Saints head up to Aston Villa tonight and Saints fans face paying £41 for the priviledge however Villa are blatantly manipulating the rules of away fan ticket prices.
Tickets for the match at Aston Villa are available in all sections for tonights match, however most Aston Villa fans will not be paying the same price as Saints supporters unless they are sitting in a Premium central stand seat.
As many will know home clubs have to charge away supporters the same price as home fans pay for a similar seat, most clubs including Saints do this fairly, away fans at St Mary's pay the same as Saints fans sitting in th other half of the Northam and indeed for Saints fans sitting in the Chapel at the other end of the ground, but this is where the similarities between Saints and Villa end and the Midland's club are playing the system so that they can charge away fans top dollar.
If you want the best ticket in the house tonight at Villa Park in the Centre of the Trinity Road Stand then its £42 only £1 more than a ticket in the away section which is in the corner of the Doug Ellis stand opposite, so Saints supporters sitting in the lower tier of this stand will find themselves paying only £1 less than for virtually the best seat in the house, for a ticket which is at pitch level in the corner.
So how are Aston Villa getting awa with this ? well the secret lies in the fact that usually Villa Park is well below capacity, although they had a virtual full house for the visit of Arsenal, apart from that the second highest crowd is the 32k that were there for the Manchester City game.
This means that they can afford to overprice the Doug Ellis stand on a single game basis, for a season ticket holder it works out at only £28.68 a game, but an individual ticket is £41 for the likes of Saints.
This means that it will price out most Villa fans for single matches, although they have plenty of choice elsewhere in the ground starting at £25 up to the aforementioned £42 best seat and with 10,000 spare tickets to chose from most games, Villa fans are not going to be too bothered about sitting in the Doug Ellis stand.
But away fans do not have that choice, so it means that Villa can completely fleece visiting supporters and not break any rules as the single game price in that stand is the same for the home fans.
It is within the Premier League regulations but totally and morally wrong otherwise.
Of course Saints have no choice but to bite the bullet, in times where organisations like the Football Supporters Federation are trying to persuade clubs to reduce ticket prices for travelling fans with reciprocal agreements etc, this is just a case of a club trying to squeeze money out of the fans of other clubs because they can.