Pochettino's Call for Spurs to Be 2016-17 Champions

Mauricio Pochettino has never lifted the Premier League. Now he’s asking if he should already have one on his CV.

The former Tottenham manager believes Spurs ought to be retrospectively crowned champions for the 2016-17 season, after Chelsea admitted to making £47m in secret payments to unregistered agents and third parties 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 Chelsea. But four of the players linked to those irregular payments – Eden Hazard, Willian, David Luiz and Nemanja Matic – were central figures in Antonio Conte’s title-winning side.

Pochettino has put a voice to a feeling that has been simmering for a while: that Chelsea escaped with little more than a financial slap on the wrist.

Secret Payments, Real Trophies

The Premier League investigation found Chelsea made £47m in hidden payments connected to a string of transfers, including Hazard, Samuel Eto’o, Willian, Ramires, Luiz, Andre Schurrle and Matic.

Between 2011 and 2018, while those deals were being done, Chelsea stacked the trophy cabinet: two Premier League titles (2014-15, 2016-17), two FA Cups (2011-12, 2017-18), the EFL Cup (2014-15) and the Europa League (2018-19).

Uefa, the Premier League and the Football Association have all fined the club. No points deductions. No titles stripped.

Fans of Everton and Nottingham Forest, whose clubs were docked points for comparatively small profit and sustainability breaches, have watched on and drawn the obvious conclusion. Their teams were punished in the table. Chelsea, accused of using secret payments to land elite talent, were not.

And in the background sits the unresolved behemoth: Manchester City’s 115 charges for alleged breaches of Premier League financial rules, still without a verdict.

So does Pochettino have a case when he looks back at 2016-17 and sees a title that got away for reasons beyond tactics and form?

Hazard: The Poster Boy and the Points

Hazard has become the symbol of this story.

Chelsea beat off most of Europe to sign him from Lille for £32m in 2012. According to the investigation, between May 2013 and August 2016 the club made seven payments totalling £5.6m to an unregistered agent “for the benefit of the club in connection with Hazard’s transfer”.

Pochettino’s logic is simple: if Chelsea could bend or break the rules to secure a player of Hazard’s level, what might Spurs have done in the same market had they been willing to do the same?

On the pitch in 2016-17, Hazard’s influence was enormous.

He started 36 league games, scored 16 goals and registered five assists. Only Cesar Azpilicueta played more matches. Only Diego Costa scored more league goals, with 20.

Hazard swept up Chelsea’s player of the year award, made the PFA team of the year, and was shortlisted for PFA player of the year. That’s the season Tottenham are looking at.

Strip it back further to hard impact. Hazard’s goals and assists were decisive in at least four fixtures:

• He scored the opener in a 2-1 win over West Ham in August.
• He scored and assisted in a 2-0 victory over Southampton in November.
• He again hit the first goal in another 2-1 win over West Ham in March.
• He scored both in a 2-0 win over Manchester City in April.

Those contributions can be reasonably mapped to 10 points. Ten points in a title race that finished with a seven-point gap.

Of course, Hazard was already in his fifth season at Stamford Bridge by then. This was not a last-minute, summer-2016 coup. But the investigation links his original arrival to irregular payments that helped shape the Chelsea era Pochettino is railing against.

Willian: The One That Got Away

If Hazard represents the headline, Willian is the sore spot for Spurs.

Willian joined Chelsea from Anzhi Makhachkala in 2013. The investigation found transfer fee payments totalling £19.2m to two unregistered entities in connection with his move and that of Samuel Eto’o.

Spurs fans know the story by heart: Willian looked set for Tottenham, had a medical, and then Chelsea swooped in at the last moment. The Premier League’s findings have only sharpened that sense of injustice.

On the surface, Willian was not a nailed-on starter in 2016-17. Nineteen of his 34 league appearances came from the bench. But he still delivered eight goals and eight assists – serious output for a “rotation” option.

Again, look at the specific games:

• He assisted the only goal in a 1-0 win at Sunderland in December.
• He scored twice in a 4-2 win over Stoke that same month.
• He hit the opener in a 2-1 win at Stoke in March.
• He set up the winner in a 4-3 victory over Watford in May.

Those contributions underpinned eight points. For a player Spurs thought they had signed, that stings.

