IT is a topic of conversation guaranteed to get all Saints fans animated.

Should the club extend St Mary's stadium in a bid to attract even more fans - and, therefore, bank more revenue - than they currently do?

Bigger attendances are currently the subject of hot debate at a couple of Premier League clubs.

Tottenham are keen to move into a new 56,000 capacity stadium, compared to their current White Hart Lane capacity of around 20,000 fewer seats.

Everton have just revealed plans to potentially move to a 50,000 stadium, which would also give them around 20,000 more seats than Goodison Park currently does.

One club who are already planning to move are West Ham, whose current capacity at Upton Park of around 35,000 is already more than St Mary's.

But from the start of the 2016/17 season, the Hammers will take residence at the 54,000 2012 London Olympic Stadium.

Providing they can fill all those extra seats, that would give them a huge financial boost ... the sort that Tottenham and Everton are also hoping for.

Saints fans wouldn't want to see their club get left behind, constricted by a capacity of 'only' around 32,000.

Former Saints chairman Rupert Lowe once declared that St Mary's could be expanded by around 12,000 extra seats, through the addition of 'bolting' on extra seats on top of the existing stands.

And in the summer of 2012 Saints chairman Nicola Cortese gave every fan who bought a season ticket a DVD containing images of a new-look, bigger St Mary's.

No words of explanation were ever offered, however, leaving puzzled supporters to draw their own conclusions as to why the images had been made public.

Were they just conceptual images of what Cortese one day imagined St Mary's would look like, or actual designs drawn up that could be submitted to the local council for discussion?

We might never know the answer to that one.

Current Saints chairman Ralph Krueger has now entered the stadium expansion plan discussion.

Asked about the 'e' word, he told the Daily Echo recently: “Once we have no seats empty for a multiple row of games we'd love to look at expansion, but we're still fighting to make sure the seats are filled every game.

“We're sure we have a product where that's going to be happening on a regular basis.”

In 2012/13, Saints' first season back in the Premier League, the club averaged 30,874.

Last season, despite the fact the club finished a record-equalling eighth since the top flight's rebranding, the average crowd figure actually fell to 30,212.

Why was that?

It was generally accepted the quality of football on offer was as good as anything served up by the Saints team in the Premier League era.

There were the crowd-pleasing skills of Adam Lallana, Jay Rodriguez, Rickie Lambert ...Surely crowds should have gone up, not down?

That should serve as a sober warning to Krueger not to rush into any expansion plans, not that he appears willing to anyway.

If Saints couldn't fill the stadium when things were going pretty well, then they probably can't when things aren't as rosy.

Sure, for the high profile games against the elite, Saints could almost certainly fill a bigger stadium than one with a 32,000 capacity.

But they are not alone in that. Most Premier League clubs probably could.

What about all the other games, though?

The ones against the lesser lights, the QPRs, the Crystal Palaces, the Swanseas, the Burnleys, the Leicesters. Say Saints are eighth, ninth or tenth in the table, would a home game against West Bromwich Albion see the 'sold out' signs displayed? Possibly. Probably not, though, in reality.

Lifelong fan Nick Illingsworth, writing on this topic, is right when he says the ball is in Saints' court right now.

They need to attract more fans by being more supporter-friendly in terms of prices. Make it easier to buy, and pay for, season tickets. Give bigger discounts on merchandise to season ticket holders. Reduce admission for youngsters.

These are all fairly simple things to organise, but the little things can mean a lot.

The Premier League's mutation into the cash-rich behemoth it is today makes it incredibly hard for Saints, and other clubs of their size, to gatecrash the top four or even the top six.

Look at last season. Even with a host of great players who subsequently signed for some of the biggest clubs in world football, Saints still finished 23 points off the top four.

With that in mind, the club need to start being clever and cute with regards to seeking capacity crowds for ALL their home games.

It is a phenomenally tough challenge, of course it is.

Even if Krueger gets the run of capacity crowds he wants, and Saints expand St Mary's, then even harder work start.

Saints will have to try and keep filling a 36,000 stadium, or a 38,000 one, or a 40,000 one.

For a club who only averaged 15,000 or so until 2001, that is a mighty ask.

This story originally appeared in The Pink, which contains unique content and is available every weekend