re: Is Liverpool still a "big" club?

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I wonder if the greater parity in the Premier League title race makes it tougher for these clubs to compete for UCL titles.

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Of course it does.

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There's definitely more parity in England, but parity can often lead to worse quality all around. (Waves at the NFL)

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I'd buy the parity argument if the teams played at a high level. The top teams generally don't. The tactics are worse in the league as a whole compared to the late noughties, and the only teams with real positional sense going forward and defensively are Tottenham and Chelsea. The relative parity of the league helped the league from 2005 to 2011 or so. There were 8 straight finals, not that long ago, where an English team featured, and the parity isn't that much greater, in a sense. I mean, you could argue that there is a great degree of difference from having 4 teams (meaning 20% of the league) to six teams (meaning 30% of the league) competing for the title, but the context of each of those seasons does away with the notion of parity, as some of those teams in the top echelon of the league (read Arsenal, with one of the other teams rotating in) were absolutely horrible.

I think the parity angle is an easy explanation, but I don't think it makes sense if you look at it closely, especially in the context of those seasons.

Amen

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There were 8 straight finals, not that long ago, where an English team featured

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A couple of seasons aside a lot of times the team in the Finals wasn't doing that great in the league.

So has the OP had his question answered? SCH is a United fan and has them in his Tier 1 along with explaining why. I just got back from a 2 week work trip to London and you may want to explain to that place that Liverpool are no longer a big club and on par with Newcastle United because they haven't gotten your memo yet. But I'm sure some American who thinks the game was invented 15 years ago knows best.

Nottingham Forest are a bigger club than Leicester.

Leicester is a piss-ant club that just happens to currently have an oligarch bankrolling them for a bit.

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I'd buy the parity argument if the teams played at a high level. The top teams generally don't. The tactics are worse in the league as a whole compared to the late noughties, and the only teams with real positional sense going forward and defensively are Tottenham and Chelsea.

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I agree that the tactics (along with careful roster construction) is the much bigger issue. Seems it should change with all the top managers coming in but if you hear their interviews they seem to adapt to EPL style and rosters more than vice versa.

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The relative parity of the league helped the league from 2005 to 2011 or so

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This is also a good point. If EPL teams were doing well in Europe we'd constantly hear the pundits wax on:

"They say, Gary, that metal sharpens metal. Well, the razor sharpness of the EPL is undeniably on display this afternoon in Turin."