Even England's top-four elite has its upper and lower classes. The division persisted in the Champions League when Arsenal and Liverpool were assigned uncomfortable quarters. It is not utterly inconceivable that one or both could be eliminated at a group stage that has been seen of late as a sort of stretching exercise in which this country's teams warm up for the more strenuous business to come.
At the moment any sort of fixture appears perilous in particular for Liverpool, who might have been eliminated by Standard Liège in the qualifying round. On all known form under Rafael Benítez, they will show more competence as time passes. His worst season in the tournament with the club still saw the side get to the last 16 before being knocked out by Benfica in 2006.
For all that, there have been moments of vulnerability, too, and only 10 months have passed since Marseille won 1-0 at Anfield in the competition. The margin for error may have shrunk this year. It was bad enough for Liverpool to be pitted against a Spanish club, let alone an Atlético Madrid line-up that was drubbing Schalke 4-0, with Diego Forlan among the scorers, while Benítez's squad wheezed past Liège.
A steady PSV are not to be disparaged either and they knocked Tottenham out of the Uefa Cup in March. While Liverpool struggle to find form they have to be wary, specifically, about a team such as Marseille that is striving to better itself. The club, for instance, paid £9.5m this summer to winkle the highly regarded attacker Hatem Ben Arfa out of Lyon.
Even with the loss of Djibril Cissé to Sunderland, Eric Gerets' side still has menace in the diminutive form of the Ivorian striker Bakari Koné. Marseille top the League in France at the moment, but their fallibility has not been banished entirely. They opened the campaign with a helter-skelter 4-4 draw with Rennes.
That has a comfortingly familiar ring to it for Benítez, whose side won 4-0 at the Vélodrome last season. The task for Liverpool now is to regain such form, but Marseille will believe they are improving steadily. It would be unwise for the Anfield team or Arsenal to suppose that domination is theirs by right. Each of these two English clubs is under scrutiny.
The depth of Arsenal's squad may be tested in Group G where the away matches could be gruelling. There will be references to the torrid atmosphere in Istanbul but the ability in the Fenerbahce ranks may also be disturbing. Luis Aragonés, having managed Spain to glory at Euro 2008, is in charge there and he has a couple of his countrymen around, such as the striker Daniel Güiza, as well as the Brazilian Roberto Carlos who had such an association with Real Madrid.
Arsène Wenger may wish, too, that Porto's exclusion from this season's Champions League, following allegations over the bribery of referees five seasons ago, had not been overturned on appeal. They are far from the peak attained in Jose Mourinho's time, but the club has still been champions of Portugal for three consecutive seasons. The journey to Ukraine will also be forbidding. Dynamo Kiev's 8-2 aggregate rout of Spartak Moscow in the final qualifying round is more imposing than even Arsenal's 6-0 aggregate canter against Twente.
It is rash to believe that English clubs now have an ineffable superiority. There may not have been a final without a Premier League member taking part since 2004, but Liverpool and Arsenal supporters would not claim, at this moment, that their teams are without flaw.
United and Chelsea belong in a different category because of the extent of their squads, even if many of Sir Alex Ferguson's personnel congregate in the treatment room at present. They have the means to be at ease. Villarreal were narrowly beaten by Arsenal in the Champions League semi-finals in 2006 and Celtic did beat United in Glasgow the following season, but it is hard to conceive of the Old Trafford club finishing behind both of them, or suffering against Aalborg.
Group A has that kind of feel as well. Could Roma and Laurent Blanc's Bordeaux both surpass Chelsea and compel Luiz Felipe Scolari's men to keep sorrowful company with the Romanians Cluj? It is unthinkable. The nature of the Premier League must be echoed in the Champions League.
At Anfield and the Emirates there are problematic areas in each line-up. While an Arsenal fan wonders about defensive midfield duty, his counterpart in Liverpool looks on in annoyance at ineffectiveness on the flanks. All four English clubs may well go through to the knock-out stage in the end, but there will be reminders that Premier League ascendancy may be far from effortless.