Saints are about to play in front of 30k for the first time this season, but sadly it looks like it wont be at St Mary's.
St Mary's seems set to get the biggest home crowd so far this season when West ham visit next Tuesday evening, hopefully it will soar over the 30,000 mark, certainly it should do, lets be blunt if we cant get a full house when we sit at the top of the table and play not only one of our biggest rivals for promotion, but the most star studded team in the division, then its hard to see when we will.
However Saints might get pipped to the post to be the first club to hit 30k in the Championship this season * by Derby County on Saturday who are expecting a crowd nudging into that area on Saturday.
The Rams despite being the second best supported club in the division so far this season with an average of 24,414, exactly 473 above Saints who lie in third, are not resting on their laurels and are mounting an aggressive marketing campaign to drive up attendances at Pride Park.
Despite the Saints game due to it being a top of the table clash likely to be well above average, Derby have boosted the crowd further by offering a deal via Groupon, as well as offering former season ticket holders a free ticket for the game, these measures look set to ensure that not only will this be the highest crowd of their season so far, beating the 27,210 that saw them play Birmingham on the opening day, but also the first gat in the division to top that magical 30k figure this season.
West Ham nearly became the first club to get past that landmark recently falling only 15 short for the visit of Peterborough to Upton Park and their average of 27,884 is more than 3k above Derby in second and almost 4k above ourselves in third with 23,941.
On Tuesday if Derby fail to hit 30k for our visit, we get our own opportunity to get tthe biggest crowd of the Championship season so far* when West Ham visit, as mentioned earlier with this being one of the biggest games of the season and the Hammers likely to completely fill the away section, the ground deserves to be full, in fact the way that this Saints team has played this season they deserve to play to a full house, in fact anything less given the importance to the game, would be a snub to Nigel Adkins and his team and they do not deserve that.
* Since the story has been written its been brought to my attention that the West Ham V Pompey clash had a gat of 33k, however for some strange reason neither the West ham website or the Official football league website are recording the crowd as such.
I dont know why this is the case or whether there is some dispute as to the official attendance, so in the meantime i have left this story up as originally written as the bulk of it refers to Saints.