There was one good piece of news over the weekend for Southampton Football Club and that was in the average attendance statistics.
Saints gate of 31,892 against Reading on Friday evening aligned with Derby County's attendance at Pride Park of 24,654 spelt good news for Saints, it meant that the club leapfrogged the Rams in the average attendance table in the Championship, Saints are now second behind West Ham United with Derby dropping to third.
An average of 26,149 have now watched Nigel Adkins men at St Mary's compared with 25,959 at Pride Park with West Ham way ahead on 30,738,.
Saints have a sleder lead in the average over Derby of 190 per game and althoughb this doesnt sound much over 23 games it means that on the final day of the season Derby's gate against Peterborough will need to be bigger than ours by around 4,400, given what will be resting on our game and what wont be on Derby's that is highly unlikely, so come the final table it should be confirmed that Saints are the second best supported side in this division.
So far 575,278 have watched Saints at home, the low point being the 21,014 that saw us lose to Leicester City in a televised Monday night fixture back in January and the high being the 32,152 that saw us beat West Ham and another 32,000 crowd against the Sky Blues on the final day will push that over the 600,000 mark , meaning our final average should be around 26,400.
Along the M27, crowds havent been that big with the "Pack The Park" campaign being a little bitb of a damp squid, Pompey's lowest crowd so far has been the 11,261 that watched them play Barnsley, whilst their biggest and even that being far short of a full house was the 19,879 that watched our 1-1 draw there back in December, giving an average so far of 14,921 with the question being can the Blue Few push the average over the magical 15k mark in their last two home games or will they become the Blue Fewer, my guess is that they will given that on Saturday against Derby County it could well be their last ever game under their current guise at Fratton park