SAINTS have improved their average attendance by almost 4,000 since relegation from the Championship in the summer of 2009.

Two large south coast derby crowds at St Mary’s this season currently sees Saints averaging 21,434.

Boosted by 3,200 travelling fans, the crowd for the October win against Bournemouth was a season’s best 26,289.

Tuesday’s crowd for the visit of Brighton, who were also backed by a sizeable following, was just a bit lower at 26,237.

But those are easily the two highest crowds in the third tier this season.

And Saints’ current average is almost 3,000 better than next best Sheffield Wednesday (18,444) and over 6,000 more than third best Charlton Athletic (15,382).

Saints’ current league average is 2.1 per cent up on last season’s 20,982 average.

In turn, that was 17.5 per cent up on the miserable 2008/09 season when the average crowd at St Mary’s dipped to 17,849 as Saints slipped out of the top two divisions for the first time in almost half a century.

That means Saints’ 2010/11 average is almost 20 per cent higher than in 2008/09.

Saints’ current average is even better than their final average in the 2007/08 Championship campaign, where the club averaged 21,253.