The alternative view is that we&#x27;re witnessing a bit of a changing of the guard here.<p>Perhaps one of the biggest moments of the season was Chelsea&#x27;s pursuit of John Stones from Everton coming to nothing. In another year, he&#x27;d have gone, but this year Everton could afford to hang onto their asset.<p>There&#x27;s now more scope for teams like Leicester to assemble squads of above-average players and hold onto them. They haven&#x27;t fallen into the trap of teams like Villa, who at one time have had really top players, only to lose them and have to replace them. Or Spurs in the past with losing players like Bale. Or Southampton, who I think had to basically rebuild an entire side three times?<p>There&#x27;s no longer a huge gap between the top four and the rest, and that gap is no longer reinforced every year by the same teams getting money for being in the Champions League.<p>As such those sides weaknesses are now being more exposed. Man U could well be in long term decline post-Ferguson, Chelsea are an ageing side, Arsenal have long term structural weaknesses in their side which they appear unwilling or unable to address, and Man City in the Premier League often seem to be always a little less than the sum of their parts.<p>We might look back and see the first 20 years of the Premier League as being an anomaly where only a few sides were capable of winning the league.