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The ceiling that the 3Bs (but also teams like Palace, Sunderland, Fulham) have, is that once a player has been coached well and is worth £80M, then his agent is going to ask the club to pay him like an £80M player would expect to be.

Those clubs can't afford to do that and therefore sell and re-invest.

I would argue that we do have the ability (assuming TFG back us) to pay those £80M players the going wage rate.

Granted, we couldn't 'compete' with City/Arsenal levels, but we can easily imagine our ceiling is higher than those 'smaller' clubs.

I also think 'the model' assumes that once you reach the CL, then you stay there - which granted is the tricky bit.

I suspect Bournemouth (if they get there) may well have a brilliant CL season - trips to the Bernabeu, San Siro, playing Barca at the Vitality etc, but they will be highly unlikely to finish next season, in the CL places again. That then precipitates a sell-off (if they haven't already sold their better players) and you fall back to earth - or worse.

In fairness, Newcastle, Tottenham (a few years back) and Villa nearly 'made it' - finished in a CL place in season one and repeated it in season 2. The first 2 fell away after a while - couldn't quite sustain it - and Villa may struggle next season as some PSR chickens come home to roost.

But I think it is plausible to imagine Everton (a club with a similar infrastructure to those 3 mentioned) working our way to a CL place and then managing to stay there. It takes some luck - and a very good manager and recruitment team - but it's by far from an impossible dream.