Hmm… I don’t buy that.
Leicester won the league the season after avoiding relegation. Forest looking likely to get top four in their 3rd season in the Prem, Bournemouth, Brighton, Brentford all historically sh*te teams & they’re pushing for top 6. Villa & Fulham were in the Championship not so long ago. It is totally possible if you get the recruitment and management right
I’d be surprised if Forest finished top 6, but take your point. The key word I suppose in my statement is “sustained” yes there are examples of teams competing in the top 6 or whatever for a period of time (3 or 4 years in some cases) but so far all of them have been picked apart and eventually get recruitment wrong and fall down the league. See Swansea, us, Leicester for recent examples.
Time will tell with the likes of the teams you’ve listed, but I doubt any of them make the top 6 and would’nt be surprised to see Bournemouth especially lose a number of players in the next transfer window/couple of seasons.
Someone mentioned it before but Utd have been **** now for a decade or more but players playing for any of those teams listed would immediately want to join them if they showed any interest.
The revenue of the big teams means they can continually spunk money up the wall until they get it right (see Utd again) and it will take a generation or more of them being **** for their fanbase to decrease enough for the revenue streams to drop even if a lot of their fanbase are fair weather type fans who may switch to whoever is doing well at the time.
City’s fanbase is still miniscule compared to Utd and they’ve been comfortably the better side for a decade, it takes ages for these switches to happen, and a smaller club sustaining themselves at the top of the table for the amount of time required is, imo, impossible in the current football climate