Why are Lazio playing in a near-empty stadium?

5,402, 3,400, 5,000, no attendance given.

These are the sort of crowd figures you might expect from an English League Two side and not one of Italy's most famous clubs.

But that is the situation Lazio find themselves in after supporters decided to boycott home matches in protest against the club's president, Claudio Lotito, with the ultras encouraging him to sell the team.

"The Lazio fan needs to dream... and now at the moment, the Lazio fan is not dreaming," supporter and writer Simon Basten told BBC Sport.

Thousands opted to support their team from outside the 70,000-capacity Stadio Olympico gates instead of on the terraces during Monday's win against Sassuolo - a situation manager Maurizio Sarri labelled as "depressing".

The former Chelsea boss has called on the owner and fans to break the impasse and find a solution, but how has it come to this?

The divide between the Lazio ownership and fans is hardly a new phenomenon, with fan boycotts of the Olimpico taking place sporadically over the past decade.

Even last season footage of fans praying to God to remove the club president went viral on social media.

But frustration has built over the sale of key players and the club's subsequent drop off in the league.

"Fans are boycotting and not coming to games, but never as bad as this particular moment," says Basten, who has been supporting the club for over 50 years.

After winning the Coppa Italia in 2022 and the Italian Super Cup in 2017 and 2019, and finishing second in the 2022-23 Serie A season, many feel the club has stagnated before a proposed move to a new stadium in 2032.

Fan favourites Ciro Immobile, Luis Alberto, Felipe Anderson and Sergej Milinkovic-Savic have all departed and not been replaced by high-quality players, with the ownership conserving funds.

In January the club sold last season's joint-top goalscorer Taty Castellanos to West Ham, with former Arsenal midfielder Matteo Guendouzi also departing - leading to the tension among the fanbase bubbling to the surface.

The club bought Kenneth Taylor from Ajax, brought in Daniel Maldini on loan and signed striker Petar Ratkov from Red Bull Salzburg, despite Sarri saying he "did not know" the Serb and had not watched him play.

"The fans believe that if they don't go to the stadium, they will force Lotito out and he will be forced to sell the club," says Basten.

"'Don't go to the stadium, show the world that the fan is the boss and must be central to the project.'"

"But changing the manager, changing a player, changing a media consultant in a club is easy because you can force that in some way or form. Presidency and sale of the club is a little bit more complex."

Fan frustration deepened when a phonecall between Lotito and a fan was leaked on social media, with the owner seeming to criticise Sarri for his squad management.

Lotito later said his words were taken out of context and Sarri had his full faith, but the former Napoli and Juventus boss has cut a frustrated figure.

"We've had to deal with enormous difficulties and some of them are still going as playing in an empty stadium is depressing, but the players have reacted well to that too," said Sarri on Monday.

"I think the club has to take some initiative to bring them back because this is too much of a difficult situation for us."

Lazio supporter Basten says he has some sympathy for the ownership, with the club aiming to pay to renovate the abandoned former Italian rugby stadium Stadio Flaminio.

"This is not the moment to buy or sell because whoever wants to buy anyway has to wait for approval from the city council before putting in a bid," he says.

"It's a bit like trying to sell your house while you're waiting to have the OK to build a swimming pool.

"Lotito is not a tycoon, it's not like he can put loads of money into the club, he can't do that," he adds.

After the win against Sassuolo, the club's main ultra group, La Voce Della Nord, announced fans would be returning as a one-off 'final act of love' for Sunday's game against AC Milan, but would continue their "painful" boycott of home games for the rest of the season.

"Let's show our support for the team and the coach," they said in a post on social media. "Let's keep making our dissent heard.

"We believe this is the only way to make this ownership understand that we will not be complicit in their failures."

Basten is worried the off-pitch disharmony will have a negative effect.

"Lotito is as flexible as an iron bar," he says, "you will have to come to terms in some way or form. There has to be some type of peace between the two because otherwise kids are not going to follow Lazio.

"They want to see things, they don't want to see problems, they want be able to dream, and at the moment that's not happening. If they don't go see the stadium it's not going to happen at all."

This article is the latest from BBC Sport's Ask Me Anything team.