This more competitive season with some unusual teams occupying the top seven is to be welcomed and the absolute dissolution of Manchester United and Spurs is delightful.

For the Premier League though, it’s very much a double-edged sword. They’re caught in a cleft stick. Teams without large global fanbases mean less money for less desirable advertising placements, lower total income and the worry that all those lovely wealthy despots will lose interest. They prefer the domination of the oligarchs and intolerant fascistic oppressors to anything else.

The economics suggest that it won’t be long before money reasserts its dominance. That means the richest succeed and this brief interregnum will be a distant memory. For this season to be a change from the status quo, for even the medium term, the likes of Bournemouth and Forest have to maintain this level of success for several seasons to more permanently transform their finances to compete with the behemoths.

I really hope they can. We badly need to see a future that doesn’t include an inevitable City steamroller to the top, with Liverpool in their wake and the nearly man’s trophyless touchline hysterics at the Emirates. It’s tedious for the neutral. Even those who are too young to remember it being different have now seen what it’s like. Much better when the team you think will win then doesn’t win, isn’t it? Wouldn’t it be great if it was always like this? This year Forest and Bournemouth, next year Palace and Brentford. Yes please.

While there will be blips, blips are not the same as variety being established as innate. Indeed, it’s not set up to be that way, not what the Premier League or UEFA want in order to maximise income. This presents them with a problem. The last thing they want is for us, the financial units on football’s spreadsheet, to see a more attractive way that means them coining less cash.

You’d think a proper, competitive, unpredictable league would be good for business, but I can tell you now that anything we write about a brilliant Bournemouth performance will get a fraction of the traffic talking about another Manchester United humiliation or another Arsenal capitulation. They don’t want it. It’s all about the money, from top to bottom and side to side. If you ever wonder why almost anything happens in top-flight football, ‘it’s the money’ is almost always the answer.

Ideally the Premier League and UEFA want the most followed, richest clubs to dominate but for their audience – which, let’s not forget, contains more neutrals for most matches – to be fed a sop to unpredictability with an outsider club making the top six, so it looks like change enough to mask the stasis.

Financially, these people hate football’s ornery nature but love the riches it provides. They crave a sealed league of big clubs and predictable large income. Sport? No thanks, too unpredictable. How can you invest in that?

Unpredictability does not satisfy their greed gland. But now, it’s not just old fellas like me who are nostalgic for the 70s when twice as many different clubs made the top six than in the last 10 years, youngsters have seen the brilliance of well-run, well-managed teams doing well, thanks to some wealthy clubs not being either. How will they feel when the old hegemony of wealth reasserts itself?

The Premier League, so long reliant on brainwash advertising and slow-motion packages with screaming commentators to fill the excitement hole, might find that people finally realise the emperor has no clothes and is exorbitantly charging you to see his bloated, over-indulged body.

Ruben Amorim has acknowledged that his Manchester United side are perhaps the worst the club have ever had in their illustrious history.

United sit 13th in the table and closer to the relegation zone than the European places after their 3-1 defeat at home to Brighton and Hove Albion.

That leaves Amorim with just three wins to his name in United’s 11 Premier League games since taking over from Erik ten Hag in November – half as many as they have had defeats.

“In 10 games in the Premier League we won two (sic), I know that. Imagine this for a fan of Manchester United, imagine this for me.

“You are getting a new coach who is losing more than the last coach – imagine that. We need to survive this moment. I know that.

“We are being maybe the worst team in the history of Manchester United. I know that you want headlines, but I’m saying that because we have to acknowledge that and to change that. So there you go, your headline.”

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Asked why United have been so crap (in not so many words), Amorim said: “It is hard to explain, we have to acknowledge the moment and not go around the problem.

“Everybody here is underperforming, no matter what the circumstances. It is unacceptable to lose so many games for any club in the Premier League, never mind Manchester United. It is a really hard moment but we have to continue.

“The opponents are better than us in many details. That we cannot be consistent. That I am not helping my players in the moment.

“It is a hard moment – we have to acknowledge we are in a very difficult situation. All the bad records, losing games at home, losing in the Premier League; we are really underperforming.”

United will take on Rangers at Old Trafford in the Europa League on Thursday night before returning to Premier League action with a trip to Fulham on Sunday evening.