Brighton have taken the unprecedented step of offering virtually their entire ground to Saints supporters for the upcoming fixture in March.
Brighton supporters groups were this morning questioning their club about it's motives in allocating 30,000 tickets to travelling Southampton supporters for the fixture at the Amex Stadium on 30th March.
This is virtually the entire capacity and the Seagulls will be retaining only a 1,000 or so for their own fans.
The increased allocation is believed to be connected to the loan deal that Saints had with Oldham Athletic for current Brighton midfielder Dale Stephens in 2011.
Stephens joined Saints on loan from the Lancashire club in March 2011 and made 6 appearances as Saints won promotion back to the Championship with ironically his current club Brighton winning League 1 despite losing in one of their final home games at the Withdean, a thriller which Saints won 2-1.
At the end of the season Stephens returned to Oldham but Saints had a clause inserted into the deal that should be at any time be sold to Brighton and play more than 155 league games for them they would be entitled to 30,000 tickets for the next fixture they played afterwards to the Seagulls,
Brighton were rather hoping that they could have discharged this obligation when they hosted us for the game in the League Cup earlier this seasonbut Stephens was still agonisingly two short of the total and Saints declined the kind offer and said they would wait till later in the season.
Stephens ironically played his 155th League game in Brighton's colours a couple of weeks later at St Mary's in the 2-2 draw.
a spokesman for Brighton said.
" When we signed Dale Stephens we were aware of this clause in his contract, we had hoped to get this done when we played them in the League cup when we didn't have a lot of our supporters turning up anyway but they stuck to their guns."
" It will be a bit of a logistical nightmare and our fans are not best pleased, but they will all get a free burger and programme at the following home game against Bournemouth."
" We must stress though that any Brighton fans found in the away section, in essence all of the stadium apart from a block in the Sammy The Seagull Stand will be ejected"
Both clubs now face the issues surrounding it, initially Saints will sell their allocation, believed to be the biggest in the entire history of football, to those that have been to four away games this season, but after that it will be tapered down ending with those that have passed by the Saints store in West Quay in the last year and taken a selfie.
There will be a series of Special trains running on the day roughly three an hour starting at Southampton Central Station at 7am till the 20th at noon. Returning from Brighton between 6pm and 11pm.
Those going by road are warned that there is nowhere to park at the stadium if you want to be out of the car park before 8pm.
This is believed to be only one of a number of strange inserts into transfer deals of players who departed Southampton FC under our old Chairman/CEO just under a decade ago.
He was always concerned that somewone was pulling the wool over our eyes and getting the best deal for the club, some of these have now expired and others have still to come to fruition, but from our sources at St Mary'e we are led to believe the folowing still exist.
When Dejan Lovren signed for Saints in 2013 his contract stated that if he were to be sold to Liverpool then we would be entitled to half the revenue of any Beatles reformation concert held at Anfield and we would also be able to install car parking meters and take 100% of the revenue for that gig.
Victor Wanyama's deal on signing for Saints included the publishing rights to the song "Oh when the Saints go marching in" this has proved to be the major part of his income since joining Tottenham Hotspur, he makes around £35k from every Spurs game from the repeated renditions of the song and is also rumoured to go into the stands and start the singing, something he seems to have a lot of time to do these days due to not playing much.
Tadanari Lee was granted a concession to set up a series of stalls selling Sushi in St Mary's.
Jack Stephens on signing from Plymouth in April 2011 has a clause entitling him to a testimonial in 2021, he was also given a get out of jail free card which he used against Cardiff a week ago, but then subsequently dropped in the celebrations only for it to be picked up by the Bluebirds Kenneth Zohore who handed it back to him and exercised it's rights.
Saints in true fashion have coined a phrase for the trip to Brighton it is
"Be the 30,012th man"