Is anyplace there actually nice? I've never heard of a city in the UK get mentioned here and then someone says "yeah, that's a great place to live."
It really depends where in the city you live, some areas are better than others, like in any country. You can have properties worth millions not far from council houses. Every city has its expensive areas, although it does decrease the further north you go (in England).
Generally old working class towns or cities have bigger deprived areas than others, i.e. where there were coal mines, mills, shipyards, automotive and other manufacturing that no longer exist. Wolverhampton is one of these, the Black Country and perhaps even the whole West Midlands in general. It's the same for the north east, some of the north west, some of Greater London, and the bigger towns in Yorkshire.
If I had to pick 5 decent-sized towns or cities in the UK to live it would be something like York, Bournemouth, Brighton, Edinburgh or Oxford. But the best places to live in the UK are in the countryside, there are dozens of small towns and many more villages. PL footballers generally don't live in city centres, they will somewhere between the suburbs and 30-45 mins out in some small country town.