The real disapointment on Saturday was not the result, but the crowd. 

Last week Mark Fry of the administrators made things perfectly clear, the Club neded its fans to rallly round and not only put their money through the turnstiles to ensure that the Club can run till the end of the season, but to show potential investors that the supporter base is still there.

On Saturday most of the excuses for not going to the game had been taken away, Lowe had left, the corners opened and prices had been slashed to name but three reasons for non attendance this season.

To add to that administration, you would have hoped that there wouldnt be an empty seat in the house, sadly that wasnt the case, 27,228 might well have been the biggest league crowd of the season, but it was 5,000 short of capacity and indeed the highest gate of the season for Manchester United.

The administrator must now surely be worried as to whether he can actually keep the club going through the season, lets be blunt if you cant get any more than 27,000 in at the peak of the crisis, how are we going to get anywhere near that for the visits of Palace and burnley, games where firstly the prices will be higher and secondly we might already be relegated by then in the case of the Burnley game.

Those that turned up on Saturday canot be faulted, they have rallied to the cause at a crucial time, but those 5,000 empty seats represent 5,000 Saints fans who must surely have a guilty conscience today, in their club's hour of need they have not stepped up to the plate.

I will accept that this season I have banged on about the poor crowds and recieved much abuse for my troubles as many have pointed out many reasons, some valid and some not so, as to why they and others are not attending, but on Saturday most of those excuses did not apply and whilst I accept that there would of course have been some who did have genuine reasons for not attending (I know at least one who went to a wedding, there are probably more) and of course some genuinely dont have the money to go, but the fact was that of a database of 200,000 we only had slightly over 26,000 Saints supporters, not many more than attended the Forest game before Xmas and of course well short of the Man Utd game.

I welcome reasoned debate on this subject, tell me Im wrong to expect supporters of a football club to rally round when their team needs them, I look forward to a few replies because i have spent the last two days trying to figure out why it wasnt a full house on Saturday in the circumstances and i have to be blunt I havent come up with an answer yet, at least not one that makes easy reading !    

Photo: Action Images

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