Saints have a problem with the forthcoming trip to Milan and it needs to be dealt with by using common sense both by the club itself and in Italy.

There can be no doubt that the forthcoming trip to Inter Milan is a biggie, in 47 years of European competition a trip to the San Siro is undoubtedly the most glamorous fixture we have drawn, but the popularity of the game is leading to potential problems both ahead and on the night of the game in a little over six weeks.

Saints are entitled to 5% of the capacity of the stadium for their supporters and with the San Siro holding 80,000 Saints would normally get 4,000 tickets, it should be noted here that Inter averaged in Serie A last season just over half of the stadiums capacity and their early games in the Europa League see attendances of well under half of capacity.

The club did ask for more and although Inter Milan were apparently open to that the Italian police would not countenance any more than a small extra allocation giving us 5,000 tickets in total.

The first big question is whether this will be enough ?

Certainly most of those who regularly attend Saints away games in the Premier League will be guaranteed a ticket but it is those that do not go very often that will struggle to buy tickets from the club itself.

Social media has been rife with stories of supporters buying tickets by registering with Inter Milan's ticket system in readiness to purchase tickets when they go on sale and of other ticket agencies offering tickets.

Saints are again insisting that only the supporter who purchases the ticket can use it, but unlike Midjytland last year and Beer Sheva coming up, the club cannot break this butterfly on a wheel by insisting supporters pick up their tickets in the city where the game is being held from club officials.

So although the club are saying that photo ID will be checked at the turnstile at the San Siro, this is having the counter effect by actually making the regular travelling supporter think that the club don't really know what they are doing here.

Anyone who turned up at Manchester United recently saw how long it took to get supporters through the turnstiles when arriving en masse and that was without having to produce ID.

So the reality is that whilst the club might state that ID will be checked, it is either not going to happen or that most of the supporters miss a large chunk of the game.

There is also the problem of who is going to check the tickets, it is not going to be the police anyone who has been to Italy know the police are reactive not pro active, they have one tactic, stand around and wait for it to happen, so when it does they can wade in batons flailing.

So that leaves only the turnstile operators to check, that will cause utter chaos, firstly there is the language barrier and then the time needed to take out photo id hand it to the turnstile operator etc etc, it just isn't going to happen.

That means there are only going to be two scenarios here, that ID is not checked or it is and in the resultant chaos of thousands milling around the entrances the Italian riot police wade in and they do not discriminate between women and children.

So the club need to be proactive here, to simply put out a few bits of criteria is not enough, they need to look at what the problems are and how best to solve them and if that means a few supporters get a ticket via a friends season ticket then that is better than the potential chaos that we could have.

Better to manage fans expectations a little better, we have 5,000 tickets, but despite the current stated minimum criteria of three domestic away games, we do not know what the maximum take up could be ? Just how many fans meet that criteria.

So the club need to be very pro active, of course they cannot say that Inter Milan will be happy to sell tickets in home areas on the day, but Vitesse Arnhem did without any issues last season and this could be the case in Italy, Inter are struggling to sell tickets for their own ground, they are not interested in adding checks in their own areas.

The Police Football Intelligence Unit attached to Saints also need to be on the ball, they need to be talking to their counterparts in Milan and stressing the situation, the reality is that although 5,000 might not be enough, that 7,000 could be, so surely it is better to keep the extra travelling fans in a secure area than have them dotted all over the ground, in fairness to our football intelligence unit they were pro active in our other European games, perhaps that might be the case here.

But overall the club need to stop putting barriers up in front of supporters, the whole identification issue cropped up because a few supporters complained that season ticket holders that couldnt go to Vitesse used their tickets to buy for others, yes that happened but the actual numbers were quite small, that lead to an absurd situation in Midjytland last season where Saints fans had to locate an open window in an office block in the town centre and then queue to show their ID, even then all ticket holders had to show their face.

The last thing supporters wanted then after travelling since the early hours was to queue up for half an hour, they wanted to find their hotel and check in, not face red tape created only by their own club, no other English club in Europe has had this issue.

Saints themselves issued the following statement.

“UEFA rules state that Clubs are not under any obligation to allocate any more than 5% of capacity to the visiting team. Inter have exceeded this with 5,000 tickets allocated to SFC.”

“We did request additional tickets to ensure that the maximum number of Saints supporters wishing to attend the fixture could, however due to safety and security measures within the stadium and the City this was not possible.”

They added: “The only way supporters are guaranteed an official ticket which will gain them entry is by purchasing via Southampton Football Club.

“SFC strongly advises against supporters buying tickets via re-sale sites, social media or any distributer other than SFC as the tickets may be fraudulent and sold illegally.

“Supporters purchasing tickets via distributors other than directly via SFC will not have the match recorded to their supporter number and as such should SFC progress throughout the European competition this may restrict their ability to purchase further matches.”

Saints have tried to make the ticket purchasing process as fair as possible, but inevitably there will be some fans who fall short of the criteria who are unhappy.

But in the main football fans are realists, they know that the first chance of tickets should always go to those that attend the games, 5,000 tickets covers just about everybody that has gone to more than one away game in the past year, there will be of course some who slip through that net, but our "official" support in Milan will be those that travel regularly and to be blunt there won't be many who do that miss out.

But the issue here is not about who should get first choice on tickets, but on avoiding the potential issues that could happen on the day.

Photo: Action Images

GeordieSaint added 11:51 - Sep 6 I went to the San Siro a couple of years ago. The place was only half full and the atmosphere was terrible and was decided by the sort of penalty that made 'match fixing' spring to mind. The thing that was most strange was the groundstaff painting the goalkeepers' areas before the game to make them look green for television. It was bizarre and in some ways disappointing experience but it still felt like a cathedral of football and a thrill of 90's driven nostalgia and fulfilling of an ambition. I grew up on Italia 90 and watching the games on a Sunday and still own the Inter shirt I bought when Bergkamp was playing for them. Amazing Saints will be playing there, wish I could make it.

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saintwizzler added 12:28 - Sep 6 The easiest way to police it would be to show your passport & pick match ticket up at a hotel in Milan city centre on the day of the game. We used to do this on England away games.
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sholingred added 20:46 - Sep 6 what a farce situation the club have created,what about the season ticket holders who stuck out two relegations and stuck with the club in div 3 and back.
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