From Pochettino’s vantage point, that’s not just about numbers. It’s about the competitive landscape. While Tottenham tried to build within the lines, Chelsea were, according to the investigation, making secret payments to secure the same players Spurs were chasing.

Luiz, Matic and the Spine of a Champion

The Premier League also identified £5.1m in payments between 2012 and 2015 “to provide talent identification services in certain European countries”, linked to the registrations of Ramires, Luiz, Schurrle and Matic.

By 2016-17, Luiz and Matic were both in their second spells at Chelsea. The 2011 deal with Benfica, which saw Matic and Luiz swap clubs, came under scrutiny. Matic returned to Stamford Bridge in 2014, Luiz in 2016 after a stint at Paris St-Germain.

The investigation did not specifically reference the deals that brought them back, but the association between those players and the irregular payment structure was established.

On the pitch, both were pillars of Conte’s side.

Matic played 35 league games, starting 30. He scored once and delivered seven assists. Only one of those direct attacking contributions altered a result – an assist for Chelsea’s first goal in a 2-1 win over Tottenham in November. But his presence in midfield was part of the platform that allowed Hazard, Willian and Costa to flourish.

Luiz, restored at the heart of a back three, started 33 league matches and scored once – the opener in a 1-1 draw at Liverpool in January. He made the PFA team of the season, emblematic of a defence that backed up Chelsea’s attacking firepower.

This was the core of a title-winning team, built in part through deals the Premier League has since ruled were not conducted within the rules.

Spurs’ Nearly Season – And the Fine Margins

Tottenham’s 2016-17 campaign was, in isolation, magnificent.

They finished with 86 points, a club record. They won 12 of their final 13 league games. They were unbeaten at home in the last season at the old White Hart Lane. They had the best attack, the best defence, the fewest defeats.

In many seasons, that’s enough. In 2015-16, Leicester won the league with 81 points. Since 1999-2000, when Manchester United took the title with 79, a total of 86 would only have been good enough twice – including the two most recent seasons.

Their problem came early. Spurs started 2016-17 unbeaten in 11 league games, but only five were wins. Too many draws left them chasing.

Chelsea, meanwhile, lost more matches overall – five to Tottenham’s four – but racked up 30 wins to Spurs’ 26. Conte’s side matched Tottenham’s late-season relentlessness, winning 11 of their final 13 games to close out the title with 93 points.

In that context, Pochettino can point to the attacking influence of Hazard and Willian. Between them, they produced decisive contributions in eight matches that directly shaped Chelsea’s points tally.

Then there’s the longer view: Hazard’s arrival helped Chelsea win trophies, qualify regularly for the Champions League and stay attractive to top talent. That’s the sporting advantage Pochettino is challenging.

“The Rules Have to Mean Something”

Pochettino’s relationship with Chelsea is complicated. He spent one season at Stamford Bridge, never fully convincing the fanbase, and left after a sixth-place finish in 2023-24. It is not a period either side will cherish.

At Tottenham, it’s different. The Argentine remains adored for his five-year spell from 2014, which included that 2016-17 title push and a run to the Champions League final in 2018-19.

So when he says he feels he should have a Premier League title, plenty of Spurs fans are inclined to listen.

"Of course I do," said Chris Paouros, co-founder and co-chair of Proud Lilywhites and Women of The Lane, when asked if she agreed with Pochettino’s view.

"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 Tottenham will not be handed the title, but insists the principle matters.

The same frustration runs through the Tottenham Hotspur Supporters’ Trust.

"It would still be something that Spurs fans would celebrate," said secretary Tristan Foot of the idea of a retrospective title. "A victory over Chelsea, albeit 10 years after the event."

But his main concern lies elsewhere.

"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 Trophy Parade – But a Warning

All investigations into Chelsea’s secret payments are now concluded. There will be no stripped titles, no medals in the post, no open-top bus crawling down the High Road a decade late.

Pochettino will not get the Premier League crown he feels his Spurs side earned. Tottenham will keep 2016-17 as the great “what if” of the modern era.

But the question he has raised will not go away.

When the Manchester City saga finally reaches its end, will the clubs who feel they were running uphill against an uneven playing field be left with anything more than another hollow apology and a fine that barely dents the balance sheet?