Mauricio Pochettino believes Tottenham should retrospectively be recognised as Premier League champions for the 2016/17 season following Chelsea's recent financial sanctions.

Spurs finished second that season, seven points behind Antonio Conte's Chelsea side, who won the title with 30 victories from 38 matches.

However, following the Football Association's £10m fine and suspended two-window registration ban handed to Chelsea in July over 74 regulatory breaches, Pochettino believes the punishment should go further and that Tottenham should have been awarded the title.

The former Tottenham boss, who is now manager of the USMNT, said: "We should win one Premier League, we should have been awarded it."

Pochettino was referring to the breaches committed during the period between 2009 and 2022, which Chelsea self-reported after the BlueCo-led ownership group took over the club in 2022.

The Argentine believes Tottenham were competing at a disadvantage during the 2016/17 campaign if Chelsea's breaches gave the club a competitive advantage.

"If that [Chelsea's breaches] 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."

Pochettino acknowledged that Chelsea still had to perform on the pitch, but questioned whether the competition was completely fair if the clubs were not operating under the same rules.

"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."

He also suggested that Tottenham could have strengthened their squad had they been operating under the same circumstances.

"Maybe with the same rules, we could've signed some players that would have made the team better or scored more goals."

Could Chelsea Be Stripped of the 2016/17 Premier League Title?

Despite Pochettino's comments, there is currently no indication that Chelsea will be stripped of the 2016/17 Premier League title or that Tottenham will be awarded it retrospectively.

The FA's confirmed punishment relates to Chelsea's 74 breaches of its regulations and resulted in a £10m fine and a suspended two-window registration ban. An initial six-point deduction was also suspended, but that proposed sporting sanction was subsequently overturned by an independent Appeal Board.

That means Pochettino's comments are a statement of what he believes should happen, rather than an indication that the league table from 2016/17 is about to be rewritten.

Still, his argument raises a wider question about sporting integrity and whether financial breaches discovered years later should ever have an impact on trophies won during the period in question.

For Tottenham supporters, the timing makes the debate particularly intriguing. Spurs collected 86 points that season, their highest-ever Premier League total at the time, while Harry Kane won the Golden Boot and the side finished seven points behind Chelsea.

Pochettino's argument is ultimately about more than one title. His view is that clubs must be competing under the same rules for the results on the pitch to be considered completely fair and that retrospective punishment should reflect the potential competitive advantage created by those breaches.