No matter what Mikel Arteta might try to tell you, Liverpool has earned more than enough points to warrant the Premier League title this season. That is, after all, how the table works.
Arne Slot’s men have 15 more points than the team in second, and with four games left of the campaign, had already been confirmed as league champion. And yet Arteta wasn’t the only one who tried to explain the situation away.
Shouts of it being a “weak league” emerged, seemingly based on the fact that Southampton, Leicester City and Ipswich Town have been so poor. Across the rest of the English top flight, however, such a claim is ridiculous.
West Ham United is 17th, and it has Jarrod Bowen, Lucas Paqueta and Mohammed Kudus — players who would not be out of place in the Champions League. Wolves has struggled this season but still have three Brazilian internationals in its starting XI, including the excellent Matheus Cunha.
Manchester United and Tottenham have both been poor by their standards this season, but sitting just ahead of West Ham in the table, the pair have reached the Europa League final in Bilbao.
Hammering Athletic Bilbao and Bodo/Glimt respectively over two legs, what exactly does it say about the rest of Europe if those two sides are really that bad? The reality is that those above in the Premier League are actually quite good.
(Image: Andrew Powell/Liverpool FC via Getty Images)
The same can be said of Liverpool topping the new-look, expanded Champions League group phase, Arsenal reaching the semifinals, and Aston Villa making the quarters. Chelsea, meanwhile, is set to stroll to Conference League glory.
There is only one reason for the English clubs being successful, of course, and that is that it has such a financial advantage over the rest of the teams across the continent. But it cannot be true that the Premier League is so much better than every other league and it is weak.
In fact, the overall quality of the English game has never been stronger. Never before have so many elite players been spread out across the division, with every team — perhaps the bottom three aside — having the potential to cause an upset.
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“Everyone can have your opinion, and where we live it’s a positive thing you can share it with everyone,” Slot said on the matter recently. “As long as it comes from their own idea, that’s the nice thing.
“I can only tell you what I’ve experienced this season and can say it’s never been as exciting for a top-five finish. In my opinion, it’s a really difficult league; there’s no easy game. But that tells you something about us.
“We’re not the only team to find it hard to win a game by two or three goals. Maybe Liverpool and City and Arsenals aren’t as good, or maybe the other teams have got better.”
Liverpool has been remarkably consistent this season but that shouldn’t mask the level that it has come up against. Manchester United and Tottenham just proved it again.
