How are Swansea City FC so good?

Article by e-Swansea's Adam Whitehouse

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You will find many top 6 club fans rebuffing the above question and taking a derisory swipe via social media about the city or the club before returning to their self imposed glimmering turrets of footballing 'excellence'. (For that reason alone, Dyke's plan for a League 3 will not work, only large investment in the grass roots/coaching and lower league game will do.) But the stats they constantly ignore prove beyond doubt that the Swans are a model for any club to follow. Manchester City are recently 50M Euros lighter as a result of their breach of financial fair pay rules. Swansea also topped the 2012/13 Premier League profits table with over £24M in profit and no debt attached to the club, which makes their journey even more remarkable.

The financial status is not however the reason the club is so good. It's the people that run it, play for it, work for it and support it that makes the club so enviable to others - and for the clubs who don't envy it, they will and if they choose not to they do so at their own risk. The community spirit born from years of financial mis-management and fans whip rounds post match to pay towards players wages have spawned an ethos that nothing is taken for granted, everything is worked hard for with a 100% commitment to the betterment of the club and all success is celebrated but filed under 'that was OK, but must keep pushing'.

It's not all plain sailing as where some clubs have spent big after the first couple of seasons to sign big names, pay bigger wages, expand stadia etc. Swans fans are still waiting to hear when a Liberty Expansion programme will start. The plans being approved but no sign of contractors still to date, just murmurs of travel infrastructure. The Swans board instead firmly financing not one but two huge new training facilities across the city, both attaining Level 2 status. This firmly lays foundations along with their sound financial footing that should the club find themselves fall foul of 'the trapdoor' it would in no way be at the severe detriment of the future of the club.

I have only recently started running the @e_swanseacity Twitter account, but within 2 minutes of chatting to the Liberty Stadium receptionist – she first told me that they were ‘... expecting Garry Monk shortly.’ I politely declined this offer, as I thought he may be a bit busy! However I found myself a short time later discussing the finer points of fan led social media enterprise/networking benefits with the Swans Head of Social Media, Juan! If that doesn't say something about the club, then nothing does!

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