Pochettino’s Claim: Should Spurs Be 2016-17 Champions?
Mauricio Pochettino has never lifted a Premier League trophy. He now believes he should already have one.
The former Tottenham manager says 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 argued.
In 2016-17, that “second-best team” was his Tottenham: 86 points, seven behind Antonio Conte’s Chelsea, who finished on 93.
Chelsea’s undeclared payments covered a raft of major signings: Eden Hazard, Samuel Eto’o, Willian, Ramires, David Luiz, Andre Schurrle and Nemanja Matic. Four of them – Hazard, Willian, Luiz and Matic – were part of the title-winning squad that season.
Across that period, Chelsea racked up trophies: 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. The club has been fined by Uefa, the Premier League and the FA. No titles have changed hands.
Pochettino’s stance puts a sharper edge on a question many have been circling for months: were fines enough?
Hazard, Willian and the Points That Tilted a Title
Hazard has become the emblem of the case. Chelsea beat most of Europe to his signature from Lille in 2012 for £32m. 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 logic is simple. If Chelsea broke rules to secure players of Hazard’s calibre, what might Spurs have done – and who might they have signed – had they been willing to cross the same lines?
On the pitch in 2016-17, Hazard’s impact was enormous.
He started 36 league games, scored 16 goals and delivered five assists. Only Cesar Azpilicueta started more matches; only Diego Costa scored more league goals with 20. Hazard took Chelsea’s player of the year award, earned a place in the PFA Team of the Year and made the shortlist for PFA Player of the Year.
Drill down to specific games and the effect is even starker.
He scored the opener in a 2-1 win over West Ham in August. He produced a goal and an assist in a 2-0 victory against Southampton in November. In March, he struck first in another 2-1 win over West Ham. Then, in April, he scored both goals in a 2-0 victory over Manchester City.
You can reasonably say those contributions were worth around 10 points. Ten points in a title race that ended with a seven-point gap.
Hazard was in his fifth season at Stamford Bridge by then. This wasn’t a last-minute coup before 2016-17. But the investigation argues the advantage started at the point of acquisition – and flowed through the years in trophies, Champions League money and the ability to attract more elite players.
Willian: The One That Got Away From Spurs
If Hazard symbolises the scale of Chelsea’s ambition, Willian represents something more personal for Tottenham: the one that slipped through their fingers.
Chelsea signed Willian from Anzhi Makhachkala in 2013. The investigation found transfer-fee payments totalling £19.2m went to two unregistered entities in relation to his move and that of Samuel Eto’o.
Willian was not a guaranteed starter in 2016-17 – 19 of his 34 league appearances came from the bench – yet his output was decisive: eight goals and eight assists.
Again, specific moments tell the story.
He set up 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, then hit the opener in a 2-1 victory at Stoke in March. In May, he assisted the winner in a 4-3 thriller against Watford.
Those attacking returns directly underpinned eight points.
And Spurs remember the transfer saga. Chelsea swooped late to take Willian when he seemed destined for north London. Tottenham supporters can now point to the secret payments and say: that’s how you beat us to him.
Luiz, Matic and the Spine of a Champion
The investigation also highlighted £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 in their second spells at Chelsea. The 2011 deal with Benfica that saw Matic and Luiz swap clubs was examined, as was the web of associated payments. The later returns of both players to Stamford Bridge were not explicitly cited as breaches, but the pattern of advantage was clear.
On the pitch, they were central.
Matic played 35 league games, starting 30. He scored once and supplied seven assists. Only one of those contributions directly altered a result – but it was a big one: an 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 matches and scored once, opening the scoring in a 1-1 draw at Liverpool in January. His influence was more structural than spectacular: organising the back line, launching attacks, anchoring Conte’s back three.
Spurs’ Near-Perfection Meets Chelsea’s Relentless March
Tottenham were ferocious in the run-in. They won 12 of their final 13 league matches, finishing on a club-record 86 points. That total would have won the league in 2015-16, when Leicester took the title with 81.
Since 1999-2000, when Manchester United were champions with 79 points, 86 points would only have been enough twice – including the two most recent seasons.
Chelsea, though, matched Tottenham’s surge almost stride for stride, winning 11 of their last 13 to close on 93 points. They lost more games overall – five to Spurs’ four – but they won 30 matches to Tottenham’s 26. That was the real gap.
Spurs’ flaw came early. They went unbeaten in their first 11 league fixtures but drew six of them. Too many stalemates, not enough cutting edge. In a clean race, that’s usually where the inquest ends.
Pochettino sees something else: Hazard and Willian, both tied to secret payments, producing decisive attacking contributions in eight separate matches that yielded points. Layer that on top of the broader sporting advantage – trophies, Champions League revenue, the gravitational pull of a winning club – and his argument sharpens.
Fans’ Fury and the Question of Justice
This isn’t just a Tottenham story. Everton and Nottingham Forest fans have watched their clubs docked points for relatively small profit and sustainability breaches while Chelsea, after admitting to secret payments, absorbed fines and moved on.
The Manchester City case – 115 charges for alleged breaches of Premier League financial rules – still hangs in the air with no verdict in sight. The sense of double standards grows.
Among Spurs supporters, Pochettino’s stance finds a ready audience.
“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 his 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 the title will not be handed over, but insists the “rules have to mean something, whoever benefits.”
Tristan Foot, secretary of the Tottenham Hotspur Supporters’ Trust, believes Spurs fans would still embrace 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 his anger runs deeper than hypothetical parades.
“It means that to an extent crime does pay in football,” Foot said. “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.”
Pochettino’s Legacy, Chelsea’s Shadow, and What Comes Next
Pochettino’s own Chelsea chapter ended quietly. He lasted one season at Stamford Bridge, finishing sixth in 2023-24, never truly embraced by the supporters. Neither side will cherish the memories.
At Tottenham, it is different. He is still adored for that five-year spell from 2014: the Champions League final in 2018-19, the thrilling young side that pressed and passed their way to the brink of greatness, and that 2016-17 campaign – 86 points, unbeaten at home in White Hart Lane’s farewell season.
He believes that should have been enough for a title. The numbers, and now the investigations, give his claim more weight than simple nostalgia.
Yet with the Chelsea probes concluded, there will be no open-top bus for Pochettino or Spurs. No medals arriving in the post. Just a lingering sense that something fundamental in English football’s competitive balance was warped – and that the punishment never quite matched the scale of the advantage.
When the Manchester City saga finally ends, will the rest of the league feel any more convinced that the table truly tells the truth?
