Spurs win Premier League, Arsenal and Liverpool win Doubles as Poch fantasy taken to only logical conclusion

· Football365

Mauricio Pochettino claims the Premier League title of 2016/17 should go to Spurs. In that case, we have 20 more trophies to reallocate.

Very obviously, here at F365 we have simply nothing better to do with our lives than write vast reams of guff about tish and sometimes even fipsy.

We take great delight, for instance, in writing several thousand words about things that haven’t happened and won’t happen. Every time someone talks about Man City’s charges, we gleefully set out to redistribute all the pots and pans they’ve won by bloody cheating , thinking nothing of spending several of the precious hours we are granted on this earth and can never get back to crafting 4000 words of nonsense with the primary goal of managing to give Spurs a trophy.

But that’s us. We’re idiots. That’s absolutely fine. It’s not beneath us to behave in such dignityphobic fashion. But do you know who it should be beneath? Actual football people. And yet, here we are, with Mauricio Pochettino actually saying out loud with his mouth that Spurs should be awarded the 2016/17 Premier League title because of Chelsea’s assorted antics.

That’s all the encouragement we need. The 74 charges against Chelsea are from the Abramovich Era. Surely, though, it can’t be fair or rational or correct or right to simply reallocate every single one of the 21 trophies Chelsea won in that time? To quote the great Mick McCarthy: it can. It is quite literally the only rational course of action at this point.

Let’s go.

2004/05 Carling Cup

Chelsea entered the League Cup in round three and we really, really can’t be arsed to imagine what might have happened had they had to do round two due to not being in Europe. We may be the sort of maniac willing to spend all day trying to extricate Chelsea from the last two decades of English football, but even we have our limits.

So, round three where they beat London rivals West Ham 1-0 at Stamford Bridge. That tie is now a walkover for the happy Hammers, who face Newcastle in the last 16. With West Ham in the Championship that season, the chances are it would be Premier League Newcastle who progress. We never said this would be foolproof.

On go the Toon to the quarter-finals, then, and a trip to Fulham. Now this one’s tough to call: they finished on the same number of Premier League points – 44 – and each had a convincing away win in their league encounters. Fulham won 4-1 at St James’ Park and Newcastle 3-1 at Craven Cottage. As this hypothetical League Cup clash is at the Cottage, we’re going to have to go with the visitors.

So it’s onwards to a two-legged semi-final against Manchester United for Newcastle. And this one’s nice and easy. Newcastle lost home and away to Manchester United in the Premier League, and thus Sir Alex Ferguson’s side set up a humdinger of a final against Liverpool.

United finished 19 points clear of Liverpool in the league and so are clear winners here because there is quite simply no way the Liverpool side of 2005 was capable of pulling off something extraordinarily unlikely in a cup final.

New winners: Manchester United

2004/05 Premier League

Nice and easy, this one. Arsenal’s Invincibles may not have matched the history-making exploits of the previous season but with Chelsea’s 95 illegitimate points struck from the record the Gunners still defend their title with some ease. Expunging their draws against Chelsea leaves Arsenal with 81 points from their 36 games, still four clear of Manchester United despite Sir Fergie’s side losing home and away to the dastardly Blues.

FA Cup winners Arsenal also therefore claim The Double while Everton finish third and Liverpool fourth – thus avoiding all that unpleasant awkwardness of needing to squeeze five English clubs into the following season’s Champions League.

Worth noting that we also lose one of the only interesting thing about the already settled 26/27 Premier League title race, which will now not in fact be the first time Arsenal have defended the league title since the 1930s. Sorry about that.

New winners: Arsenal

2005 Community Shield

With Arsenal now holding both the league title and FA Cup, they take on Premier League runners-up Manchester United in the Traditional Season Curtain Raiser. Now picking a winner here is slightly tricky because not only is it not a real major trophy, it’s also not even really a proper competitive match. It is the original and greatest of Glorified Friendlies (not that anything is particularly friendly when these two sides meet, Clive!!!!1!!one!). Luckily, Arsenal and Manchester United’s dominance in the years preceding Chelsea’s rouble-powered arrival at the top table gives us a pretty reasonable Charity/Community Shield form guide to use. They had met in four of the previous seven such showpieces and Arsenal had won three – including in 2004 – while United’s sole victory came on penalties in 2003. The data is firmly in the Gunners’ favour here.

New winners: Arsenal

2005/06 Premier League

The first real bit of fun. Up to now we’ve just been inflating the already bountiful trophy counts of the two most successful clubs of the immediate pre-Abramovich era. It in some way explains – if not excuses – why the British football media largely turned a blind eye to what had turned Chelsea into such a force. They and everyone else had grown bored of the United-Arsenal duopoly and here was a new challenger led by the charming and endlessly quotable Jose Mourinho before he became an embittered parody account of himself. But it turns out we didn’t need Chelsea and their billions to generate a media-pleasing narrative.

Although Manchester United finished second, they foolishly picked up three of their 83 points against Mourinho’s men. Third-placed Liverpool were not so daft, shrewdly collecting all their 82 points from teams whose entirely unproblematic ownership would not cause a single issue 20 years down the line.

Thus Liverpool’s long wait for a league title ends at a mere 16 years and Rafa Benitez follows up his Champions League success of the previous year with a domestic Double to firmly cement his place among the absolute greats. He also probably never has that “facts” rant , or manages Newcastle. Or Everton.

Spurs, meanwhile, spend the final day of the season cheerfully vomiting their way to an irrelevant defeat at West Ham, having long since secured a top-four finish and a first foray into the Champions League.

