It was a slow start in terms of ticket sales, but a late surge saw a great attendance for the visit of FC Midtjylland to St Mary's showing how Saints are building a strong supporter base.

I must admit at the weekend I thought we might struggle to match the packed house we had in the last round of the Europa League for the visit of FC Midtjylland, back then tickets we snapped up well in advance for a crowd of 30, 850 including 1,357 Dutch supporters in the visitors section.

But with only a few days to go it appeared that only around 20,000 tickets had been sold for this one and it was hard to see the gate topping 23-24k which would have been very disappointing.

But in the final few days ticket sales picked up and this boosted by a good walk up on the night saw an attendance of 28,890, only 1,960 less that the visit of Vitesse.

However the official number of FC Midtjylland fans in attendance was a paltry 190, they are clearly poorly supported despite dominating Danish football at present and that has to be in part due to the atrocious way they play the game.

So if we take the fact that there were 1,167 less away fans in the ground last night, it means that we had only 793 less ans in the ground.

Statistics perhaps, but what they are telling us is that despite the hype that surrounded the Vitesse game and the low key build up to this one, we now have a core support that is there week in week out.

As a club we need to build on this and make sure that it stays at these levels and like club's such as Norwich and Brighton, a consistent big average attendance is relying less on success on the field, but of building up loyalty to the team regardless of results.

We are still a long way from doing that but last night's crowd proved we have the base there.

Photo: Action Images

IanRC added 10:21 - Aug 21 Having seen the way they play I am not surprised they are poorly supported. Unfortunate not to obtain a better result, the first goal will be crucial next week.
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SaintBrock added 13:27 - Aug 21 Of course Nick, we are saints fans dyed in the wool and we'd turn up to watch them play pantomine if that was all that was on offer.
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