What’s Gone Wrong for Clem Morfuni at Swindon Town?
At best hopelessly incompetent, at worst, well, who knows was the consensus of large portions of the Swindon Town fanbase, after Australian owner Clem Morfuni ended his 6-month-long media hiatus and answered the questions of local journalists from the BBC and Swindon Advertiser for the first time since it emerged the Aussie had disclosed selling 22.5% of the club.
The growingly ambivalent atmosphere at the County Ground in recent months is an incredible juxtaposition to the beginning of the Morfuni era. After acquiring the club from the menacing Lee Power in July 2021, the Axis boss’ popularity was so high amongst Town fans in his first season that the club recorded its highest average attendance since its infamous ‘100 goal’ season in the Premier League.
Swindon Town is a club that for years has been crying out for someone to take it by the scruff of its neck, engage a fanbase deprived of recent success and heroes to adore, and finally rise back up the leagues to where it historically belonged. Clem Morfuni appeared just the man to do this.
With promises of a strategic 5-year plan to return to the Championship, operating with ‘openness and transparency’, and any extra revenue produced through increased ticket and merchandising sales reflected in a healthy playing budget, supporters were eager to help their club in any way they could.
An average crowd of over 9,200, significantly higher than what’s typical in League Two, was achieved over the first 30 months of Morfuni’s tenure, refunds from unused season tickets of the COVID-19 disturbed 20/21 campaign waived, and new kit launches regularly sold out all to support the club’s recovery.
However, with Swindon’s youthful and thin squad, currently containing just three players who’ve made over 100 Football League appearances, experiencing near relegation form for a whole 12-month period, many are beginning to wonder their money is going, why the club is seemingly unable to compete financially with its League Two rivals, and what exactly has gone so wrong for Clem Morfuni?
Questionable characters, lies, and EFL charges
After the jubilation of Morfuni’s summer 2021 takeover, supporters took to the stands, filling the County Ground with the vibrant colours of the recently released Puma jerseys, but, in retrospect, red flags were already waiving from the boardroom.
Just days after Morfuni, who first became involved in the club in 2014, won the rights to ownership, a bizarre statement released on the club’s official website detailed that Zavier Austin, previously convicted of laundering ‘drug money’, would be appointed as Town’s new Vice-Chairman and, without providing any further context, had recently been ‘the victim of a brutal, cowardly, and wholly unprovoked attack’.
Similarly to Morfuni, Austin held a significant boardroom position during Lee Power’s controversial stint as Swindon owner — any illusions of a completely fresh start from the troubles of the previous regime were starting to show.
Months of harmony and ignorance to potential off-field fragilities went by as the Robins performed well on the pitch until revelations revealed Adam Hart, once considered ‘one of Britain’s most wanted men’, held a backroom position at Swindon that Morfuni has, so far, been unable to provide any genuine clarification about.
Following a dismal 2022/2023 campaign, in which Swindon failed to make the playoffs, with much of the season’s discourse dominated by relentless chatter regarding the radical transfer strategy of unpopular Sporting Director Sandro Di Michele, pressure begun to build on Morfuni.
After struggling to strengthen an inexperienced, deflated squad in the following Summer transfer window, supporter concerns failed to go away. Having promised a competitive budget, the Australian owner faced accusations of underfunding the playing squad, leaving then-manager Michael Flynn unequipped to mount a serious promotion challenge. The Wiltshire club would often be unable to name more than two professional players on the subs bench during many games across the subsequent months.
In August 2023 it emerged that Morfuni sold 22.5% of his shares 11 months prior, but failed to inform supporters or the appropriate authorities, resulting in an EFL fine and charge on the football club.
Hours after Swindon were embarrassingly beaten 7–4 at home to non-league side Aldershot Town in the first round of the FA Cup, reports suggested that several first- team players had been incorrectly paid in the week leading up to the game. Morfuni denied the accusation.
Concerns about cash flow at Swindon Town have persisted; CEO Anthony Hall suggested the club had yearly outgoings in the region of £8.2M, alarmingly high for a club with such a sparse playing budget. Hall later rectified his comment, instead claiming he “does not know” the cost of operations.
Yesterday, a new EFL charge revealed that the club has been operating under a transfer embargo, preventing the Robins from paying loan or transfer fees, during the January transfer window for failing to pay HMRC on time on two separate occasions.
What’s next for Swindon Town?
When Clem Morfuni first became involved in Lee Power’s Swindon Town 9 years ago, the former Premier League side had endured just 5 seasons in the bottom tier of English football in its entire history. However, a disastrous spell under the ownership regimes of both Lee Power and Clem Morfuni has seen the club spend six of the last seven seasons languishing in League Two, often just making up the numbers rather than seriously competing for promotion.
With off-field revelations growing more threatening by the month, the Robins are in danger of achieving its lowest-ever finish this season, and some supporters are worried about what a continuation of Clem Morfuni’s ownership could mean for the football club.
Protest group Swindon Supporters Action, who believe the club could drop out of the EFL for the first time if Clem Morfuni continues his ownership over the coming seasons, are looking for opportunities to “raise awareness and shine a light on what from the outside looks to be a professional club operating like a Sunday League one.”
There appears to be much debate amongst Swindon Town fans about what constitutes an appropriate time to begin large-scale protests, or if they’re even justifiable at all. The Supporters Action conceded “A lot of people don’t care about the off the field stuff, they just want to watch football on a Saturday and enjoy, which is understandable but it’s worth considering that might not be there for them to watch if we let the year on year decline in every aspect of the club continue unchallenged.”
A banner raised outside the County Ground last weekend reading ‘Clem Morfuni it’s time to go’ caught the attention of both national media and local-rivals Reading’s ‘Sell Before we Dai’ protest group, who tweeted “We stand with Swindon. We don’t want them to go out of business…we want them to stay in business so we can keep on battering them 5–0. This goes beyond rivalries. Football has an ownership problem.”
The situation at Swindon Town hasn’t yet reached the same severity as their M4 rivals, but the momentum of discontent against owner Clem Morfuni and his controversial band of associates appears to be building week after week…
