Pochettino’s Claim: Should Spurs Be Champions of 2016-17?
Mauricio Pochettino has never lifted the Premier League. He now believes he already should have.
The former Tottenham manager says Spurs ought to be retrospectively crowned champions for the 2016-17 season, arguing that Chelsea’s admitted rule breaches mean the title should pass to the “second-best team”.
That “second-best” side finished seven points behind Antonio Conte’s Chelsea, 93 to 86. On paper, it was clear. On the pitch, it was closer. Off the pitch, the picture has darkened.
At the heart of the argument: £47m in secret payments. The Premier League investigation found Chelsea had made undeclared payments to unregistered agents and third parties between 2011 and 2018 to help secure a series of major transfers.
- Eden Hazard
- Samuel Eto’o
- Willian
- Ramires
- David Luiz
- Andre Schurrle
- Nemanja Matic
Four of them – Hazard, Willian, Luiz and Matic – were at Stamford Bridge in 2016-17, the season Spurs chased Chelsea all the way to the line.
Across that period, Chelsea collected trophies at a rate that defined an era: Premier League titles in 2014-15 and 2016-17, FA Cups in 2011-12 and 2017-18, the EFL Cup in 2014-15, the Europa League in 2018-19. The club have since been fined by Uefa, the Premier League and the Football Association. No titles have been stripped. No retrospective sporting punishment has followed.
Pochettino thinks that is nowhere near enough.
“If they admitted they broke the rules, the Premier League title was for the second-best team,” he said.
He is one of the first heavyweight figures to say publicly what many have been muttering: Chelsea escaped with a financial slap on the wrist, while others have been hammered on the pitch.
Everton and Nottingham Forest fans do not need reminding. Their clubs have taken points deductions for relatively modest profit and sustainability breaches. Chelsea, by contrast, sought to sign elite players using secret payments and kept their trophies.
And looming over everything is Manchester City’s unresolved case: 115 charges for alleged breaches of Premier League financial rules, still without a verdict.
So does Pochettino really have a case? And how much did those four Chelsea players shape that 2016-17 title race?
Hazard: The Face of the Storm
If there is a poster boy for the scandal, it is Eden Hazard.
Chelsea beat almost every major European club to sign him from Lille for £32m in 2012. Between May 2013 and August 2016, investigators found seven payments totalling £5.6m made to an unregistered agent “for the benefit of the club in connection with Hazard’s transfer”.
This is the crux of Pochettino’s complaint. Spurs, he argues, could never compete for a player of Hazard’s calibre if they stuck to the rules while rivals did not.
On the pitch in 2016-17, Hazard’s impact was enormous.
- He started 36 Premier League games, scored 16 goals and registered five assists.
- Only Cesar Azpilicueta started more league matches.
- Only Diego Costa scored more league 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.
Strip away the numbers and look at the moments that mattered.
- 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 struck first as Chelsea beat West Ham 2-1 again in March.
- Then came both goals in a 2-0 win over Manchester City in April.
You can make a strong case those contributions alone were worth 10 points. In a tight title race, that is not a footnote. It is a headline.
Yes, this was Hazard’s fifth season at Chelsea. He was not a new arrival in 2016. But the investigation makes clear that his presence in that title-winning side was rooted in a transfer whose financial architecture broke the rules.
Willian: The One That Got Away From Spurs
If Hazard symbolises Chelsea’s advantage, Willian embodies Tottenham’s frustration.
Chelsea signed him 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.
Willian was not a nailed-on starter in 2016-17 – 19 of his 34 league appearances came from the bench – but he still delivered eight goals and eight assists. That is a huge return for a rotational player.
Again, the decisive moments stack up.
- He set up the winner in a 1-0 victory at Sunderland in December.
- He scored twice in a 4-2 win over Stoke that same month.
- He scored the opener in a 2-1 win at Stoke in March.
- He provided the assist for the decisive goal in a 4-3 thriller against Watford in May.
Those attacking contributions helped Chelsea take eight points. Eight points in a title race they won by seven.
The sting for Spurs is personal. Chelsea swooped for Willian at the last moment, hijacking a move that had seemed destined for north London. Tottenham supporters have long joked about the “he saw the light” saga. Pochettino and others now argue there was more than just persuasion involved – that secret payments helped tilt that battle.
