'Spurs deserve the title' - Pochettino wants Chelsea stripped of Premier League crown

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FT Desk

Mauricio Pochettino believes that Tottenham should be awarded the 2016/17 Premier League title and Chelsea stripped of the honour.

The 2016/17 Premier League title race was mainly contested between those two clubs at the business end of the season.

The Blues, under Antonio Conte, recovered from a shaky start by switching to a 3-4-3 formation and then went on a remarkable 13-game winning streak. They built a significant lead at the top, while Tottenham remained their closest challengers, with Harry Kane, Dele Alli, Christian Eriksen and Heung-min Son leading a vibrant attack under Pochettino.

Spurs finished the season strongly, winning nine games in a row, and briefly reduced Chelsea's lead to four points. However, their defeat to West Ham in May effectively ended the challenge.

The Stamford Bridge side then won the title with 93 points, finishing seven points ahead of Spurs' 86.

In March of 2026, Chelsea were fined £10.75m by the Premier League for more than 30 historical financial breaches between 2011 and 2018. The main issue was £47.5m of payments to unlicensed agents and third parties that Chelsea failed to disclose. The Premier League found these payments breached its rules, including the requirement for clubs to act in good faith.

Four months later, the club were fined £10m by the FA for historical transfer and agent-rule breaches during the Roman Abramovich era (2009–22), which included the 2016/17 title victory.

These included undisclosed payments and dealings with unlicensed agents. Current owners BlueCo reported the issues after taking over in 2022 and cooperated with the investigation, which reduced the punishment. The deals that took Eden Hazard, Willian, David Luiz and Nemanja Matic to Chelsea were among those found to have been flagged.

Due to Chelsea admitting guilt over the transgressions in that period, Pochettino believes Spurs should be given the title.

“We should win one Premier League, we should have been awarded it,” Pochettino said in a recent interview.

“If that [Chelsea’s rule-break] 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.”

Hazard was arguably the difference-maker in that title-winning season for Chelsea, scoring 16 goals, but as his transfer from Lille was one that was flagged for its alleged murky legality, Pochettino thinks that's reasoning enough to strip the Blues of the championship.

When asked if Hazard made the difference, the Argentine replied:

“Maybe yes,” Pochettino replied. “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.’

“It’s impossible if only some clubs play with offside and another plays with no offside. Or one plays with VAR and another plays with no VAR. For everyone it needs to be the same rules. And then you have the capacity to create the best team.

“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.’”

The 2016/17 season was the last time that Chelsea won the Premier League. Remarkably, despite his thoughts on that title win, Pochettino would eventually take charge of the Blues between 2023 and 2024 before being sacked.