If there is one game that is guaranteed to be a sell out at St Mary's it is the League fixture against Manchester United.

You have to go back nearly a quarter of a century for the last time Saints played Manchester United at home in a League fixture and the game wasn't sold out , that was back in 1993 when Ian Branfoot's team had made an appalling start to the season and just over 16,000 watched an early season game with the Red Devils some three thousand short of the capacity of the Dell in what was the final season of terracing in the old ground.

Saints fans were staying away in droves back then and the formation of the Southampton Independent Supporters Association was nigh, a move that would see supporters mobilising themselves to say that they would no longer be prepared to accept their lot uncomplaining.

It took a little more time to sell out this year for some reason, although all but around 500 tickets went quickly after going on sale, the last tranche took a long time, this should perhaps tell the board that they should read the signs unlike their predecessors two decades ago, if this fixture is struggling to sell out for the first time in 22 years there is something wrong.

Now we know its not on the pitch, after all this is our most successful period in over three decades, so it must be pricing, some will point to grounds being 95% full for most games and that is true, but the trend is downwards for attendances at the moment, few teams take a full allocation at St Mary's these days and that is a trend across the Premier League.

That should be telling our board that the pricing is too high, not drastically but it is too high and Saints and indeed all Premier clubs need to look at their pricing structures and arrest declining attendances before we go int another period of bust after the boom.

Football's history is littered with boom and bust periods and they come because football clubs get too greedy, they don't heed the warning signs and assume that supporters will just turn up whatever, I hope our board is now different.

Photo: Action Images

halftimeorange added 11:28 - Sep 19 I don't think it's necessarily the pricing alone that is responsible for the downturn in attendances across the PL. Football supporters in general have many more convenient opportunities than ever before to watch their favourite teams. Football is rarely off our screens these days, be it TV or computer. Also, many fans are sick of having sensationalist drivel being spouted at them by the media in relation to the "bigger" clubs and how run-of the-mill players - say, Wayne Rooney - or unproven newbies say, Harry Kane are regularly portrayed as ball at their feet geniuses. Basically, there are a number of reasons why people choose to stay away. Football isn't the one day a week thrill it used to be.

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DockersRottingCorpse added 13:45 - Sep 19 Halftime makes some fair points but cost does come into it. United will always sell their allocation because 20% live locally.
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saintmark1976 added 19:46 - Sep 19 A well thought out and timely post Nick. In the long run football will not be able to escape the fundamental economic law of supply and demand. To think that you can continually increase the price while at the same time also increasing the available supply of an item can only end in one result ie customer resistance to the price at which you are attempting to sell. If as you suggest most other Premiership clubs are seeing a decline in attendance then it appears reasonable to assume that a tipping point has been reached. The question then becomes do the clubs really care or are they just happy to take the ever increasing broadcasting revenue and give the request of fans for cheaper prices the two fingers? If they genuinely wish to keep attracting fans to the grounds and restrict the drift away of supporters then prices will have to stay frozen for many seasons or better still reduced, as appears to be West Hams proposal for next season.The alternative is to increase prices once again and play in front of even more empty seats. Interesting times indeed.

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