Pochettino says Chelsea should be stripped of 2016-17 title and Spurs awarded it

By Jack Shaw · London · Published: 11:35 BST

• Mauricio Pochettino says Chelsea should be stripped of the 2016-17 Premier League title and the trophy handed to his Tottenham side, who finished runners-up.
• Chelsea were fined £10.75m in March after being charged by the Premier League over historical breaches of competition rules; a six-point deduction was “set aside” on appeal.
• The club admitted £47m in secret payments to unregistered agents and third parties on transfers between 2011 and 2018.

Mauricio Pochettino believes the 2016-17 Premier League title should be taken off Chelsea and awarded to the Tottenham team he managed, telling BBC Sport that his players “didn’t compete with the same rules” as the club that beat them to it.

What Chelsea admitted

Antonio Conte’s Chelsea finished seven points clear of Pochettino’s Spurs in 2016-17. Years later, owners Todd Boehly and Clearlake Capital self-reported 74 breaches of Football Association rules on buying the club in 2022, and Chelsea went on to admit making £47m in secret payments to unregistered agents and third parties over transfers between 2011 and 2018. The Premier League charged the club, and in March it was fined £10.75m. A six-point deduction was set aside on appeal. Chelsea said it had “treated these matters with the utmost seriousness, providing full cooperation to all relevant regulators”.

For the full chronology of the charges, the appeal and the reaction across the division, follow the rolling coverage on JOE’s football desk.

The expert angle: Pochettino is right on principle and stuck on process

The uncomfortable part of this is that Pochettino’s argument is the strongest one anybody has made about that season, and it still almost certainly goes nowhere. His case is simple and, on the facts Chelsea themselves accepted, hard to rebut. “They were punished, they admitted, so that’s it?” he said. “The title should be for the team that was second.”

The problem is the shape of the punishment. The financial penalty landed; the sporting sanction did not. A six-point deduction set aside on appeal is the whole story in one line — the Premier League found breaches worth charging, then arrived at an outcome that touched Chelsea’s bank balance and not a single point in any table.

Pochettino also makes the squad-building point, which is the one clubs will be listening to: “Maybe with the same rules, if we apply the same things, maybe we could’ve signed some players that would have made the team better or scored more goals.” That is the real grievance of a manager who spent five years at Spurs from 2014 to 2019, reached the 2019 Champions League final, and left without a trophy — that second place remains his best league finish.

And he knows how it sounds coming from a man who later managed Chelsea in 2023-24. “I’m not scared to say the truth,” the now USA head coach said. “The Chelsea fans will be upset with me because I’m saying this, but if we were at Tottenham and broke the rules I’d admit the same.”

So where do you land: does an admitted breach mean the table should be rewritten nine years on, or is a fine the end of it? Chelsea’s current dealings are moving fast too — read our report on Enzo Fernandez, Manchester City and Chelsea’s £120m deadline-day talks.

Follow all the latest: Football live: Premier League 2026/27 news, transfers and updates.