Luiz and Matic: The Spine Under Scrutiny
The investigation also uncovered £5.1m in payments between 2012 and 2015 “to provide talent identification services in certain European countries”. These were linked to the registrations of Ramires, Luiz, Schurrle and Matic.
By the 2016-17 season, Luiz and Matic were in their second spells at Stamford Bridge. The 2011 deal with Benfica, in which Matic and Luiz effectively swapped clubs, came under scrutiny. Matic returned in 2014, Luiz came back from Paris St-Germain in 2016.
The specific deals that took them back to Chelsea were not directly cited in the findings, but the association is clear enough to raise questions.
On the pitch, both were central to Conte’s system.
- Matic played 35 league games, starting 30. He scored once and laid on seven goals. Only one of those contributions directly changed a result – the assist for Chelsea’s first goal in a 2-1 win over Tottenham in November.
- Luiz, named in the PFA team of the season, started 33 league matches and scored once, the opener in a 1-1 draw at Liverpool in January. He anchored the back three that gave Chelsea the platform to surge away.
They were not the headline-grabbers. But they were the structure that allowed Hazard, Costa and others to flourish.
Spurs’ Relentless Charge – And Where It Fell Short
Strip away the off-field noise and 2016-17 remains one of the finest seasons in Tottenham’s modern history.
Pochettino’s side were relentless down the stretch, winning 12 of their final 13 league games to finish on a club-record 86 points. 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 would have been enough. In 2015-16, Leicester won the title with 81 points. Since 1999-2000, when Manchester United were champions with 79, a haul of 86 would only have delivered the title twice, including the two most recent campaigns.
Spurs’ problem came early. Their first 11 games were unbeaten, but only five were wins. Too many draws, too much ground given away before the run-in.
Chelsea actually lost more matches – five to Spurs’ four – but they racked up 30 wins to Tottenham’s 26. Conte’s side matched Tottenham’s late surge almost stride for stride, winning 11 of their final 13.
Pochettino would argue that the difference lay in the extra edge provided by Hazard and Willian. Between them, they produced attacking contributions in eight matches that led directly to points. In a league decided by fine margins, that edge is exactly what financial rules are supposed to regulate.
And then there is the broader sporting advantage: sign Hazard, win trophies, qualify for the Champions League, attract more top players, and keep the cycle spinning. Once you jump ahead, you tend to stay there.
The Emotional Ledger in North London
Pochettino’s stance lands differently in west and north London.
At Chelsea, his solitary season in charge in 2023-24 ended with a sixth-place finish and a fanbase that never fully warmed to him. Neither he nor the club will look back on that year with much affection.
At Tottenham, it is the opposite. His five-year spell from 2014 still carries a glow. He delivered that 2016-17 title challenge, a Champions League final in 2018-19, and that 86-point club record. He is still adored.
So how do Spurs fans feel about his claim?
“Of course I do,” said Chris Paouros, co-founder and co-chair of Proud Lilywhites and Women of The Lane. “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 is realistic. She knows Spurs will not be handed a title a decade later. The point, for her, is that “the rules have to mean something, whoever benefits”.
Others in the fanbase go further.
“It would still be something that Spurs fans would celebrate,” said Tristan Foot, secretary of the Tottenham Hotspur Supporters’ Trust. “A victory over Chelsea, albeit 10 years after the event.”
But beneath the imagined parade, there is anger.
“It means that to an extent crime does pay in football,” Foot added. “And that’s the serious underlying part of all 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.”
What Now for Sporting Justice?
The investigations into Chelsea’s historic payments are over. Fines have been issued. No titles have changed hands. No retrospective medals have been posted to north London.
Pochettino will not get his Premier League on paper. Spurs will not suddenly see 2016-17 rewritten in the record books.
But the question he has forced back into the spotlight lingers over the entire competition.
If clubs break financial rules to build title-winning squads and the punishment is purely financial, what does that say to everyone else? And when the long-running Manchester City case finally reaches its conclusion, will the rest of the league feel that justice has truly been done – or that, once again, the table only told half the story?
