Introducing a cutoff of 37 points would have sent down a quarter of the league in 2006, while a cut system based on the champions' tally would force others to up their game.
The Premier League has too many mediocre teams and that is its biggest problem. There are too many sides content in the knowledge that at least three teams will be worse than them at the end of the season. Clubs of decent resource and history, Newcastle and Aston Villa chief among them, have turned dreams of Champions League football into a perennial struggle for survival in only the course of a few years.