It's just a way to undermine Levy/ENIC, seeing as they finally got us what the haters have been screaming for. That's the only reason it's questioned.
As to the format, though, yes that changed, but the relative difficulty hasn't lowered as much as is made out. Back in 1984, it was a competition for teams who did not win their leagues, and did not win any domestic cups, since both of those things qualified you for the European Cup proper and the CWC respectively.
That's why we were in it. We came 4th the year before, behind Watford (2nd), but ahead of Forest (5th) and Villa (6th), all of whom were in the competition with us. The same is true for every league which participated, from Austria to Belgium.
Of course, the modern CL now takes the top 4 of every (big) league, so many of those clubs would now be in the higher competition, but most leagues still only get 1 or 2 teams qualified, and we all know that they're little more than fodder now for the big teams of the Big 5 leagues to gobble up at will. European football used to be more competitive in general before the modern period, and now it's ruled by a handful of clubs from an even smaller handful of leagues.
The best clubs not from the Big 5 leagues? They're all aiming for the Europa League now. That's who we beat, instead of the also-rans of the 80s. Not a whole lot of difference in quality, really.