With season ticket details about to land in Southampton supporters in boxes any time now, the club should surely be making a gesture to the supporters that ensures that the fan base does not desert the club after Spygate.

The immediate aftermath of the Spygate verdict saw many Southampton fans react with over the top vitriol against the club itself.

Most did not really know who they were ranting about, should they be deriding the manager or Sport Republic or everything in between in general.

Since then social media has calmed down a little and some siege mentality has developed, I haven't met a Saints fan who condones the club's actions, but I have met many who feel that the club has been treated very unjustly and that the punishment does not fit the severity of the crime.

Now with season ticket renewals, Southampton FC have to start to rebuild the relationship between it's supporters and the club itself.

In truth these have been strained for several years now, the irony is that just as the fans could start to see the progress that Sport Republic was making, everything was blown out of the water.

So it is important that the club now go on the charm offensive to get the fans back on side and through the St Mary's turnstiles next season and that means giving them something tangible financially.

The obvious answer would be a decent discount off season ticket prices, but at a time when the club, facing another season in the Championship, they need all the income they can get.

The maths are easy to do, £10 off a season tickets would be seen as an insult by most supporters, if all 20,000 season ticket holders renewed, that would cost the club £200,000, it doesn't sound a lot, but it has to come from somewhere and it would perhaps cost half a dozen people who work for the club their jobs.

So if the club were to offer a £50 discount it would cost them £1 million and £100 a truly decent gesture £2 million and that is a significant amount.

But looking at it from another angle, if 2,000 season ticket holders did not renew at say an average of £500 per ticket, that is £1 million that won't be coming into the club coffers either, if 4,000 turned their backs then there is your £2, million gone.

Ask any marketing director at a football club and they will tell you the trick is to have hard core of season ticket holders, the more you have the more income you can derive from them

I haven't researched the stats in recent years, but the amount spent at the club by a season ticket holder per annum, both in terms of merchandise and also food and drink on the concourses and fan zones dwarfs that of a non season ticket holder.

A season ticket holder has more connection to the club, he will probably buy a replica shirt and his family will associate him with the club, so they are more likely to buy club merchandise etc for them at Xmas, Birthdays & Father/Mothers Day etc.

The modern club is all about generating income from your fanbase and the more closer a supporter feels to his club, the more income that is generated

Then there is the question of advertising, you can charge more if you have 20,000 season ticket holders, than if you have 15,000.

So what do Southampton do that truly brings the fans closer but does not cost the club too much money, either in terms of what it costs them in a reduction in price or for that matter a reduction in numbers.

The answer is to give them something that stimulates interest and doesn't cost the club.

I have put this idea out there a dozen years ago or more, but at Southampton at least they have never been that good at either public relations or thinking outside the box.

A simple idea would be to load each season ticket with £100 that can be spent either in the club shop or buying food & drink on matchdays, if it can't be loaded on season ticket cards, then a gift car would surely be easy to implement.

The good thing for the fans is that they are getting £100 from the club to spend, the good thing for the club, is that it isn't actually costing them £100 to do it.

It would cost them far less than that, buy a pint in the fan zone and it would cost you about £6.50 after season ticket holder discount, the actual cost of the pint to the club is probably less than a third of that.

So it is win win, the fans get something tangible and it costs the club very little in the grand scheme of things.

But it is more than just the initial cost, it encourages the supporters to engage with the club, if they go into the club shop to use their £100, they will probably end up spending more than that, money they might not have spent otherwise.

The fans that pop into the ground a little earlier to spend their money on a pint, will probably get into a routine and keep going back long after they have blown their money and will now be spending their own.

There will be some who will now stand up and say that we should be spending it in local businesses, they have a point, but truthfully most of the pubs and food outlets used on a matchday by fans are not local businesses, they are part of large chains.

But who is the biggest local business in the City ? I would say Southampton Football Club.

The fanzones are not for everyone, but they are popular and not only generate money for the club, but give exposure to local music, the Northam fanzone for instance has a local band on each game.

Like it or not it is a business, if the fans support it and spend their money there in large numbers, then it enables the club to flourish, I agree with those who say it will barely make a dent in the transfer kitty, but it could do.

30,000 people at St Mary's spend £10 each game. that's £300 k per game and that's touching £7 million over a 23 game Championship season, to put that in perspective that more than pays for Daniel Peretz £6 million transfer fee this summer and wouldn't have been far off the cost of Leo Scienza last summer.

So now is the time to start to think outside of the box and make a gesture that will not only excite the supporters, but bring them closer to the club, make them feel more a part of it and that the club cares.

The next month or so will be crucial, Saints need to make that significant gesture and make it now, start the siege mentality now and then we can all start to feel proud of our club again.

All Photos Via Reuters