Pochettino's Claim: Should Spurs Be Crowned 2016-17 Champions?

Mauricio Pochettino has never lifted the Premier League trophy. But he now says he should have one.

The former Tottenham manager believes Spurs ought to be retrospectively crowned champions for the 2016-17 season, after Chelsea admitted making secret payments to unregistered agents and third parties to secure major transfers between 2011 and 2018.

“If they admitted they broke the rules, the Premier League title was for the second-best team,” Pochettino said.

In 2016-17, that “second-best team” was Tottenham. Seven points behind Antonio Conte’s Chelsea, but relentless, ruthless and – in Pochettino’s eyes – robbed of a fair fight.

Chelsea’s £47m Shadow

The Premier League investigation uncovered about £47m in undeclared payments linked to deals involving Eden Hazard, Samuel Eto'o, Willian, Ramires, David Luiz, Andre Schurrle and Nemanja Matic.

Four of those – Hazard, Willian, Luiz and Matic – were key parts of the 2016-17 title-winning squad.

Across that wider period, Chelsea stacked up silverware: Premier League titles in 2014-15 and 2016-17, FA Cups in 2011-12 and 2017-18, the EFL Cup in 2014-15 and the Europa League in 2018-19.

Uefa, the Premier League and the Football Association have all fined the club. No titles stripped. No retrospective relegations. No asterisks in the record books.

Pochettino, and many others, think that’s nowhere near enough.

Everton and Nottingham Forest fans have watched their clubs hit with points deductions for comparatively small profit and sustainability breaches. Chelsea, by contrast, were using secret payments while competing for – and winning – the game’s biggest prizes.

And hanging over it all is another unresolved storm: Manchester City’s 115 charges for alleged breaches of Premier League financial rules, still without a verdict.

No wonder people are asking how much those Chelsea signings really tilted the 2016-17 title race.

Hazard: The Poster Boy of a Tilted Era

Hazard has become the face of this story.

Chelsea beat almost every major European club to his signature when they signed him from Lille for £32m in 2012. Between May 2013 and August 2016, investigators say seven payments totalling £5.6m went to an unregistered agent “for the benefit of the club in connection with Hazard’s transfer”.

Pochettino’s argument is simple: if Chelsea could ignore the rules to land that calibre of player, what might Spurs have done had they operated in the same grey areas?

Hazard’s impact in 2016-17 was enormous. He started 36 Premier League games, scored 16 goals and provided five assists. Only Cesar Azpilicueta played more league matches. Only Diego Costa scored more goals, with 20.

Hazard was Chelsea’s player of the year, made the PFA Team of the Year and was shortlisted for PFA Player of the Year. He wasn’t a luxury. He was the engine of their title charge.

Look at the details. His goals and assists directly shaped results in at least four league games:

• First goal in a 2-1 win over West Ham in August.
• A goal and an assist in a 2-0 win over Southampton in November.
• The opener in another 2-1 victory over West Ham in March.
• Both goals in a 2-0 win over Manchester City in April.

You can argue those contributions alone were worth around 10 points. In a title race decided by seven, that matters.

This wasn’t a new signing in 2016, of course. It was Hazard’s fifth season at Stamford Bridge. But the investigation says the groundwork that brought him to Chelsea in the first place wasn’t clean.

Willian: The One That Got Away From Spurs

Willian’s story cuts even closer to Tottenham’s bone.

He joined Chelsea from Anzhi Makhachkala in 2013, with the investigation finding that transfer-fee payments totalling £19.2m were made to two unregistered entities linked to his move and that of Eto’o.

Spurs thought they had him. Chelsea swooped late. The transfer became a running joke among Tottenham fans – and a symbol of their frustration in the market.

In 2016-17, Willian wasn’t even a nailed-on starter. He began 19 of his 34 league appearances on the bench. But he still produced eight goals and eight assists – and several of those moments came when the title race was tight.

Key contributions included:

• An assist in a 1-0 win at Sunderland in December.
• Two goals in a 4-2 victory over Stoke later that month.
• The opener in a 2-1 win at Stoke in March.
• An assist for the winner in a wild 4-3 victory over Watford in May.

Those attacking returns helped Chelsea claim eight points. Again, in a race decided by seven, that’s not a footnote.

For Spurs, the sting is obvious. A player they thought was theirs, ending up at a direct rival, in a deal now linked to secret payments.

Luiz and Matic: The Spine Under Scrutiny

The investigation also highlighted £5.1m in payments between 2012 and 2015 for “talent identification services in certain European countries”. Those were linked to the registrations of Ramires, Luiz, Schurrle and Matic.

