The Kraken

Of those 500 (or more as you intimate from surrounding areas); do you think they will be brand new customers? In other words, are they football fans who have never been to a game before but quite fancy it because we're in the Premier League? Or are they Southampton fans who happen to live in Pompey but haven't been bothered to turn up because they don't fancy the allure of League 1 or Championship football? Just wondering. As I see it, it's massively obvious that our attendances will rise in this division. And that we are of course now a more attractive proposition to come and watch. I just don't buy the argument that 500 people from our rival city who have never been to see football before before will suddenly come out of the woodwork now that we're in the top league. As you say, both of our opinions can be proved neither right nor wrong, but I find that idea to be a bit far fetched. 180,000 customers on our database suggests that, even with our attendances to date in the lower leagues, our outreach of supporters is not limited to the direct Southampton area. With that many people who have been to see us before, we surely already have a significant amount of fans who come from far and wide. Trying to grow the supporter base is clearly important, but I think we probably first need to encourage our customers base to come a little more often. That's how we've got a better chance of getting our attendances consistently higher IMO.

No. I don't think that at all. I've never said that. I think the opposite. Where have you got that ill-conceived view from? There may be some numbers who might do that. They will be small in comparison to the 180,000 customers we already have on the database. Most of whom don't live as far away as Weymouth, Or even Portsmouth, perhaps. It seems like you're the one stamping your feet. We are in the Premier League. Our fan base will grow. We will become a bigger club. We may well soon need a bigger stadium. That has never been in doubt. Why are you getting angry and making a number of points that don't actually go anywhere apart from stating the obvious?

Your first point was that more away fans will come to games, wasn't it? Great. 3,200 maximum away fans. As it has always been. On the other hand, apparently there are all those other neutral fans who will come to St Mary's just to watch a Premier League game will make all the difference. Because of our large catchment area. or something. I do confess, I've completely lost what you're trying to say, if it's different from the fact that our home and away attendances will increase a bit because we've gone up a division?

I'm a sucker for boredom and idiocy. Who's the bigger idiot? The idiot, or the idiot who responds to him? Go figure.

I'm still not sure if its a sensible answer or not, but I'll respond nonetheless. Away fans have got nothing to do with growing as a club. Nothing at all. So lets stop referring to them as a factor, shall we? And as we've risen a division, no doubt our home attendance will grow too? Sing hallelujah! Yeah, I think we're done.

If I've got this correct; now we are in the Premier League, more away fans will come to our home games to watch the opposition team? Is that right? Or more away fans will sneak into the home end, maybe? Either way, basing our attendance rising on a full away end or up to 500 away fans in the home end is a slightly weird justification. I'm not sure who is winning this one; stev2001 with his teenage musings or saint86 with his statements of the obvious. And people accuse Turkish et al of being trolls; these two are the worst kinds of pointless idiots you could wish to find.

Yep, I get suckered into your predictable and unfunny faux character evertime. Weird, heh?

Edit: Forget it; i'm out. Stupid discussion.

Sorry, I clearly got you confused with someone who had something interesting to say. Thanks for wasting my time.

OK. That's 1 game a season. What significant difference does that make? Against Man U we have plenty of home fans who want a ticket already. In fact, where is this even going? This is a ludicrous discussion.

I think I'm missing your argument on this. Is this Man U fans coming to Southampton to watch Sainst v Man U? Or neutral fans coming to watch Man U? I'm genuinely confused by what you mean.

Bloody hell, is this really logic? Fans will support Saints because they want to watch Man United? Have I read that wrong? I hope so.

Personally I think the whole catchment area discussion to be largely a waste of time. Particularly when people claim that getting to the PL (as opposed to being in the Championship) will suddenly mean that signicantly more fans from far away places will start to show an interest in coming to St. Mary's regularly. It's a talking point and no more. It means nothing. We'll attract more fans if we're successful. We'll attract less if we're not. The vast majority will come from within 20 miles or so of the stadium. Anything else is just minor statistics, as I've said especially so in comparison to our 180,000 customers on the database.

You've clearly quickly forgotten Neal Heaney, Stuart Ripley, Frankie Bennett and Neil McCann then. Oh, hang on, I think that might not be correct.....

No it won't, unless we choose to make a special exception. Premier League rules dictate home clubs must give 10% of the attendance or 3,000 tickets to the away side, whichever is lower. Saints figure has typically been 3,200. There is no rule for us to go above that, unless we choose to.

