One thing I find weird is that most people agree the bottom half of the table is better, relative, than it used to be. They also believe most of the top 4 are shells of their former selves.
But yet United could easily finish this season with 70 points and finish 5 points back of 5th place. 75 points might not make the top 6 this year.
The last ~3 years the top 6 have really separated themselves from the rest of the league.
I think that since Chelsea need to visit Old Trafford, 73 points would be the maximum available total for the team finishing 6th. Which is still very impressive, obviously.
Mind in 2014-15, that is to say one TV deal back, (which as you know translates to all an awful lot of £), Everton finished fifth with a 72-point campaign, and Spurs sixth on 69.
Expectations play a factor in perceptions here - as rightly they should. Martinez's Everton, whose net spend that season was less than zero, were justly praised for their finish. But there was a sense of anticlimax over Spurs, as they were felt to have used the Bale fee erratically. To say nothing of their ending the season under Tim Sherwood's throwback charge.
The amount of money washing around both within the league itself and in comparison to other leagues makes a difference too. Everton's highest fee that season was £13 million. Spurs spent £17 million on Paulinho, £26 million on Soldado and £30 million on Lamela.
Contrast those sums with the money spent by Arsenal (whose strikeforce alone cost £100 million), Chelsea and the Fallen Empire. It would be a perverse triumph if such fees
weren't leading to a big gap developing between the top clubs and such as Watford - a club for whom 32 year old Crystal Palace discard Adrian Mariappa and 30 year old Craig Cathcart have started 49 games at the heart of the defence.
Indeed, it's in defence where you see an awful lot of people still able to play regularly in the Premier League whose longevity surprises. Ex Football League stalwart Wes Morgan (who played
every single minute of Leicester's title-winning season) has started the majority of their games again in his age 34-35 season. Even five years ago, such a prediction would have raised eyebrows.
The game has indeed changed, and perhaps the tendency towards screening defences with two central midfielders, and the emphasis on coaching to prevent spaces appearing between the lines, means more than ever it's imperative a defender reads the game - because if they don't anyone who can run past them quickly without losing control of the ball is away. So more than ever, coaches will trust experienced journeymen with limited passing skills to shore up their back line. But that limits a team's attacking potential - as does the need to have defensively responsible central midfielders. And without a striker who holds the ball up you won't enjoy any relief from defending. And without wide players possessed of pace your counter attacks will wither on the vine. All of which means a stereotyped, risk-averse style of play can become entrenched. That in itself limits a team's potential. Unless for a pittance you somehow land the very best player in the league at arguably the most important single position in a team, as happened when Kante pitched up at Leicester.
Plenty teams outside the top six were pretty stereotyped and risk-averse in 2007-8. Again, the difference is how many £10 million + signings such teams now contain.
Leicester's title win notwithstanding, the top six has been entrenched ever since those lovely, beautiful, kind benefactors of humanity who are a model for all us dirty, lesser beings walked through the door at Manchester City. And we return to the cheerful fact that the league's financial structure is set up so that every single season the top clubs edge further away from the rest.
Now consider the clubs whose support bases put them notionally in the best position to challenge the biggest clubs on a semi-consistent basis.
For the period 2009-2014, Everton's net spend was below nothing. In 2014-15, £30 million of the £36 million they spent was to make permanent two loan signings from the previous season. By the time the purse strings were genuinely opened in 2015, they were lagging well behind - and their ground capacity is smaller than all of the big six, so they can't even negate the widening TV cash gap a little through gate receipts.
Randy Lerner decided Villa should forget about challenging the big guns in 2010, and sent them into a decline from which they only now show the merest signs of recovering.
West Ham's only period of stability during the last decade came at the cost of crashing their heads against the glass ceiling imposed by Sam Allardyce demanding they never play football. Any hint of success the club enjoys occurs in spite of the owners, who are shabby fools.
When it was in the Premier League, sunderland's utter lack of pride was underscored by a total want of coherence in the club's running.
Newcastle United's owner actively demands the club avoid qualifying for the Europa League or having cup run. Predictably, only once did they by accident trouble the top six.
Leeds United hasn't even managed to negotiate the Championship.
Meanwhile, there are fewer and fewer continental European clubs with the financial muscle to go head-to-head against the English. In theory, that should mean that with each new TV deal widening the economic gap, competing on multiple fronts should tax EPL clubs ever less.
Wolves' relative success this season illustrates that if a club emerges from the Championship with money
and a purposefully-directed plan that goes beyond '17th is a triumph', then the reputed gap between the second tier and the top flight is nowhere near as great as it's cracked up to be. (Yes Fulham came up and were are awful, but review how many of their promotion team were loanees - they had to cobble together pretty much a new team over one summer, a job of which they made a botch. Cardiff are managed by Neil Warnock, and therefore cannot be judged as though they have anything to do with modern top flight English football. And as for Huddersfield, you need only recall how they practically stumbled into promotion by default at the end of 2016-17 to understand they were never going to last long, particularly once, rather than accept their term had come to its natural course, they pointlessly fired Wagner).
What does for non top-six clubs is sustainability. Kante
was Leicester's system, and his initial replacement, Mendy, simpy wasn't EPL ready. Ndidi has fared rather better without reaching Kante's heights, but after he'd been at Leicester six months Drinkwater left, so yet another midfield partnership needed to be forged. Again, the designated replacement, Iborra, didn't work out.
