PREMIER LEAGUE: England should enjoy its European mastery: if history has taught us anything, it won't last

IT WAS the answer to a question that had no need to be asked. “It’s been obvious for a while now,” Alex Ferguson growled, when it was put to him that last week’s Champions League round of 16 proved the Premier League really was the toast of Europe.

Nobody argued – nobody ever does with Ferguson, not even when he claims Manchester United have just murdered Liverpool 1-4.

Then again, on this occasion, there appeared no need.

The facts speak for themselves: four teams through to the last eight of club football’s showcase tournament for the second year running; the challenge from the once-mighty Serie A snuffed out at a stroke; Real Madrid’s royal white jerseys turned into flags of surrender by a rampant Liverpool.

All that was missing was a bloke on a soapbox telling us we’d never had it so good.

The point, of course, is we have, and not so long ago. England’s dominance now is nothing compared to the halcyon days between 1977 and 1984, when the European Cup – when it really was a Champions League, rather than a rag-bag of runners-up and also-rans – remained on English soil seven years running and the old First Division delivered three Uefa Cups.

What’s more, the vast array of winners – from metropolitan powerhouses Liverpool and Tottenham, to provincial scrappers Nottingham Forest and Ipswich – betrayed a strength in depth that is the stuff of dreams for the modern Premier League.

Those really were the days when, as Blackadder’s General Melchett would have it: “The sun never set on the British without asking permission first.”

Decades of omnipotence were prophesied from the pulpits of Liverpool, Manchester and London, only for those delusions to be dispelled one dreadful day in Brussels.

The Heysel tragedy was the trigger for English football’s banishment to the wilderness, but it would have happened naturally – the emergence of Arrigo Sacchi’s great Milan side would have seen to that.

Besides, that is the cyclical way of sport: power is always being rotated from country to country, the only question is how long they get to enjoy it before the music starts again.

The Premier League might like to bear all this in mind after its elite sides once again turned the Champions League quarter-finals into their own private fiefdom.

Absolute power is always nothing more than an elaborate confidence trick and their fall from grace could be coming quicker than they imagine.

It might have happened already. With the exception of Liverpool, all the English sides diced with death in their second-round ties: Arsenal needed penalties to see off Roma (Italy’s sixth-best side) and Chelsea could only afford to relax for 120 seconds at Juventus, after they had plundered a second away goal.

Even Manchester United, embarrassingly superior to Internazionale at San Siro, might have been confronting a chastening early exit at Old Trafford had Zlatan Ibrahimovic remembered that, to justify an inflated reputation, it is necessary to score a goal or two on the big occasion.

These, however, are the minor details. It is the bigger picture which should concern those who claim to have English football’s long-term future at heart, for beneath the headline-hogging elite, all is far from well.

Six clubs – Everton, Newcastle, West Bromwich, Portsmouth. West Ham and Fulham – are actively looking for new investors, their current owners ground down by years of throwing good money after bad, while several more would doubtless welcome offers.

It appears only a matter of time before a major English club sinks beneath the choppy financial waters and West Ham spent most of last week gasping for air in the Icelandic courts.

The club’s parent company, Hansa, have been granted a three-month reprieve in its battle to avoid bankruptcy, but the east Londoners – a proud club, with a worthy heritage – are in a sorry state.

It comes to something when their power-brokers have the gall to celebrate striking a €16.3 million compensation settlement with Sheffield United for their slippery role in the Carlos Tevez affair.

That is not the end of the Premier League’s concerns. Rumours from the Far East suggest Richard Scudamore, the organisation’s chief executive, may have priced his product out of the market during negotiations over TV rights packages, with China and Thailand now said to be looking at better value deals with La Liga and Serie A.

There is also the gathering storm of Fifa’s plan to adopt stricter rules on the number of foreign players, a proposal which shows no sign of going away and which would hit England harder than any of their continental rivals.

For now, these are tomorrow’s problems, trifling concerns when set against the pleasure of lording it over Europe’s finest today.

But England should make the most of its mastery: if history has taught us anything, it won’t last.