Despite the cheap prices and the renewed optimism after the sacking of Nathan Jones, it seems that there is little enthusiasm for the visit of Grimsby Town on Wednesday evening and the Mariners might actually have the advantage in terms of vocal support.
Despite the boot of over 4,000 away supporters travelling South from Grimsby , it looks like the FA Cup 5th round match against the Mariners will be our lowest crowd of the season.
This will be our 6th cup tie at St Mary's this season and despite cheap prices in all of them, the crowds have not been brilliant for a Premier League club of our size.
The first game of this sequence against Sheffield Wednesday saw a respectable 20, 457 in attendance and the second game, in the next round of the Carabao Cup saw 17.385 watch us beat Lincoln, given this was the first game back after the World Cup break this was a disappointment.
Next up was Manchester City in the Carabao cup again, surprisingly only 22,996 were in attendance and that included 3,000 City supporters, it seemed at that game that our regular fans had deserted us, there was a big proportion of the crowd more casual Saints supporters than those who went on a regular basis.
You could understand why the combination of Nathan Jones & the probability of being slaughtered put a few people off, but in the next round of the Carabao cup, the semi final first leg there were no real excuses, we were playing for a place at Wembley, the score was 0-0 in a two legged tie as we kicked off yet there were a couple of thousand seats unsold.
A few days later Blackpool arrived to be despatched in the FA Cup and it was a respectable 20, 665 in attendance, so that being the case it is surprising how few tickets have been sold for the Grimsby Town game.
With a little over 24 hours left before the game I estimate that Saints have sold barely 12,000 tickets, with areas of the ground closed as they have been in previous games, it is hard to be accurate, but given the number of seats available in the central areas of the Kingsland, I am not going to be far out.
This means that even with the help of Grimsby supporters who have so far sold over 4,000 tickets, we are still short of that 17k against Lincoln.
So given that this is a 5th round tie which gives us a great chance to reach the last 16 and with a good draw the FA Cup semi final, it is strange that a large proportion of our supporters cannot find any enthusiasm for this game, despite the fact that on paper it is our most likely game to win of the entire season.
I often quote Bill Shankly who said "If you can't support us when we are losing, don't bother when we are winning" but it seems some of our fans can't be bothered even when we have a good chance of winning.
Of course this is not a great season, I appreciate that, but this game is a chance of a good win and a shot at glory.
It can't be the cost of going, you can still buy tickets at £17.50 for an adult and £7.50 for under 18's, to put that in perspective that is cheaper than the £20 that Grimsby will charge to watch them in League 2 and around the price that National League clubs including Eastleigh will charge. Indeed Wrexham who are the poster boys of the National League charge £19.
I hope there is a last minute rush, as mentioned it is £17.50 for an adult at the moment and only £7.50 for a child, but these prices rise by £2,50 on matchday, so best to get them today if you are going to have a late decision to go.
Yes it is on TV , but that is no substitute for the experience of being at the game itself.
The real downside though will be that although we will outnumber the Grimsby Fans by about 3 to 1, they will have their 4,000 bunched together and in their biggest game since 1996 in the FA Cup, they are not staying at home to watch it on TV, indeed it is around two thirds of their average home support of around the 6k mark.
They sit 16th in league Two and have still made the effort.
I am not having a go at anyone here, we all make our choices as to how we support the club and the level of support that we give, I am just surprised and a little disappointed that given the low prices, the recent change of manager and most importantly the chance of progressing in the competition that the turn out so far looks to be so poor.