Are Premier League clubs flat-track bullies in Europe?

 Two seasons, 21 knockout ties, 21 victories. That is the Premier League's dominance of the Europa League and the Conference League.

Premier League teams have lost two ties - but both to another English club.

Is this just English football enjoying a period of success?

Or does it suggest a trend whereby its financial power is now too much for European clubs outside the elite?

Football has always moved in cycles, whether that's England in the early 1980s, Italy in the 1990s or Spain in the 2010s.

This feels different, as though it is too easy for the Premier League teams. That the format is almost weighted in their favour, creating easier paths to the knockout rounds.

But when you look at the Champions League the reverse is almost true.

Are Premier League clubs now just flat-track bullies who can beat those with fewer resources but cannot transfer that into Champions League success?

Fifteen Premier League clubs in Deloitte Money League

As La Liga began to take control of European club football 15 years ago, it was lauded as shaping how football was played, its tactics and style.

But when Premier League clubs enjoy a period of success, it tends to be met with a certain snarkiness.

After all, with the huge riches available to Premier League clubs through the massive broadcasting deals, surely it should be way ahead of the rest?

The explosion of the international television rights over the past decade has taken Premier League onto another level.

The league earns more than £1.37bn a season, a figure the rival top five leagues could only dream of.

La Liga, Serie A, the Bundesliga and Ligue 1 are estimated to match that figure - but combined together. The Spanish league, at around £780m, takes up the lion's share.

While the TV cash is part of the story, it is not all of it. No Premier League club appears at the summit of the 2026 Deloitte Money League..

Real Madrid, Barcelona, Bayern Munich and Paris St-Germain sit in the top four places.

But outside of that, the top 30 is all about the Premier League - Liverpool, Manchester City, Arsenal, Manchester United and Tottenham Hotspur fill the rest of the top 10.

Fifteen of the 20 Premier League clubs appear, and it's been a similar story for several years.

Brighton are 23rd, Everton in 24th even before the revenues of the Hill Dickinson Stadium kick in, Bournemouth sit in 26th despite having a ground which holds just 11,000 fans, Wolves appear in 29th with Brentford in 30th.

Each season the gap to clubs in every other league grows that little bit wider. It gets harder for them to compete, and the inequality grows.

Can other European clubs be expected to compete?

The Conference League was introduced to give more teams the chance to play proper European football, rather than be eliminated in knockout rounds.

But Uefa had a problem. It needed a format which would also attract broadcast revenues, so it required teams from Europe's top five leagues.

Yet the collective financial power of the Premier League is too great. It dwarves the revenues of a team from the other top five leagues.

Take this season's finals.

Crystal Palace have revenues of £197m, almost four times that of Rayo Vallecano (£52m). It should be no surprise they won the final 1-0.

Football finance expert Kieran Maguire told BBC Sport that even Championship clubs Leeds, Sheffield United, Burnley and Luton generated more revenue than Rayo Vallecano in 2024-25.

"Palace won the Conference League with revenues that will far exceed that of any other club in the competition," Maguire said.

"When Chelsea won it in 2024-25, the cost of their squad was higher than that of the other 35 teams in the competition added together."

That English clubs have won three of the first five editions of the Conference League should therefore be no surprise. Nor that the top five leagues have supplied eight of the 10 finalists.

Financially, the Europa League was a complete mismatch too.

Aston Villa, with revenues of £392m, up against Bundesliga club Freiburg's £141m - again, just over a quarter of the Premier League club. Villa eased to a 3-0 victory.

"Freiburg's revenue was below that of every single Premier League club," Maguire said.

The Premier League will now look to Arsenal to complete the set, and become only the second league since Italy in 1989-90 to do a clean sweep of all three trophies.

But it has not been so easy in the Champions League.