Excluding the transitive dependency made it work and adjusting the module-info.java too!!!
compile("org.springframework.boot:spring-boot-starter:1.5.3.RELEASE") {
exclude group: 'commons-logging', module: 'commons-logging'
}
compile("org.springframework.boot:spring-boot-starter-web:1.5.3.RELEASE"){
exclude group: 'commons-logging', module: 'commons-logging'
}