By 2016-17, Luiz and Matic were in their second spells at Chelsea. The original 2011 swap deals with Benfica – Matic one way, Luiz the other – fell under the microscope. Matic returned in 2014, Luiz came back from Paris St-Germain in 2016.

The specific deals that brought them back weren’t singled out, but the association is there.

On the pitch, both were crucial.

Matic played 35 league games, starting 30. He scored once and delivered seven assists. Only one of those directly changed a result on the scoreboard – but it was a big one: an assist for Chelsea’s first goal in a 2-1 win over Tottenham in November.

Luiz, restored at the heart of Conte’s back three, started 33 league matches and scored once – the opener in a 1-1 draw at Liverpool in January. His performances earned him a place in the PFA Team of the Season.

They weren’t as obviously decisive in raw goals and assists as Hazard and Willian, but they anchored a title-winning side that finished seven points clear of a Spurs team playing at a historically high level.

Spurs’ Almost-Perfect Season

Tottenham’s 2016-17 campaign remains one of the great “what ifs” of the Premier League era.

They finished on 86 points – a club record. They won 12 of their last 13 league games. They were unbeaten at home in the final season at the old White Hart Lane. Best attack. Best defence. Fewest defeats.

In many seasons, that wins you the title. In 2015-16, Leicester were champions with 81 points. Since 1999-2000, when Manchester United won it with 79, a tally of 86 would only have been enough twice, including the two most recent campaigns.

Spurs’ flaw came early. Too many draws at the start. They went 11 games unbeaten but only five of those were wins. Chelsea actually lost more games – five to Tottenham’s four – but they racked up 30 victories to Spurs’ 26.

Pochettino could reasonably point at the attacking edge Hazard and Willian provided. Between them, they had goal contributions in eight league matches that directly produced points.

Strip away the secret payments that helped Chelsea land that level of talent. Does the table look the same?

Sporting Advantage and a Skewed Market

Beyond the arithmetic of goals and points, there is the broader question of sporting advantage.

By signing players like Hazard and Willian, Chelsea didn’t just win matches. They won trophies, secured Champions League qualification and built a platform to attract even more elite talent. Success bred success – and it may have been underpinned, in part, by payments that broke the rules.

Pochettino knows what that looks like from both sides. He spent one turbulent season in charge of Chelsea, finishing sixth in 2023-24 and never fully winning over the fanbase. Neither party will cherish those memories.

At Tottenham, it is different. He remains adored for his five-year spell from 2014, a period that delivered a Champions League final in 2018-19 and that 86-point league campaign. For many Spurs fans, he represents the high-water mark of the modern era.

So when he says he feels he should have a Premier League title on his CV, people at Tottenham listen.

“Crime Does Pay in Football”

Among supporters, the idea of being handed a title a decade late is complicated.

Spurs fans know they are not going to wake up one morning to find the Premier League has posted them a championship trophy in the mail. But the principle still matters.

“Of course I do,” said Chris Paouros, co-founder and co-chair of Proud Lilywhites, when asked if she agreed with Pochettino. “He could tell me the moon was made of halloumi and I'd nod along.

“The Spurs 2016-17 team was the best in the league by most measures: best attack, best defence, fewest defeats, unbeaten at home in the last season of the old White Hart Lane.

“If the playing field was tilted, the least you can do is ask the question.”

Paouros accepts the title is not coming, but insists “the rules have to mean something, whoever benefits”.

Tristan Foot, secretary of the Tottenham Hotspur Supporters’ Trust, believes fans would still celebrate a retrospective title.

“It would still be something that Spurs fans would celebrate,” he said. “A victory over Chelsea, albeit 10 years after the event.”

But he also captured the darker mood beyond North London.

“It means that to an extent crime does pay in football,” Foot said. “And that's the serious underlying part all of this.

“During the transfer window they were signing players that we had no chance of winning, the obvious example being Willian.

“The Premier League has got to be better about imposing sporting sanctions and making sure that its rules actually have teeth.”

No Parade, Just Questions

With the Chelsea investigations now concluded, the record books will not be rewritten. Pochettino will not get a retroactive title. Spurs will not stage a delayed open-top bus parade.

The anger, and the doubt, linger instead.

And as the league edges towards a resolution in the Manchester City case, one question hangs over everyone else in the division:

When the next verdict finally lands, will clubs feel justice – or just another reminder that, for too long, the biggest battles in English football have been fought off the pitch as much as on it?