New winners: Liverpool

2006/07 League Cup

Okay, we are starting to regret heading down this road now. Twenty-one trophies is a lot, isn’t it? This is a very, very longwinded way to poke fun at Chelsea (and, let’s be honest, Poch) when we could have just sent a snarky tweet instead. We only did this because it was going to be funny to give Spurs a Premier League title. Look forward to that in about 3000 words’ time.

Anyway. Another year, another League Cup win for Mourinho and co. So who ends up with everyone’s favourite inexplicably three-handled trophy this time around now it turns out Chelsea don’t count?

The Blues kicked things off in round three with a 2-0 win over Blackburn, who now instead get a walkover to meet Aston Villa. Remarkably, we’re once again left to separate two very evenly-matched sides in this all-Premier League clash. Blackburn finished that season in 10th with 52 points, with Villa one spot and two points behind.

But the head-to-heads give us a clear winner here, Villa doing a league double over their mid-table rivals and thus easing into the quarter-finals of a tournament taking place entirely in our increasingly damaged head.

Here they meet Newcastle and it’s a win apiece from their league games that season. Villa get the victory here, though, thanks to being nine points better off in the league. It’s as fair as we can make it.

So Villa now find themselves in the semi-final against plucky League Two giantkillers Wycombe, and we have to imagine it’s the Villans who win this day.

Arsenal against Villa in the final, then. The Gunners were demonstrably the better side and although their league matches were tight, it was Arsenal who took four points from their encounters thanks to a 1-1 draw at Highbury and a 1-0 win at Villa Park. Another pot finds itself heading Wenger’s way.

New winners: Arsenal

2006/07 FA Cup

Another cup. Great. Come on, let’s rattle through the formalities before inevitably ending up with more silverware for Arsenal or United.

Macclesfield are our first big winners, not only by reaching round four but also having a 6-1 drubbing officially struck from the record books. Sadly, that’s as good as it gets for Macc, who bow out to Nottingham Forest.

League One Forest are promptly dispatched in the last 16 by Championship Norwich, who lose out to Tottenham in the quarter-finals.

That leaves Spurs taking on Blackburn in the last four. Both their league encounters ended in draws, so that doesn’t help. In theory, we should now side with Spurs because they were fifth and Blackburn 10th.

However, we’re only trying to remove Chelsea from football history here, not pretend football history itself doesn’t exist entirely. And the simple fact is this: Tottenham do not win FA Cup semi-finals. Not since 1991 have they done so. They have lost eight in the intervening 35 years. Some of those defeats have been against decent Arsenal, Manchester United and, yes, Chelsea sides. But some were against Portsmouth and Everton and Newcastle. They can’t reasonably be handed an FA Cup semi-final win against anyone. Thus it is Blackburn who progress and get spanked by <checks notes>, sigh, Manchester United in the first FA Cup final at the new Wembley.

New winners: Manchester United

2008/09 FA Cup

Chelsea needed a replay – eh, here, who remembers replays?! Eh? Hey? Anyone? You sir, you look like a man who remembers replays – to get past Southend in round three. The Shrimpers don’t need a replay to skip past the no-longer-there Chelsea, but they come undone against Ipswich in the last 32.

Ipswich then head to Watford for an all-Championship clash so once again to the league results we go for an unimpeachably accurate and reliable guide to what would definitely happen in this fictitious encounter, because if there’s one thing that keeps us coming back to football time and again it’s the sure and certain knowledge that exactly what you expect to happen based on factors is always what will happen. This is also why all bookmakers are poor.

Anyway, four points for Watford in their league games against Ipswich so on they go to the quarter-finals and wouldn’t you know it – another clash with Championship opposition. (As an aside, this whole nonsense isn’t doing much to quieten the conspiracy theory that Chelsea always get easy cup draws.)

Coventry this time; Watford beat them home and away in the league so we have to go with the Hornets again in this one. Sadly that’s where the fun must end for our brave Championship heroes as they come unstuck against Arsenal, who you have to believe then beat Everton in the final much as Chelsea did (2-1, from behind) in the darkest timeline that we are at last putting right. Everton finished fifth to Arsenal’s fourth so they can be reasonably expected to have put up a fight but ultimately Arsenal sometimes win trophies and Everton in the 21st century do not. Unsurprisingly, it’s another pot for one of the Big Two whose fun in our dimension had been so rudely intruded upon by those ghastly nouveau riche rotters from the Bridge.

New winners: Arsenal

2009 Community Shield

That sets up yet another Manchester United v Arsenal Community Shield and we’ve already established what happens in those. More quasi-glory for the Gunners here to begin their season.

New winners: Arsenal

2009/10 Premier League

Under the watchful gaze of Carlo Ancelotti’s eyebrow, Chelsea pipped Manchester United to the title by a single point with Arsenal a further 10 adrift. Straightforward here, then. It’s another Premier League medal for Fergie to chuck on his massive, massive Scrooge McDuck-style pile of Premier League medals. We’re rattling through these now. Good stuff, and in no way do we feel we’ve wasted our ever-dwindling time on this planet by spending 2,000 words awarding pretty much all Chelsea’s trophies to either Arsenal or Manchester United. No siree. In other news: Manchester City qualify for the Champions League for the first time despite a 1-0 home defeat to fellow qualifiers Spurs, who are by this point old hands in the Big Cup now, of course, and set for their third appearance having also qualified in 2006 and 2008.

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