Mauricio Pochettino has spoken out about the guilty verdict to almost all of the 115 charges levelled against Manchester City by the Premier League.
City have been found guilty of 114 of the 115 charges against them, that spanned from 2009 to 2018 - a large chunk of the period that Pochettino was managing in England's top flight.
The Argentinian, now manager of the US Men's National Team, spent six years in the Premier League from 2013 to 2019, firstly with Southampton and then Tottenham Hotspur, before returning for a season with Chelsea in 2023/24.
City won three Premier League titles during that time, as well as one FA Cup and three League Cups, leaving a sour taste in the mouths of a number of people who competed against them, not least Pochettino.
The Argentinian guided Spurs to fifth, third, second, third and fourth-placed finishes during his five full seasons in charge of the club and is one of the most well-respected and successful managers in N17 in the modern era, taking the club to the final of the UEFA Champipns League in 2019 too.
He has previously spoken out about Chelsea's breaches of financial rules, that led to them being handed a £10million fine and a transfer ban earlier this year. Spurs finished second behind Antonio Conte's Blues side in 2016/17 - during which time Chelsea were found to have broken financial rules.
"I’ve said that we should win one title, one Premier League,” Pochettino said.
We should have been awarded it. If that was true, and that happened, for sure we deserve to be champions for that year. Because we were the second best.
Pochettino was sacked early into the 2019/20 season after a poor run of results that had started before the UEFA Champions League final defeat to Liverpool.
But the sacking also came after Spurs created somewhat unwanted transfer history. They became the first ever Premier League club not to make a signing in a summer transfer window in 2018 and they followed it up with no signings in the January transfer window of 2019 either, making it a full season without new faces arriving at the club.
They had been building their £1billion Tottenham Hotspur Stadium at the time, moving in in early 2019, and the "painful rebuild" that Pochettino later called for was not forthcoming.
Pochettino goes against Daniel Levy somewhat
Now, in speaking out against Manchester City and the case against them, Pochettino has delivered some revealing quotes about Spurs' lack of transfer activity.
Back then, Spurs were linked with a number of players and came close to signing Jack Grealish from Aston Villa before new investment into the Midlands club ended their pursuit. Meanwhile, then chairman Daniel Levy had said that there were no players on the market in January that were better than what Spurs already had at their disposal.
Speaking this week, Pochettino said: "What is the punishment that’s just? Because there are other clubs - Nottingham Forest, Everton - not with the same situations, different cases, but where rules were broken and they were punished with point deductions or economic sanctions and so on.
“It’s the astonishment you feel when a ruling comes out citing 114 rule violations. How? How did this happen? The most important thing is how things are set right, because it’s not just about who committed the violations, who broke the rules. But what about the controls? Where were they? That’s what struck me most: Where were the controls?
"So if a club like us, Tottenham, who had been competing for titles, competing with the other teams up there, finishing in the top four every year, reaching a Champions League final without having been able to sign anyone for 18 months because we had to comply with the rules the Premier League imposed on us, how could those controls have been so strict with us and so much less strict with some others?
“If it’s true that the 114 rules were broken, then we lived through a period of deception. I think a lot of damage has been done. Especially with the controls during the pandemic, because ultimately a lot of clubs followed the rules and others didn’t."
Pochettino has openly admitted that Spurs did not sign any players during one or both of the windows in the 2018/19 season because they had to comply with Financial Fair Play rules. It will not be much of a comfort to the Tottenham supporters, but it at least explains the decisions that were made, or not made.