two team sheets: Toure, he says, was earning roughly ten times what Stoke’s best-paid player earned, and the £24m City paid Barcelona for him in 2010 was more than Stoke’s entire starting XI was worth.
“Although we lost 1-0, our players were fantastic and gave, as always, a fully committed performance against the odds,” he wrote. “Today, I feel very differently. We lost, but to a team that have been found guilty of breaking the financial rules.”
Nine years, 115 charges, one finding
The charges cover nine seasons, from 2009 to 2018 — a window that contains the 2011 final, City’s first Premier League title in 2012 and the beginning of the most dominant run any English club has assembled. At their core is the allegation that City failed to provide accurate financial information giving a true and fair view of the club’s position, alongside alleged hidden payments to players and coaching staff and breaches of both Premier League and UEFA spending rules.
The Premier League announced its investigation’s findings in February 2023 after four years of work. The hearing ran at the International Dispute Resolution Centre in London from September to December 2024. The wait for a verdict then stretched close to two years.
Neither party has confirmed the outcome publicly. City’s position is that “the Premier League process remains ongoing, with significant elements to be completed, and subject to strict confidentiality.” The Premier League declined to comment, calling the process private and confidential. City have denied wrongdoing throughout and are expected to appeal.
What sanction, and what it cannot undo
The Premier League handbook gives an independent commission a wide range: a reprimand, an unlimited fine, a points deduction, or expulsion from the competition. Sanctions have not been decided, and the appeal process has not begun.
Pulis is realistic about where that leads. He does not expect City to hand back the trophy or the winners’ medals, and says “a points deduction and a massive fine feel far more likely.” He is almost certainly right. The FA Cup is run by the Football Association, not the Premier League, and the charges relate to Premier League financial regulations — there is no obvious mechanism by which a commission ruling on those rules reassigns a 2011 cup final.
Stoke did not leave Wembley empty-handed in sporting terms. Because City had already qualified for the Champions League through their league position, the Europa League place that came with the runners-up spot passed to Stoke, and the club played European football the following season for the first time in 37 years.
That is not the point Pulis is making. His is narrower and harder to answer: a set of players who could not compete financially were asked to compete anyway, and the club that beat them has now been found to have broken the rules governing that gap. “It’s left a very sour taste,” he wrote. Whatever the commission decides, and whatever an appeal finds, no sanction available to it reaches back to 14 May 2011.
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**~740 words.** Two things worth flagging on the facts:
– The guilty finding is **reported, not officially confirmed** — City say the process is ongoing and the Premier League declined to comment. I wrote it that way throughout rather than as a settled announcement.
– I added the point that the FA Cup is an **FA** competition, not a Premier League one, so there’s no route by which this commission could reassign the 2011 trophy. Pulis doesn’t make that argument in his column, but it’s the factual answer to his headline question and the piece reads as evasive without it.
Sources: [ESPN](https://www.espn.com/soccer/story/_/id/44382463/man-city-115-charges-premier-league-verdict), [CNN](https://www.cnn.com/2026/09/25/sport/manchester-city-charges-premier-league), [Yahoo Sports (Pulis column)](https://sports.yahoo.com/articles/feel-cheated-stoke-city-fa-065016752.html), [GiveMeSport](https://www.givemesport.com/i-lost-biggest-game-my-life-man-city-tony-pulis/), [Wikipedia — 2011 FA Cup final](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2011_FA_Cup_final)
Sports journalist and editor at SportsPortal.net. Covers cricket, football, Formula 1, tennis, and basketball with a focus on how global sports connect with Pakistani audiences. Follows the PSL, Pakistan national cricket team, Premier League, and major international tournaments. Has reported on sports for digital audiences since 2021.
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