The crowd for the visit of Norwich City tonight will do well to top the 10,000 mark, however it is still way above the lowest crowd at the stadium for a major fixture.
For a long while after it opened gates at St Mary's were high for cup games even when we werent doing well in the League, Saints fans staying away tonight will point to the poor entertainment on offer this season as the reason for staying away but surprisingly this hasn't been the case for our previous low gates.
The lowest attendance prior to the arrival of Markus Liebherr had been the 11,331 that had watched the Carling Cup game against Birmingham City, back then the club were in turmoil and Rupert Lowe had arrived a the club so you could understand why fans stayed away but that attendance could still well beat the one tonight.
It was strangely in the Liebherr era that we saw some low gates, the visit of Nothampton Town in the League cup was the debut of Ricky lambert but there were only 10,921 there to see him make it a scoring one.
Slightly more turned out for the next round against Birmingham again when 11,753 was only slightly higher than had turned out a year earlier so much for the feel good factor.
2010/11 saw Saints start as promotion favourites from League One with a star studded side and cup fever from the Johnstones paint win, however that did not extend to the league cup where a then record low of 10,251 turned out to see us lose to Bolton Wanderers 1-0.
But it was to get worse that season, possibly because ticket prices had been increased all round and then Chairman Nicola Cortese did not see fit to offer much reduction for the FA Cup, therefore only 10,410 turned out for the visit of Shrewsbury and if that wasn't bad enough our record low crowd so far at St Mary's was set in the FA Cup 2nd round that year when 9,276 watched us beat Cheltenham 3-0.
The following season should have seen an upsurge in interest on the back of promotion, true 25,860 watched the seasons opener against Leeds and were happy with a 3-1 victory, but three days later the stadium record low was again smashed and so far is yet to be beaten, this was the 6,541 who watched us beat Torquay 4-1 in the League cup with ironically Jose Fonte scoring one of the goals.
In the next round Preston North End arrived and it seemed packed with 7,414 in the ground.
The reason was more about price than the quality of of football as we were top of the league at this stage and in the following round took over 3,000 to Crystal Palace virtually half of both of our home crowds, so it wasn't about the football it was about a Chairman who wasn't interested in filling the ground by lowering prices.
Tonight's game will probably get into five figures if only because Norwich will bring a few but it will still be a few more than watched that game against Torquay.
Saints fans are moaning now about the quality of the football, but if it was just about that then why did we get so many turn out when the club was truly at it's lowest ebb in 2008/09 season when we had to play kids.
Perhaps because even though we hated the Chairman and the team were playing badly we still stuck with them and wanted a bit of glory to brighten up the day, now that seems to have all changed, people have lost touch with where we have come from and what we have achieved and the moment things go a little wrong they are up in arms.
Saints will continue to march on, they will always have ups and downs, but even sitting 13th in the League is nowhere near a down as most of the seasons in the last 30 years when we last reached a League Cup semi final.