It's time for those 50'000 Saints fans who went to Wembley to get off their behinds.
Back in August the internet and local media was rife with tributes to Markus Liebherr, many saying how they now want to help Markus's dream be realised by supporting the team back to the premiership, well to be blunt the proof of the pudding is in the eating as Saints face two of their challengers for promotion in the space of a few days at St Mary's.
So far just over 20,000 tickets have been sold for the peterborough game and 22,000 for the brighton game, in actual fact sales for Brighton will be worse than for the Posh in that those totals include away supporters and there is an estimated 3,000 coming from Sussex on Tuesday as opposed to about 1,000 from Peterborough.
But even so these figures really are not good enough if you match them against the levels of support when Markus sadly passed away of the 50,00o who went to Wembley. Added to which not only are they two very important matches that will shape the season, but this week sees the 125th Anniversary of the club
Of course there will be those who cant make it to either game due to very good reasons, for some it may be financial or maybe other commitments, but when you take it that at the moment it seems that 30,000 who watched Saints at Wembley cant be bothered to go to one game this week thats a little sad and please dont tell me that we are the best supported team in League 1 and should be happy with 20k for a home game because its better than everyone else, thats not how i judge Saints, I judge us by Premier standards and that means full houses or as near as damn it, we are a big city club, we are not Dagenham and Redbridge, Swindon or oldham with respect to those clubs, we are Southampton.
So all being equal there is not a lot of excuses available for not going to at least one of the games, season ticket holders aside there are around 16,000 ticksts available in the home seats, times that y 2 and it means that put simply if you went to Wembley and are not a season ticket holder all you have to do is turn up for one game.
Its the first Saturday league home game in over a month so financially it shouldnt be a burden for most, we often decry Pompey for telling the World that they are the greatest fans whist having swathes of empty seats, actions speak louder than words, time to show the world and not tell them how good Saints fans are.