Our club is teetering on a precipice... please, Mr Morfuni, if you can't stop us from falling, sell to someone who can

I don’t usually get too up or too down after a game anymore.

It is, I think, a byproduct of working in the media. There are deadlines to hit and certain levels of etiquette to adhere to in the press box, and for years I stuck rigidly to them: whether that was at the County Ground, the outposts of the EFL, or various cricket grounds around the country.

As a reporter, you learn not to feel in quite the same way as you do if you’re a punter. To do a job, you have to keep your senses about you. It is not easy to write 1,000 words in minutes when you allow yourself to juggle the real emotions of triumph and disaster. Even Rudyard Kipling would struggle.

I’m down tonight, though. Really down. And you and I both know why: this situation feels terminal.

Defeat at home by the team bottom of the EFL has landed Swindon Town in precisely the same predicament as Morecambe, separated from the foot of the 92 only by goal difference.

Bottom of the EFL. The club of Hoddle, Ardiles and Macari. The club of Calderwood, Taylor and Bodin. The club of 1969, whose heroes we celebrated just this week. The club of you and I, our parents and, we hope, our children and grandchildren. Maybe another generation or two beyond.

But what chance of that legacy fulfilling itself if all we have to look forward to is this revolving door of misery. Occasional false dawns interspersed with persistent decline: some of it slow, all of it steady.

There is no prospect of positive legacy right now. Just sadness. Just despair. Just disappointment. And since when did that engage future generations.

Tonight, Swindon Town is a club in little more than name.

On the pitch there remains confusion over this squad’s strategy and purpose, off it there is bickering and infighting as supporters of all ages – all equally in love with their team – argue over how this rut is best ended. Or at least they were all equally in love with their team once.

And this is what makes this situation so sad. So very sad. There are hundreds of people who now consider a Saturday afternoon spent away from the County Ground more beneficial than that familiar pilgrimage. The trip they’ve made 100 or 1,000 times before has become too much of a grind, too much of a bind.

It is not fun anymore. It is not worth their time.

When football is no longer fun, and if supporters cannot identify with what is put in front of them, everything falls apart.

Make no mistake, everything is on the precipice of falling apart. You would have to have the most monumental blinkers installed not to recognise the trends: this is a club in existential threat. It is in danger of losing its 104-year EFL status and everything that comes with it, it is in danger of everything that comes without it.

It will be easy to argue that we are only 17 games into the season, that there are still 29 to play, and that fostering a sense of doom does little to encourage improvement. To an extent, I understand that position.

But this is about much more than PR now. We can laugh and joke about ghostly apparitions on the training ground, and stock up on sage, and (as I did this week) Photoshop the manager onto the body of Russell Crowe, but it all counts for nowt if next autumn Swindon Town can no longer sustain itself as it prepares for the visits of Wealdstone, Tamworth and Braintree.

What has happened to us.

In the past 12 months, Swindon have won 10 league matches out of 45. They’ve lost 22.

A bad spell, perhaps? An unfortunate period from which the club will eventually emerge? Maybe, but bear this in mind: since Scott Lindsey quit for Crawley in January 2023, Town have won 22 times in 84 games in the league.

Throw in the cups, and the landscape is much worse.

Jody Morris, Michael Flynn, Mark Kennedy, Gavin Gunning and now Ian Holloway have tried, but the result has still been the same.

So what of the constants?

It cannot be easy to run a football club, particularly today in an environment of rising costs and ever-diminishing margins.

Those in the Town boardroom will say they are trying to make it sustainable, and that may well be true. They will say that it had been run badly for a decade or more prior to their arrival, and that may well be true.

But it is also true to say that they have presided over considerable decline – either managed or mismanaged – these past two years. It is true to say fans are turning their backs on the product. It is fair to say their matchday offering ranges between disappointing and downright dreadful.

These are the men who have a responsibility to this community. These are the men who have to act. If they can give Ian Holloway the tools to do so in January, they must. If they cannot, they must sell before then and allow someone else to do it.

They cannot allow their club to fall apart. They must not let our club fall apart.