Can you make a case for Chelsea being stripped of 2016-17 title?

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 - the player everyone wanted 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? It was considerable. The Belgium forward started 36 Premier League games, scored 16 goals and provided five assists. Only Cesar Azpilicueta started more matches, and only Diego Costa netted more goals (20). Hazard was Chelsea 's player of the year, was named in the Professional Footballers' Association (PFA) team of the year, and made the shortlist for PFA player of the year. Then there's the direct impact of his goals and assists in the results of four fixtures. Hazard scored the first goal in a 2-1 win over West Ham in August, then scored a goal and provided an assist in a 2-0 victory over Southampton in November. In March he scored the opener as Chelsea again beat the Hammers 2-1, and got both goals in a 2-0 win over Manchester City in April. You could argue that input was worth 10 points. There is no doubt that Hazard had a huge influence, but this was his fifth season at the club. It was not as if Chelsea signed him in the summer of 2016. Willian - hugely influential bit-part role Willian joined Chelsea from Anzhi Makhachkala in 2013, with the investigation finding that transfer fee payments totalling £19.2m were made to two unregistered entities in connection with his move and that of Samuel Eto'o. Willian was not a regular starter in 2016-17, with 19 of his 34 appearances coming from the bench. But he still had a huge influence, scoring eight goals and providing eight assists. The Brazilian's attacking returns were crucial in four matches. He had an assist in a 1-0 win at Sunderland in December. He scored two goals in a 4-2 victory over Stoke in December, and the first goal as Chelsea beat Stoke 2-1 in March. He provided an assist for the winning goal in a 4-3 victory over Watford in May. His contributions helped Chelsea take eight points from those fixtures. Crucially, Chelsea nipped in at the last minute to sign Willian from under the noses of Spurs, who might argue that was only because of the secret payments. Matic and Luiz - players who left and came back The investigation found that Chelsea made payments totalling £5.1m between 2012 and 2015 "to provide talent identification services in certain European countries". This was identified as payments in relation to the registrations of Ramires, Luiz, Schurrle and Matic.