I see the CL as a cup competition. My indifference to play-offs is not that they are a poor way of deciding a winner - I love the FA Cup and even the League Cup, in an era where they are becoming despised for distracting teams from the "serious business" of contesting the PL - but that they are superfluous after an entire season of league games. Why spend fully 9 months contesting a league and putting all of your effort into winning it just to reset the competition and allow all the teams you worked so hard to leave in your dust back in. There's a positive firestorm of excitement for the City v Liverpool game in two days' time, do you think that would be the case if both sides knew that finishing top of the league was relatively insignificant and they'd always have a second chance in the playoffs if they mucked up this time around?
Sure, it contributes to a really thrilling end to the season - although it surely also hacks off the fans of the teams who didn't make it, to be told that they didn't deserve to make it to the end of the season this year - but it does make games in the regular season far less important, thus increasing the period in which teams decide that the rest of their games are unimportant and they won't try as hard in them. Ideally you want a system where as many teams as possible have something to play for right up to their last game.
Going back to the CL, it's a cup, not a league. I know it calls itself a league, but in my CV (resume) I call myself hardworking, dedicated and passionate, but that doesn't necessarily mean I am. It's a knockout, and I treat it like a knockout. It's the difference between watching the 100m and the 10,000m at the Olympics. The cups are about who can come out of the blocks fastest, overpower every team, and honestly get a bit lucky. The league is about consistency, resource-managing, psychology - how you get over runs of bad form, how you set up to counter a team when you know they are stronger - and about how you long you can stay with the leaders. They are two totally different disciplines.
I appreciate the CL for what it is - a chance to see the best teams in the world in set-piece action against each other. It's not the same as the PL, and I don't think it should be compared as such. Indeed, City fans who remember the dark days of lower-league football tend to have less of an interest in it, although few English fans agree with us for it, and few foreign fans either. The CL may be more glamorous, but the PL is the tougher and more rigorous competition. The PL is the one we want to win more.