Let's be realistic. Places like Fareham, Locks Heath etc are obvious candidates for new fans who could go either way with their support. Expecting to steal all but a handful of fans from those within the city is an extreme hope. Pompey are in the same division we were just 2 short years ago, its not as if they've disappeared entirely. There's a small element of merit in some of the "catchment area" talk on here; there's also far too much pointless rhetoric. Our appeal as a club will grow as we gain more success in the top league, of course it will. But lets at least have some perspective; any fans we actually attract from the other end of the M27 will be negligible in the general scheme of things; especially in comparison with the fact that we already have 180,000 customers on the club database.

I'm very concerned that you still consider yourself humourous or credible.

Well what is the point then? Because I'm clearly missing it; other than if its to state that most SFC customers live fairly close to Southampton, fewer than that live 30 - 50 miles away, even fewer still live further away and some live really far. And some might choose to come and watch us play, once in a while, because Premier League football is such a massive draw. Is that it? Because genuinely, if not, then I don't know what point is being made.

The whole catchment area discussion is really quite bizarre. I was reading through an old thread yesterday and someone popped up to say that Liverpool's metroplitan area and catchment area was similar to ours, and they also have Everton to consider, so therefore we could be on an equal footing. It's quite astounding really.

Is the answer "ooh Terry Hurlock"? I haven't got the Guardian so I don't know what the clue is. I imagine I'm right, though.

I'll be perfectly honest; I've never heard anyone say they support Saints because Arsenal were full up. Our immediate catchment area is obvious; its good that we have no other club within 15 or 20 miles of us. As we get bigger we will likely attract more new fans from the likes of Fareham, Locks Heath, Ringwood, Winchester etc. Outside of 30 or 40 miles its negligible how many fans are going to gravitate towards us. Even north Hampshire we're massively up against the likes of Reading, QPR and the London sides. And a real pipe dream to imagine that significant numbers of fans from W.Sussex, East Devon and Surrey are going to look at Saints as the new Man City and gravitate towards us. Sorry, I don't buy that at all.

We already do this. At least towards the upper end of the scale. Regular ST prices now already go up to £780 for adult Premium seating in the Itchen. In fact the club have also brought out a new season ticket which allows access to one of the suites pre-game (on a pay basis) which comes in at over £1,000. So we have the more expensive STs already. Which, under your model, would unfortunately mean that we'd need to build a whole load of new seats just to price them cheaply. Unrealistic, I'd suggest.

At the very, very worst this should have been a community service sentence. Get him cleaning streets or something, a rap over the knuckles, a "don't be an aboslute weapon like that ever again". 3 years for making a rubbish and poorly timed joke on facebook. Lunacy.

That analogy has been suggested a few times before. There are some parallels of course, but the two situations are also very different. Pretty much all home games were sold out at the Dell, and those games sold out very, very quickly. The Dell also had a season ticket waiting list, which we don't now. Moving to a bigger stadium wasn't the issue, everyone knew we needed to do that. Moving to a 32K stadium proved a few people wrong on how big a stadium needed to be, and that was the clever part: accurately predicting what our new capacity should have been. It was a brave move to say that Stoneham's 25K was probably a mistake and we should aim for more. I don't tend to think the timescale will surprise me. Even if the club started planning now and put in applications etc, we're years away from a start. Reading have had plans for expansion since 2007 and done nothing with them. We haven't actually got formal plans yet; and I assume that reason to be because the club don't yet know what a realistic capacity of an extended stadium would yet be. And while they may have all the information from our previous time in the PL, I don't believe they are a hugely reliable benchmark. For a start the figures are 10 years old, and apart from our post FA Cup season (for which most games sold out) we had three seasons during which we didn't sell out the home allocation for a significant number of games. The vaguaries of the "Our future?" statement suggest to me that the club are laying down a challenge to the supporters. IMO we need to show at least 2, 3 maybe 4 seasons of continual sell-outs before the stadium expansion dream will become a reality. In the interim we can (and I hope we do) press on with formal plans, planning permission etc, but I think the go/no go decision is a few years away yet.

F*cking hell, I knew when I posted that you'd come back and point out it wasn't actually spot-on. To all intents and purposes it captures what the kit is like. And it did so 2 months ago; so it was a decent enough mock up.