Why does anybody care ?
If we stay up the same shyte will be said next season
If we finish top half it will be a fluke and they'll all figure us out next season
If we finish top six and win both cups this will also be a fluke and we'll get sussed out next season
If we finish top six the season after that, win both cups again and win the Europa League, this will also be a fluke and everybody will suss us out the season after that.
You can't have it both ways. The club has reveled in projecting a poor, small time, downtrodden, plucky underdog image and people get on their high horse when others constantly treat us as such.
It's reached such a degree that the Premier League's fuckwit fans would have preferred a decent club to have got promoted, like Birmingham or Swansea or Wigan again.
I've even read a Liverpool fan posting that one of the relegated Premier League clubs should have been allowed to stay up rather than allow us to go up. This got quite a few other Liverpool fans agreeing with him.
We have no axe to grind with Liverpool, no bad blood between us, so why would a Liverpool fan say something like that and why would some others agree with him ?
IMAGE, That's why, and ours is pathetic to be honest, so suck it up and ignore it, because our image will never change no matter what.