its been found that wage bill and league position are highly correlated. ofc, its not clear which drives the other - do clubs finish high bc they pay the highest wages, or is it the other way around?
but either way, there's certainly a case to be made that, generally speaking, sustainability (if taken to mean low wage budgets) is the enemy of success.
there's outliers, but richer clubs are better than poorer ones. unfortunately, players are just bags of money really.