And yet in the last decade since the 15/16 season when Leicester won, City have been league champions 6 times, including a record 4 consecutive PL title wins between the 20/21 and 23/24, as well as a record points total of 100 for the 17/18 season.
And since the inception of the league, Blackburn Rovers and Leicester are the only teams outside of Arsenal, Chelsea, Liverpool and the two Manchester clubs to have won the title. Hardly competitive - just compare it to the current Championship or even the old First Division to see the diversity there used to be in league winners.
And when you consider where Blackburn and Leicester have been/are now, both having spent huge sums of money on the gamble that they would achieve success and that that success could be sustained and/or repeated, it’s not a huge incentive for the rest of the clubs to take that same risk in pursuit of winning the league.
The PL absolutely isn’t the only league with little competition for the top places as you’ve noted, but that doesn’t make it the best in terms of quality when you consider the majority of the teams playing in it. In my view, 2/3rds of the teams have mostly bang average players, a couple who are good athletes but aren’t the best technical footballers, and at most one or two skilled players who are capable of single-handedly changing a game. Compared to the average skill levels of players in La Liga or Serie A, I think there’s a big difference.
Using Everton as an example, I’d say there’s only really Grealish and Ndiaye that have the ball control, dribbling skills, the vision and footballing nous to produce an individual match winning performance. And yet, both can still be guilty of not releasing the ball quickly enough, of not putting in earlier passes into the box or not just getting the ball out from under their feet and having a shot from the edge of the area when they’re in space.
As for the rest of the squad, other than Pickford who is fantastic and has been key to our survival over recent seasons (but is still guilty of failing to properly command his box and for punching balls away too often that he should be catching) and Branthwaite who shows all the attributes to become a top left footed centre back (but has sadly been out with a few injuries for most of the season which hopefully isn’t a sign of things to come), the rest of the squad range from good, to solid, to average, to largely overrated/shite (I’m looking at you Dwight McNeil!)
Are you honestly telling me that if you were to look at the first team/main squads of the other PL teams, you wouldn’t reach similar conclusions about the general quality levels of the players?
For every Wayne Rooney, James Rodríguez or Romelu Lukaku, there’s been a dozen Alex Iwobi’s, Demarai Gray’s or Oumar Niasse’s stealing a living as premier league footballers.