This is getting dangerously close to realism for you.
You’ve already answered your own question, and proven my point. As you well know we don’t have any third division players, which is the majority of the reason why we finished 22 points ahead of Luton, which shows that utter wham you chat about the Luton manager ‘playing to win’ made absolutely zero difference in the real world of football when he’s got a load of crap players.
Given this blinding reality which you are now pinning your argument on, why did you then spend all that season telling anyone who would listen that Luton were a much better team than us? They weren’t, and the league table showed that.
Player quality is paramount and maybe you should focus on this over the last 30 years at Everton rather than wetting the bed all season about the manager and whichever newly promoted team has won a game that weekend.