I don't think I've heard anyone deny the incredible performance of your club this season, canaries. Lambert is a superb manager that plays to your strengths and has created a team of team players, not superstars. You deserve immense credit for your current league position and will hopefully remain around the same position come the season's end.
However, to try and answer the OP's question, you are a far bigger club than us, with a far more successful history and larger fan base. Yes, you had a rotten few seasons a couple of years back and yes, it is an achievement to win back to back promotions, but in some sense I think a lot of people kind of feel that you are back in a position where you belong. Us Swans, on the other hand, are reaching for the impossible. It was only 8 years ago that we were fighting to stay in the football league, playing hoofball under journeymen managers, and struggling to reach crowds of 3 thousand, so it is surely correct to believe that our current position is far more unlikely, and therefore far more noticeable, than yourselves.
Our tippy-tappy style, as those jealous types decide to call it, is the fundamental root of why most footballers become footballers; to kick a ball with their feet. Not their head, or their chest, or gamble on winning lady-luck second balls. It is a style that went out of fashion when football became big business in the 90's; make a mistake whilst playing a pass-and-move game and it is glaringly obvious, there is no where to hide, whilst if you hoof the ball into the opponents half and box all game, and if you don't score or win, you can correctly label yourself as just being unlucky. Our team adopted the possession and passing game in league 1, where we romped to the title, carried on the style for three years in the Championship, improving our league position with each season, and now it is holding us in good shape in the toughest league in the world.
I, and most Swans fans, will make no apologies for our comparisons with Barcelona. They are wholly justified. Of course, their skill, technique, and individual performance is vastly superior to where we are now, however they play, not just with a style, but with a footballing philosophy; new players and managers are sourced and appointed with regards to sharing their philosophy, and that is exactly what Swansea City FC has done ever since Martinez left us.
I believe the plaudits that we receive are of huge significance, not just to us, but to the footballing community as a whole, as they represent a celebration of attractive, confident, stylish, football, achieved without an exuberant war chest of funds. We are, quite rightly, an inspiration for many clubs in many leagues, and when the bottom finally falls out of football's financially leaking bucket, we'll still be here playing "boring" tippy-tappy football and earning plaudits for sticking to our principles. I wonder what Man City's footballing philosophy will be when the millions are removed?
