With two straight sell outs at St Mary's for the visit of Leicester City a week or so ago and for Wednesday night's game against Aston Villa you would have thought that the visit of Bournemouth would be a sure fire full house but not the case.

The sell out for Leicester City was even more impressive when you consider that the Foxes sent back around 1,000 tickets that were then sold to home fans, given that Bournemouth have taken the full allocation you would have thought that their visit would have already have sold out.

But that is not the case and at a rough estimate around 750 tickets are still available in the home sections for Sunday afternoon's fixture.

These are mainly in either the corner of the Itchen & Chapel stand, an area that is usually the last to sell out where about 300 tickets still remain and the Chapel stand itself that has about 360 unsold seats.

The other 100 or so are dotted around the ground with the Northam End being completely sold out.

So why has this fixture not sold out ?

Well the fact that it is live on a Sunday afternoon is not helping and with this fixture being a category A game it means that an adult ticket will cost upwards of £40 a ticket and that is a fair chunk to pay to watch Bournemouth who with respect at every other Premier club would be the lowest category.

The only reason for this to be an A game is geographical, but the reality is that for Saints fans there is no rivalry with the Cherries, our derby game is Portsmouth and that will never change, for many this is just another game.

Indeed when we played the Cherries on equal terms in League 1 a few years ago for just about the only time in most Saints supporters lifetimes, the game was far from a sell out with only 26,289 present and even the taster for this game a month or so earlier in the League cup saw St Mary's barely half full with 17, 135 turning up.

Both those games saw Bournemouth sell out their allocation, for them they see this as a derby game, but that is not how Saints fans see it.

Hopefully these last tickets will be snapped up, after all this season although seeing full houses or virtually full houses for most games, it hasn't seen tickets fly out of the door, even the visit of Manchester United, traditionally a match that sells out fast, went right to the wire with the last ticket not being sold till two days before the game.

So I think the reason this fixture has not sold out is purely down to cost and the fact that it is on TV, it should never have been a category A fixture, people want value for money and paying £40 plus to see Bournemouth is not an attraction.

Photo: Action Images

truthfulsaint added 10:19 - Oct 27 It's down to money it's one or the other Times are hard
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SonicBoom added 10:53 - Oct 27 So there's 750 left with 5 days to go. so it hasn't sold out.......yet.
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dirk_doone added 11:12 - Oct 27 You know the same as everyone else that it will sell out just like other games. Nothing new in that. Is the big story now how many days before each game a match sells out?
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SanMarco added 12:04 - Oct 27 It's also live on tv - those that live a long way from St. Mary's and only attend some games are less likely to choose a televised one...
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Jesus_02 added 15:56 - Oct 27 They play in red, there are positive connections with Saints - Lallana (pre-twit) and Surman are obvious examples. They played nice football to get to the Premier League and they have a nice beach. OK some of their fans are the equivalent of Elijah Wood but generally I see them in a similar light to Eastliegh
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