The Premiership is the best league in the world.

A statement, which all too often trips off the tongue of the umpteen pundits and ex players who discuss the league on a daily basis.

At times the arrogance with which it is stated is alarming and many believe that statement is beyond reproach.

Can this still be the case when the eventual winners of “the best league in the world” have went out of Europe’s premier competition at the first possible opportunity?

Beyond that Manchester United went out of the Europa League to a team currently lying 11^th in La Liga and City to a poor Sporting Lisbon team sitting in 5^th position in a league which has only three teams of note.

Manchester United’s humbling defeat against Athletic Bilbao was a sign of the times. After their defeat to Barcelona in last year’s Champions League final Sir Alex Ferguson spent around £50m to get United closer to the Catalans. They now appear further away than ever.

It wasn’t long ago that England had three Champions League semi-finalists and the competition had an all English final.

At this point the Premiership was certainly the envy of Europe. While no doubt still the richest league in the world it is hard to argue that La Liga has not taken over as the best.

La Liga contains the two best teams in world football in Barcelona and Real Madrid.

However the ease at which Bilbao got past Man Utd shows Spain has a strength in depth that it didn’t have five years ago.

What is often levelled at La Liga is that only two teams can realistically win the league every year.

While that is the case only two teams have won the premiership since 2004 and only three have won it since 1995.

It may appear like there is more teams involved in the title race with Manchester City’s new found spending power and Tottenham’s rise under Harry Redknapp.

However that has come at the same time as Arsenal, Liverpool and Chelsea have gone backwards and in reality when March comes round every year there are only two possible winners of the league.

The fact that television money is fairly distributed in the Premiership means it will probably always have a claim to be the most competitive league in the world.

As another favourite pundit line goes “anyone can beat anyone”.

It would be foolish to confuse competitiveness with quality however as the days of assuming the Premiership is “the best league in the world” are long gone.