Premier League is still nice and broken to be fair, it's even getting stranger.
So we're being real, you can't crack the top four without money. Leicester is a null argument, they won a Premier League on a bad year for the big clubs, but that didn't suddenly raise their stature, look at them again now
mid table.
When there was a 'top four' you could sneak the odd team into fourth place every few seasons or so. That's not happening now there's a top six. Burnley could be that wildcard we have every few seasons. However, lets say Staveley gets her way and concludes the takeover of Newcastle and as people are anticipating and proceeds with the arab investment, leaving Newcastle alongside City and PSG in financial terms and shortly after changing the top six to the top seven.
How do mid table clubs ever stand a chance to compete with that when you'll have seven clubs all fighting for those four spots and the title. That means everyone else needs to wait for middle eastern money bags takeovers, at which point we've gone full circle and we're back to a top four.
We've seen an example of that already. United getting a spot via the Europa League, something Arsenal are needing to do to be fair.
The TV money was a sham. Sure it makes your club look a bit wealthier, you can spend it on training ground improvements and whatnot but it's absolutely worthless in the transfer market as inflation just matched it outright pretty much instantly. Your £10m bargain bin buys are now £25-30m.