It looks better for us if you only look at the teams still in it yeah :p but Everton got knocked out last round and look at their season so far, probably their worst in years? the 10 extra games they had to play in the Europa surely didn't help that at all.
I don't think you can place the blame on Everton's current league form solely on their participation in the Europa League, and besides, they're exactly like the other teams I mentioned. Everton's squad isn't deep enough to compete in 4 tournaments in one season.
All of those teams are also in much easier leagues, the prem is far more demanding vs every single game as we've seen multiple times this season and last season.
What are you basing this statement on? There's no way to make a statement like that. It's just a general bs statement that r/soccer tends to wave around, without any way to back it up. Sure, the RPL and the Ukranian league are below the EPL by quite a margin, but La Liga and Bundesliga? No way. I think Liverpool would struggle to even qualify for Europa this season if we were playing in La Liga. Here's the top 8 in La liga as of this moment:
Barcelona - Reached the QF of the 13/14 CL, beaten by Atletico.
Real Madrid - Won the CL 13/14
Atletico Madrid - Losing finalist of the CL 13/14
Valencia - Reached the round of 16 in the CL 12/13. CL Finalist twice. (2000 and 2001)
Sevilla - Europa League winners 13/14. Reached the round of 16 in the CL 09-2010. Same year, Liverpool placed 3rd in their group with 7 points, 6 points behind Lyon and 8 behind Fiorentina. This was our last particpation in the CL until now.
Villareal CF - CL-Semi-finals in 05/06 and CL-quarter-finals in 08/09. 09/10 the reached the round of 32 in the Europa League. In the 10/11 Europa League, they reached the semi-finals, losing to eventual winners Porto.
Malaga - Reached the quarter-finals of the Champions League in 12/13, losing to eventual finalists Borussia Dortmund.
Let's compare this to the current top 7 of the Premier League. I'm only including PL history, as we all know, football started in the 90s.
Chelsea - Won the CL in 2012.
Arsenal - For the last 5 season in a row, Arsenal has been eliminated in the round of 16 of the CL.
Manchester United - Won the CL 07/08. Lost both finals against Barcelona in 08/09 and 10/11. Reached the quarter finals last season.
Manchester City - Never gone furter than the round of 16, a feat they've accomplished two season in a row. In 12/13, they ended 4th in their group with 3 points, behind Ajax with 4.
Us! - Won it in 2005. Losing finalist in 06/07. Semi-finals in 07/08. Quarter-finals in 08/09. Europa League semi-finals in 09/10. After this we've either not qualified for Europe or gone out in the round of 16/32.
Tottenham - CL quarter-finals in 10/11. Europa league QF in 12/13.
Southampton - AFAIK they have never been in Europe in the PL era.
I didn't bother including the rest, but I'm pretty sure the difference in quality either is extremely close, or better in La Liga.
But Rodgers had an opportunity to rotate the squad around for Europa and CL this season and he didn't do it and the performances around our Europa and CL games were poor as a result of that..
We were shit in the league as well, when we were playing in the CL. I think we were almost 10th at one point in december (haven't checked). When we reached the Europa League, our focus was solely on the league and the FA cup, meaning we let some of our best players rest for the away match at Besiktas (Coutinho and Henderson comes to mind). I'm positive we would have beat Besiktas if we were actually interested in playing the EL.
International break matters less for us too I think, quite a few of our players don't play/start for their national team AFAIK.
That's my point. Most of our players were rested and ready, but we still got slaughtered.