Chelsea news: Spurs should be awarded 2016-17 Premier League title, claims Mauricio Pochettino

Chelsea should be stripped of the 2016-17 Premier League title and it awarded to Tottenham Hotspur, claims Mauricio Pochettino.

The Argentine has spent time at both clubs, most notably with Spurs who he managed between 2014 and 2019.

In the 2016-17 campaign, Spurs finished runners-up to champions Chelsea by seven points as Antonio Conte made an immediate impact at Stamford Bridge.

However, Chelsea have been fined a combined £20.75m and given a suspended two-window transfer ban for multiple rule breaches between 2009 and 2022 during the Roman Abramovich era.

Several players signed that contributed to the 2016-17 title success arrived through unlicensed agents and payments made to them.

In a long-ranging interview in London, Pochettino - who was Chelsea boss for the 2023-24 season - feels that it should be a simple decision to hand the title to Spurs.

He said: "We should win one Premier League, we should have been awarded it. If that was true, then we deserve to be champions that year, for sure. They were punished, they admitted it? So that’s it. The title should be for the team that was second.

"We can say that they scored goals, they won games. OK. But it’s completely fair to say that we didn’t compete before the start of the season with the same card. Maybe with the same rules, we could’ve signed some players that would have made the team better or scored more goals."

The 54-year-old added: "I have no doubt and I’m not scared to say the truth. The Chelsea fans will be upset with me. But if we were at Tottenham and broke the rules, I’d admit the same: 'We don’t deserve the title because we broke the rules.'

"I don’t say that Chelsea didn’t play well, that Conte was not great. I don’t say that. I don’t want the message to be twisted. But if you broke the rules then ciao – you need to give it to another team. I don’t know why that didn’t happen.

"What is being promoted and incentivised is to break the rules. If you don’t punish in the way that you need to punish, I say: 'Yeah…I lost my job [at Spurs] because we didn’t win a title.'"

There will be the vast majority of Chelsea fans who will be demanding that Manchester City be stripped of Premier League titles if they are found guilty of a significant percentage of their well-documented 115 charges, whenever that process is completed.

With Chelsea having initially been charged with 74 breaches a year ago, for rule breaches over a 13-year period, there is an argument that Pochettino is correct in his judgment of the situation.

The fact that Chelsea were not stripped of any league titles may have ramifications for the Man City case.

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