For the Town’s position in the League Two table, it’s been a useful seven days, including a blowout win away to second-placed Barnet and a point in a local derby. With a three-game unbeaten run, Holloway can point to the beginning of a turnaround in fortunes.

However, given that only time will tell if a sustained upturn will materialise, this current phase of the season has the air of an uneasy truce. It will not take much for the negative sentiment to ramp up again. Even with the positive week we’ve had, Swindon have still won just one game in the last ten. Holloway still can’t help himself from picking fights with fans or the media, or reacting to solitary voices in the crowd; all behaviour you would not expect from a man of his experience and supposed standing in the game.

While the table tells us we’re somewhere in the middle, that gnawing feeling Holloway so expertly abated earlier in his tenure, one so familiar from the Gavin Gunning caretaker spells and Mark Kennedy’s ill-fated reign, is back. It’s a gnawing concern that the club is not heading in the right direction; and it’s getting very difficult to avoid.

Ian Holloway speaks to fans after taking the Swindon Town job (Image: Andy Crook)

Two years ago, just as Holloway was anointed the new manager, my experience of following the team was one of immense frustration, watching games full of hope that things may go right, only to see those hopes dashed by pathetic performance after pathetic performance. We really looked bound for non-league.

That this was not a short-term trend within that season, but a longer-term one of mismanagement during the Clem Morfuni ownership era, led to the Spirit of 69 protests, which, given the numbers of supporters who took part in the days of action in December 2024 and February 2025, showed a huge groundswell of engagement among fans. But the immediate crisis was avoided by a Holloway-inspired turnaround on the pitch, and momentum dissipated.

I must admit that now, two years on, my reaction to watching another Swindon side underperform in League Two is one of complete apathy. 

The protests two years ago were ignored by Morfuni - the club continues to be run with the same incompetence we derided then, and even the lesson of being kicked out of a competition last year due to an administrative error has led to no substantive improvements.

From the outside, despite recent negativity, there is a feeling that Holloway can remain in post indefinitely. From videos and interviews, the strong relationship between manager and owner is plain to see, while his ebullient personality almost offers cover for Morfuni from personal criticism. Holloway’s run of poor results is no recent phenomenon, given it realistically began with the mania surrounding the club being thrown out of the EFL Trophy in January. And he is the first manager I can remember who has gotten into arguments with individual fans on, at this point, several occasions. If a manager is not answerable to the results he achieves, or even to his own conduct, it gives the impression that Swindon Town’s internal culture lacks accountability. 

Ian Holloway interacts with a Swindon Town fan in the away end at Bristol Rovers (Image: Andy Crook)

There is little sense that the club is being run with success in mind. At this point, we just exist.

All the while, the club’s debt is increasing, with nothing to show for it (other than, I guess, an LED screen on the Stratton Bank). We cannot pretend that this half-decade of, at best, stasis is not damaging the club and its stature in the professional game. 

While Swindon fans have no God-given right to see a successful team on the pitch, we’ve been here for longer than Morfuni and Holloway, will be here long after them, and, despite what loyalists will argue about entitlement, actually should have some level of expectation. There is no reason to accept second-best, just because that is what is being offered.

The expectation isn’t that we win every game. It’s that the club is set up to win, that there is a plan, and that the ownership is pulling in the same direction as the fans, rather than doing everything to drive us away. 

Aaron Drinan charges through to set up Matty Virtue's early miss (Image: Focus Images)

When the Trust - a body whose output is always very measured, given their particular role in the Swindon Town ecosystem - refers to a wedge between fans and club, that is a sign that the owner should either rapidly change his modus operandi or, as an esteemed club figure may put it, “jog on”.

It’s frustrating personally because, after four years flying the red flag in Germany, I’m now back in Wiltshire and attending games should be much easier. When I made the decision to move back, the prospect of afternoons at the County Ground and in away ends up and down the country was very enticing. While very little about this season is pulling me back in, Saturday in Bristol was at long last my first Swindon game in person since returning.

Drenched Swindon Town fans in the away end at Bristol Rovers (Image: Focus Images)

Despite my apathy, one of my central beliefs around being a football fan is that you have to take the rough with the smooth, and to a certain extent find the beauty in the rough. And so I headed to a game I had no real expectation we’d win, stood on an open terrace in the middle of a downpour, watched Matty Virtue miss an open goal after 90 seconds, witnessed the spectacle of Antwoine Hackford running in the opposite direction to the ball, and endured a pretty abject second half resulting in a goalless draw. 

At least I’d gone some way to earning the enjoyment of whichever good times occur after Morfuni finally sells up to an owner willing to push the club on.

But please: a little more smooth for us Swindon fans in the near future. We’ve had enough rough Saturday afternoons of the soul for the time being.