Saints take on Preston North End on Wednesday evening after rebooting their promotion hopes against Birmingham at the weekend, yet the game looks set to be not only the lowest League gate of the season so far, but the lowest since 2012.

With just two days to go before Saints take on Preston at St Mary's, a look at the online ticketing system does not make pleasing reading, at a rough guess there are still somewhere around 3,500 tickets available in the general seating areas in the Itchen, Chapel & Kingsland stands.

You can't get a ticket in the Northam End, but although that may be sold out in the home sections, that means that with Preston only likely to bring around 800 fans, there will be another 2,000 seats empty in the ground.

Corporate areas will not be sold out, so as it stands I would hazard a guess that there are around 6,000 unsold seats at present.

Given that a full house at St Mary's these days seems to be around 30,800, we are likely to have our lowest attendance since our last sojourn in the Championship in 2011/12, back then only 21,014 turned out for an evening fixture against Leicester City.

Although ironically the second lowest crowd was against Preston who played at St Mary's in the League cup attracting just 7,414.

Indeed since then we have never had an official attendance in the league less than 26,302, but that looks set to be smashed on Wednesday evening.

So why is this attendance going to be so low, of course there are some good reasons, Saints poor form of late and the weather at the moment being two of them, cost perhaps being another, but you would hope that with Saints getting back on track at Birmingham on Saturday and the automatic promotion spots still being in sight, that some who used the poor form excuse might have a late change of heart.

The weather has been foul of late, but on Wednesday it is forecast to be dry and for the time of year fairly warm, so again perhaps that will encourage some to make a late call on going to the game.

The cost should not really be a factor, there are still plenty of adult tickets available at £15, that is cheaper than watching Eastleigh in the National League & comparable with AFC Totton & Sholing, most of the other areas are £25 for an adult ticket.

So hopefully a late walk up for this game, if so then we might even avoid this being the lowest crowd in a dozen years.

In contrast the game on Saturday against Sunderland is almost a sell out, Sunderland appear to have not taken block 43 meaning that in the usual general seated areas there are less than 100 tickets available, plus another 290 in the aforementioned block 43, so another full house set for Saturday, it is just the visit of Preston that is not looking good at the moment.

More information and purchasing of tickets can be done at Southampton FC Tickets

Photo: Action Images

YosemiteSaint added 20:38 - Mar 4 I'd be there—but i live 5400 miles away. :-(
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