Should Tottenham be retrospectively crowned Premier League champions for the 2016-17 season? That's the opinion of former manager Mauricio Pochettino, who led Spurs to a second-place finish - seven points behind Chelsea - that season. This is about Chelsea making £47m in secret payments, according to a Premier League investigation, to unregistered agents and third parties to seal transfers between 2011 and 2018.
The transfers included Eden Hazard, Samuel Eto'o, Willian, Ramires, David Luiz, Andre Schurrle and Nemanja Matic. Four of those - Hazard, Willian, Luiz and Matic - were at the club in 2016-17. During that period Chelsea won two Premier League titles (2014-15 and 2016-17), two FA Cups (2011-12 and 2017-18), the EFL Cup (2014-15) and the Europa League (2018–19).
Chelsea have been fined by Uefa, the Premier League and the Football Association, but Pochettino thinks that is not enough. "If they admitted they broke the rules, the Premier League title was for the second-best team," Pochettino said. Pochettino is one of the first people of significance to articulate what many feel - that Chelsea got off lightly with a fine.
Fans of Everton and Nottingham Forest have pointed out that their clubs faced points deductions for relatively small profit and sustainability breaches, while Chelsea sought to sign star players with secret payments. Meanwhile, there is no sign of a verdict in the case of Manchester City's 115 charges for alleged breaches of Premier League financial rules. Does Pochettino have a point?
And how much of an impact did those four players have on the title race? Hazard is seen as the poster boy for Chelsea's breaches. The Blues fought off most of Europe's top clubs to sign him from Lille for £32m in the summer of 2012.
Between May 2013 and August 2016, according to the investigation, seven payments totalling £5.6m were made to an unregistered agent "for the benefit of the club in connection with Hazard's transfer". Pochettino's argument is that Spurs could have beaten other clubs to the signing of players of similar ability had they also ignored the rules. What about Hazard's impact in the 2016-17 season?
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