nothing to do with distribution of wealth. Simply a combination of bad management in most clubs, and a greed to take the money out for themselves. In reality players who are ambitious and of a high enough quality to make this league better don't come here unless they can get CL football. The only way non-top level PL teams (and even top PL teams) can get top players is by vastly overpaying for them. Which player who values their career will choose Stoke over Valencia, Atleti, Roma, Monaco? They wouldn't. So they can have all the money in the world but if they're fighting for 12th nobody top is going to want to go there, only the money-grabbers.
Then it comes back to the poor management. Most of the academies have served up nothing, or complete dross. Who in Stoke's team has come through and looks like a potential England player, or someone who Dortmund, Napoli or Lyon would want to buy if they could afford them? None. Same for West Brom and countless other teams. They produce clogging athletes like Tom Davies and Calvert-Lewin who are a million miles away of the standard required, which is Foden levels. Then their scouting isn't up to scratch because they overpay for names rather than pro-actively signing players 1/2 years before the biggest clubs want to take a chance on them. Only really Leicester who snapped up Kante have achieved that, but even then look at the calibre of kids that Monaco could source and you can see the gulf.
Now through this mis-management in the past few years they've created a 14 team relegation league, where the stakes are too high for them to implement a long-term vision. Southampton, Everton and West Ham had their own little niche forming to seal off the top 10, yet the former has just failed to match its strong vision of a few years ago with the required investment, and the latter 2 have had no vision and splurged a fortune on names who they can't fit into a competent side and are now far worse off than when they didn't spend money.
