Mauricio Pochettino was right about Chelsea with his little rant this week. Of course he was. When they won the Premier League ahead of his Tottenham side in 2017, it was a success built on cheating. Chelsea confessed.By Pochettino’s logic, they should have been stripped of that title. But we know that didn’t happen – when Chelsea self-reported secret payments exceeding £47million to unregistered agents and third parties, they received the equivalent of a slapped wrist. A tickle, actually.The Premier League and the FA settled on fines totalling around £20m earlier this year. That’s a fraction more than the club pocketed in compensation from Manchester City for a manager they had already sacked; as a penalty, it was softer and more misplaced than a bad Panenka.We know why that was – the authorities saluted Chelsea’s co-operation after they came forward with some troubling discoveries in old accounts. The FA commission gushed about their honesty in the 63 pages of their written explanation, which I’ve read.But there was no sporting sanction handed to the current regime for the sins of the father. By their reckoning, there was only so far they could go in penalising BlueCo for offences under Roman Abramovich, with the masses of rule breaches occurring between 2009 and 2022.So not a single point was docked, much less the three Premier League titles won in that period. Pochettino finds that strange because it is. And strange can be upgraded to outrageous when we revisit the signings made outside the rules – Eden Hazard, Samuel Eto’o, Willian, Ramires, David Luiz, Andre Schurrle and Nemanja Matic. Chelsea won the Premier League in 2017, a success built on cheating to which they subsequently confessed The club made signings beyond the rules including that of the Belgian midfielder Eden Hazard I wrote about this issue at length three years ago when Chelsea first came forward. The focus then, and in the past few days since Pochettino opened his spleen, has largely been on Hazard. In the context of that title-winning season, 2016-17, he scored 16 league goals and those played a decisive role in the seven-point gap to Spurs come May.In that campaign and so many others, the chicanery involved in swinging Hazard away from Manchester United in 2012 paid for itself many times over. A report in The Times last year specifically alleged the move to Old Trafford from Lille broke down because United wouldn’t pay a backhander to an agent, thus bypassing the books and the rules; Hazard instead went to Stamford Bridge for £32m and history tells us a £20m fine isn’t remotely equal to what he brought.But that’s Hazard. What about Willian? Just Willian.Why? Well, that breach of the regulations was more relevant to Tottenham – they tried to sign him in August 2013 and got awfully close.He was at their training ground for eight hours and even completed his medical. Then something happened – he got in a van and headed for Chelsea. Abramovich had got on the phone to the Anzhi Makhachkala owner, another oligarch named Suleyman Kerimov, and Willian was rerouted.That deal was one of the dodgy ones. And it was mentioned in the FA’s documentation earlier this summer, citing a figure at Chelsea whose name was redacted. This individual felt that losing Willian was ‘not good’ and that the player going to Tottenham would add ‘insult to injury’.Pochettino wasn’t at Spurs when that hijacking occurred but he was there in the 2016-17 season. And Willian, like Hazard, was exceptional for Antonio Conte that year. I’ve gone over a few of his notable contributions, meaning the sort that turned losses to draws or draws to wins – the kind you can measure. Willian, who was signed by Chelsea from under the noses of Tottenham, was superb in the 2016-17 season as the Blues won the title Antonio Conte celebrates winning the title as manager of Chelsea in May 2017We can start with Hull in the October of 2016. Willian scored the first in a 2-0 win, a screamer from the edge of the area, and two months later he was set loose in a sprint against Nicolas Otamendi at 1-1 with Manchester City. Willian, as usual, got there first. The finish was handy too. Chelsea won. At Sunderland, he turned a draw into a win with an assist, in the 4-2 victory against Stoke he got the goals for 2-1 and 3-2, and then he scored the first in the return fixture against Sunderland.The latter was a rout and none of this is an exact science. Maybe a replacement would have done the same.But those are the kind of equivocations that snare lawyers and commissions. The rest of us? We all saw Willian at his best – he turned games. It would have to be a damned good replacement. And by our calculations, that replacement would need to be worth 13 points. Again, the margin to Tottenham was seven. Again, no sporting sanction was found to be suitable.If Pochettino is furious, he has every right to be. Had he mentioned the FA Cup semi-final of that season, he would have even more fuel to rage on – Willian scored the first two in a 4-2 win and was named man of the match in Daily Mail Sport’s player ratings. The other two goals? Matic and Hazard, both on the list of iffy signings. A clean sweep and a dirty win.When Pochettino spoke this week, the following line was less dramatic than some: ‘Maybe with the same rules we could’ve signed some players that would have made the team better or scored more goals. It’s not me complaining, it’s the truth.’That makes you think of Willian. And Willian makes you think of other seasons, like 2015-16, when he scored an equaliser in the 86th minute against Newcastle in the September. In May they were relegated by two points. Pochettino was right to say it stinks. His error was to think that common sense might apply Chelsea players Pedro, David Luiz, Willian, Nathan Ake and Cezar Azpilicueta celebrate going 1-0 up against Tottenham in the FA Cup semi-final in 2017Correcting all of those little and large contributions after the fact would be perilously hard. But to rule that sporting sanctions are unnecessary? That seems like an affront to logic.Maybe the authorities just didn’t want to pull any threads out of the jumper. Maybe they just don’t like an asterisk on old tables. And maybe there is nothing to be gleaned from all of the above while we wait to see how the Premier League untangle the vastly larger case against Manchester City.But Pochettino was right to say it stinks. His error was to think that common sense might apply in his line of work.