There are a couple of league tables that feel pretty significant this morning.
The first is a Champions League table that has five Premier League teams camped inside the all-important top eight, and a non-zero chance that after the matchday-eight madness that number is actually six.
And then there’s the newly published Deloitte Football Money League that has every member of the Premier League’s Big Six inside its top 10, with only the continental behemoths of Real Madrid, Barcelona, Bayern Munich and Paris Saint-Germain ahead.
Perhaps more striking still is that three more Premier League sides – Aston Villa, Newcastle and West Ham – all make the top 20. And it only gets more absurd the further down the list you go; half the top 30 are Premier League teams. Brentford had higher revenues in 24/25 than any South American club.
It’s a reminder, along with the recent domestic struggles of your Tottenhams and Manchester Uniteds in an increasingly competitive division, of just how huge the Premier League’s baked-in advantage over the rest of Europe and therefore the world now is.
There is no other country that could even conceive of having six teams cruising through the Champions League league stage as the English clubs have this season. A quick look at the worst-performing team from the other big leagues – none of whom, of course, have as many as six entrants to begin with – is stark.
Villarreal sit second bottom with just a point to their name after seven games. Eintracht Frankfurt have fared little better and are also out of contention altogether before the final matchday of a league format specifically and deliberately designed to minimise jeopardy. Napoli currently sit outside the top 24.
And even above them, any or all of Marseille, Leverkusen, Monaco and Athletic Club could yet tumble and miss even the play-off safety net.
England’s worst-performing team is Manchester City, who even in the absolute worst-case scenario can now finish no lower than 18th.
And this at a time when five of the Big Six would consider themselves to be, in general, underperforming this season. Even not in peak condition, these six teams remain among the very best in the Champions League, their superiority baked in yet further by the added advantage of being kept apart from each other throughout the league phase. Five Champions League places already feels inevitable for next season.
Tottenham are the 14th best team in England but the fifth best in the entire continent. You’re tempted to say ‘make it make sense’ but it’s actually pretty depressingly easy to make it make sense. The bloated Champions League league stage is a lower overall standard than the Premier League.
The only real surprise in Spurs’ lofty standing is the fact three Premier League teams sit below them.
You could chuck plenty more Premier League teams into the Champions League and they would most likely also finish in the top 24 qualifying positions.
Aston Villa and Manchester United most obviously, but really anyone currently above Spurs in the table has proof of concept.
There are other factors of course. There’s little doubt that Spurs specifically are playing with far greater freedom with the pressure off to an extent in a Champions League where relatively little is expected of them and failure is legitimately hard to achieve; they are clearly less burdened and shackled by fear and tension on European nights at Tottenham Hotspur Stadium, where they haven’t lost any of their last 24 games, than on Premier League days.
The fact Spurs have won as many Champions League games as Premier League games on their own patch since the start of 2025 is both hilarious and ridiculous, but also revealing.
English clubs, in truth, underperformed in last season’s Champions League. Yet they still produced a semi-finalist, a quarter-finalist and a team that dominated the league stage only to find themselves unfortunate to come up against what was by the time of the first knockout round the best team in the competition.
And it still took members of the tiny handful of European powerhouses who can still vaguely compete with any of the Premier League big guns on an even keel to eliminate them: Real Madrid knocked out Man City, and PSG took care of Liverpool, Aston Villa and Arsenal – notably finding each of them far harder nuts to crack than finalists Inter.
And the three members of the Premier League’s Big Six who found themselves outside the Big Cup just casually dominated the lesser trophies, with Spurs beating Man United in the Europa League final and Chelsea winning the Conference League while yawning and absent-mindedly scratching their arse throughout.
But the Deloitte numbers also show why, even now as it feels like it’s disintegrating on the Premier League pitch, it is still correct to talk about the Big Six. Spurs’ revenues still dwarf those of Villa and Newcastle, never mind supposed European giants like Atletico Madrid or Juve or the Milan clubs.
The fact Villa’s wage bill is significantly higher than Tottenham’s – and terrifyingly close to Manchester United’s – is a sign of a problem approaching rapidly over the hill for the midlands club rather than evidence they have compellingly displaced silly Spurs.
And here too another reminder that while Villa’s frustration and anger at what they perceive as rules designed to protect that Big Six and force them to operate with one hand behind their back is understandable, their direction for that irritation is entirely misplaced.
Villa should not look at Spurs and think ‘unfair’. They should look at Spurs as the example to follow. Not on the pitch, obviously. Don’t do that, whatever you do. But off the pitch.
For all their myriad faults, their undeniable and unending banter-club status, the one thing Spurs have got impressively right over the last two decades is making that elite cabal a Big Six in the first place, and how they went about it. Say what you like about Spurs – and we do, frequently – but they did not bet the house on shortcutting their way in as Villa are currently attempting or follow Newcastle’s own dubious attempt at the Man City or Chelsea approach.
And that’s why even now, as Spurs reel around on the fringes of a genuine relegation fight and Villa have at this time thoroughly and conspicuously overtaken them on the pitch, those Deloitte numbers and Champions League table still tell a tale of how and why the idea of the Big Six persists and prevails.
