The first reaction of most Saints supporters to promotion back to the Premier league might well have been that banf goes the 3pm Saturday kick offs, well its likely this coming season they will play more.
Liverpool supporters where perhaps the first wags to comment on the ever changing days and times that games were played around two decades or so ago when they parodied the football magazine "When Saturday Comes" by producing a fanzine called When Sunday Comes, back then it was a funny comment, but supporters of Premier League clubs werent laughing much over the next 20 years as kick off days and times got more varied, when you look at fixture scheduled for a 3pm Saturday kick off now, you know that it has the potential to be moved to anyone of another five kick offs.
Saints supporters though probably didnt notice that for us fixture changing came in last season, a couple of days ago I asked a fellow Saints fan how many games he thought we had played at 3pm on a Saturday last season, he guessed at 35, thinking even that would be a lower figure than the real total, the answer though is 19 out of 46, yes thats right, out of our 46 Championship fixtures we played only 19 of them at 3pm on a Saturday.
At home we kicked off at the traditional time only 9 times out of 23 home games, indeed in the last six months of the season encompassing 16 St Mary's fixtures only 5 were at that 3pm Saturday kick off, funnily enough 4 of those were within a six week period in February/March, in fact after beating Brighton on 19th November, we would not kick off another home game at 3pm on a Saturday until the arrival of Burnley on 11th February almost three months later.
So the stark reality is that percentage wise we are likely to play a lot more 3pm Sat fixtures in the Premier, as it stands out of the 38 games we only have 6 not at that time, around 15% as opposed to the 60% last term, even if we see a dozen moved for TV etc, that would still leave us some way short of that 60%.
But leaving the percentage game and going to pure numbers, we only enjoyed 19 traditional kick offs last season, for our first term back in the top flight to be less than that 14 games have to be moved and thats a big total, last season so many were changed as Saints were considered the most attractive side in the division, you always got goals with us, that meant that we were on TV a lot more than most clubs, indeed we featured on 10 occasions and that might not be a lot different than the number we get in the Premier League, the difference this time round though is that we go from being the most attractive to one of the least appealing, in the Premier its not so much about who plays attractive football but who can attract the biggest TV audience.
So the gist if this story is if you were concerned that Saints will play a lot less games at that 3pm on a Saturday kick off time, dont be, we got in good practice last year.