WITH the benefit of hindsight, it all looks so obvious now. Sitting in Leicester City’s King Power Stadium last May, watching the Foxes demolish Newcastle United as part of their successful survival bid, I should have sensed I was glimpsing a side on the verge of something special.

Instead, my attention was focused on the team at the other end of the field, whose implosion was so spectacular it looked like heralding their own relegation. It was the day of Newcastle finishing with nine men, of John Carver accusing Mike Williamson of deliberately getting himself sent off, of a club spiralling out of control.

Yes, Leicester were hugely impressive – a quick look through the archives confirms I made Riyad Mahrez the man-of-the-match – but their excellence was all too easily overlooked in a rush to highlight Newcastle’s ineptitude. We didn’t realise it then, but perhaps the Magpies didn’t fare so badly after all.

Even by the start of this season, Leicester’s remarkable rise was not on the radar. Our sports editor, Nick Loughlin, won’t thank me for pointing this out, but in our pre-season Kick Off supplement, he had Leicester down as one of the three clubs to be relegated. And he made Claudio Ranieri his ‘Flop of the Season’.

To be fair to Nick, he wasn’t the only one making such claims. Plenty of respected observers were describing Ranieri’s appointment as a disaster. Having scrambled to safety last season, Leicester might not be so lucky this time around.

Six months on, and I think we can pretty much conclude that they won’t be going down. Five points clear of their rivals, with 13 matches to play, the side that started the season as 5,000-1 outsiders to lift the league title are now 2-1 favourites. If they get anything at all from Sunday’s game at Arsenal, their odds will contract even further.

It is a quite incredible story, but what does it tell us about the state of the Premier League and the way in which the English game in changing?

Clearly, there are some peculiarities to Leicester’s tale that do not necessarily translate into an all-encompassing bigger picture. The quality of their recruitment is almost impossible to replicate – it’s not every day you stumble across a Mahrez and a Jamie Vardy for a combined total of £1.4m – their tactical approach is designed to fit a very specific group of players and the fact they are not involved in other competitions, and therefore able to retain a settled side, is a major advantage.

Even so, their unexpected emergence as title favourites tells us a couple of things about the wider Premier League picture. It confirms a wider trend that has seen the so-called ‘middle ranking’ tier of clubs move much closer to the established big boys, a development that has occurred for two distinct reasons.

It is not just Leicester that have made major strides forward this season. Tottenham are currently sitting in second position, and if the Foxes don’t make it over the line to claim the title, there’s every chance Spurs will. West Ham are in the top six and fighting for a European place, Southampton now look firmly established as a top-ten side and for all their recent wobbles, Everton can boast one of the strongest squads in the country.

Why? The increased financial muscle provided by the forthcoming new television deal has to be a major factor. A recent study by Deloitte revealed that 17 Premier League clubs are among the 30 richest in the world. As a result, it’s not just the top three or four that can compete for some of the most talented players on the market.

Every team in the Premier League boasts considerable clout, which helps explain why Stoke City can plunder the likes of Xherdan Shaqiri and Bojan Krkic, West Ham can splash out more than £10m to sign the supremely-talented Dimitri Payet and even Newcastle can throw more than £14m at former Dutch Player of the Year Georginio Wijnaldum.

Players that would once have been the preserve of the Champions League elite are now scattered much more freely across the Premier League.

Increased financial security also means clubs can repel interest in their key players, when in the past they might have felt compelled to sell. Hence, Everton hold on to John Stones despite a succession of bids from Chelsea and West Brom retain Saido Berahino even though they were offered more than £20m to sell him in successive transfer windows.

Leicester might well receive multi-million pound offers for Mahrez or Vardy this summer, but with a guaranteed £100m of television income alone next season, why on earth would they let them go?

The standard outside the established Premier League elite has improved. At the same time, the performance levels of most of the big four or five clubs has fallen off a cliff.

It is not to denigrate Leicester’s achievements to state that they would not be winning a league title if they were up against a Barcelona or a Bayern Munich, or even a Paris St Germain or a Juventus.

At least in part, Leicester’s success this season has been due to the failings of others. Manchester City have been wretched, with their defensive deficiencies repeatedly laid bare and the lack of authority exerted by outgoing boss Manuel Pellegrini increasingly apparent. Manchester United have been no better, with Louis van Gaal clearly not the right fit for Old Trafford, Liverpool are back in one of their seemingly endless spells of reinvention and Arsenal are their usual selves, with Arsene Wenger’s misguided transfer policy continuing to hold them back. The less said about Chelsea the better.

All five clubs have their own distinct issues, but a common factor pertaining to them all is a failure to attract the very best world talent. For all the talk of the Premier League being the ‘best league in the world’, the brutal reality is that the very top echelon of players – the top five or six who dominate the World Player of the Year awards – do not want to play in England.

When was the last time an English club signed a player, at the peak of their talents, who the rest of the world wanted? It hasn’t happened for a decade or so.

Even Manchester City, with all of their riches, cannot compete with Barcelona, Real Madrid and Bayern Munich when it comes to attracting the very best. So they spend extravagantly on the next tier of player, and end up wasting more than £60m on Eliaquim Mangala and Nicolas Otamendi.

The leading sides have come back to the pack, and the chasing pack has improved. Hence, Leicester go into this weekend’s matches with the Premier League title theirs to lose.