Top 5 is about right.
Top 4 would mean getting to the Semi-Finals most of the time but we don't.
Top 5 means we usually get as far as the Quarter-Finals; that's about right.
That's a very selective way of looking at rankings though. You don't play many teams in the finals of tournaments & many team that could beat us never make the finals. If we are 5th then I'd say we were joint 5th with about 20 other countries (which makes us, by definition, joint 20th).
Joint 20th sounds about right to me.
Can you name 4 teams that England have beaten in the finals of the World Cup and European championships over, say the last 20 or so years? You would imagine there'd be a list of 20-30 right?...wrong. You'll struggle to find even 4 (you'll struggle even harder to find 1 of any significance).
As for the reason why the England team don't seem to replicate the quality of the Premiership...that's an easy one, the England team has all the talented foreigners removed from it.
I'd probably look fairly reasonable if you surrounded me with the likes of Suarez, Van Persie...etc. That's why James Milner, Gareth Barry and Stuart Downing get to wear an England shirt. They are basically Championship players surrounded by foreign talent at club level.
At England level they are surrounded by James Milner, Gareth Barry and Stuart Downing.....that's fairly depressing I imagine.