There’s no getting away from the fact that Tottenham and Manchester City are finally ready to raid the top six and leave Everton and Aston Villa to battle it out behind them.

Spurs are the big worry. They’ve won their first three games and are already nine points up on Everton. And they haven’t even used Roman Pavlyuchenko and Peter Crouch to any great extent.

It shows they have quality and depth in their squad, while Everton’s is threadbare. You only have to look a their bench at Burnley in Sunday to realise the massive difference between the squads.

The same is, of course, true of Manchester City. It’s inconceivable that they won’t be up there challenging and you can already see in their 100% start to the season that they have that extra match-winning quality that only money can buy.

There’s not much Everton can do to stop other teams getting stronger but it already shows the massive difference in the landscape of the Premier League compared to the previous two seasons.

I don’t anticipate Everton struggling as much as they did at Turf Moor, when they looked a bit devoid of ideas – the return of Mikel Arteta can’t come soon enough.

But any improvement they make will still only leave me with the impression that finishing seventh could be the best they can hope for.

Mark Lawrenson was talking to NICK SMITH