Premier League Thread

I thought that, I've bought myself a membership as I think it's a steal for £25, wonder how many of them they have sold, I expect quite a lot of people who can't afford ST's have.

 

Bigger stadium.?

 

Well, if we can get average attendance over 95-96% this season there would be more of a case for it. It always puzzles me it's not higher anyway, but the board won't even think about expansion/new stadium until it is.

 

Not a good day for Man City they are losing 4-1 to Real Madrid after 80 mins. Man City seem to have some youngsters playing at the back but Real have made loads of substitutions.

 

Give it time, Chilco. In a sense we're still new kids in this division. Sustain this and improve gradually and I think it will become inevitable.
I agree with you that it is surprising that our attendance averages aren't higher as almost every game seems to sell out, and my old opinion has always been that St Mary's was built at least 5,000 too few.

 

We're not far off...announced attendance was 94.3% of capacity last year, and teams failing to use their away allotment likely accounts for a fair portion of that.

Still, I don't think that expanding the stadium is in the offing for some time.

 

I think percent of available home seats is the best way to see if we need more. Not much we can do about away not taking theirs. I bet the percentage is quite close to 100 in that case.

 

I'm bloody glad I bought the membership now!

 

I have bought a Membership, but am nervously awaiting it's arrival, as I think my Vitesse and Espanyol tickets are loaded on it.

 

Mine came this morning. I haven't bought any tickets yet, but you are right, whenever you buy any, they are uploaded to your membership card, and you swipe that at the turnstile.

 

I've thought of a flaw - what if you forget what seat you've got or there's a dispute over a seat you've bought?

 

Good point! Er, pass...

 

I hope Saints have thought of that! Maybe at the turnstiles when you swipe your card you get a little receipt with your seat number on it?

 

I thought of that the other day forgot to ask when I was on the phone though!

 

Thanks for mentioning that...went and found my booking and noted it down. Haven't got my card yet though.

 

With the massive boost in Sky income in 2016/17, wouldn't this be the ideal time to start to develop the ground rather than simply putting it into players wages.
Our main competitors are developing Spurs and West Ham and will benefit from grounds of 50k+ so an additional layer onto of the Kingsland Stand would boost attendance to 40k+ especially if we could develop that space to boost our family/concession area to encourage young fans to come to SMS as they are our future and also like to wear club merchandise.
The Itchen could be turned over to away fans, imagine the atmosphere if this was full of away fans belonging to the big boys/London clubs and the Northern turned over to the singing stand especially if we can introduce safe standing
"I have a dream!"

 

Got both my membership tickets today. So glad i did judging by the popularity of the tickets so far.

 

I believe stewards will have scanners that can tell you the seat number, but the amount of people who get lost when they have a ticket in their hands makes this a potential flaw, especially for late arrivals

 

It's the scale of the sky money that makes the investment of a stadium expansion less cruical.

Say we did increase the capacity by 8,000 and managed to sell out each game with the average fan bringing in £30 a game. That's 250k extra match income and across a league season that's roughly an extra 4.5m.

Sure, extra money is extra money but that's relatively small returns in premier league turnover.

To me a stadium expansion now would be more of a vanity project than a sound business need.

 

You're absolutely right. An expansion of the stadium would be a vanity project.
And yet clubs will continue to do it because it brings in money in the longer term and biggest of all - prestige. An unquantifiable, yet seemingly essential ingredient in sorting the glamour clubs from the alsorans. And Saints have said it enough times for everyone to hear by now. They want to join the elite.