Mostly when a player leaves a football club it is a blow but supporters move on quickly, but sometimes it is something that cannot be brushed away lightly, it is like the breaking up of a marriage, it can break your heart.
The only thing certain in football is that one day a player for a club will stop playing for that team, for all it will finally be because they have finally reached the end of their playing career and when that happens for most it is usually for a club they have not spent their best years at so is not a blow.
But these days few stay at club's their entire career, so there cannot be that many players who at some time have left a club with the fan base not aggrieved that they have done so.
Over the years at Southampton we have had many players that have left us, it is the nature of the game, most football supporters seem to be able to accept this, but any club fan base will have a proportion of there fans who feel that players should have undying loyalty and should never want to leave.
So for them when a player leaves it is personal, it has to be someone's fault , to be blunt it is usually the player themselves , but that taints the memory so it is easier to blame the club for wanting to cash in and forcing the player out.
Back in 1977 Mike Channon leaving was a heartbreaker, but most Saints fans accepted that he had given us over a decade of first team service, he deserved a shot at the big time and as a then second division club we could not give him that, we were heartbroken but could accept it.
There have been some bitter transfers from Saints though , perhaps the first I can remember is Kevin Keegan, those of a certain age remember it as the club waiting till they had sold the season tickets before it was announced that Keegan wanted to leave, in those days of pre social media it was easy to keep secrets in football.
So the anger was not at Keegan but directed at the club itself, sound familiar !
Steve Williams leaving in 1984 was not without it's ranting in the fanbase, but he was moving to Arsenal and again had given us good service, it was a natural progression, it might have been through gritted teeth but most wished him well.
Likewise the departure of Alan Shearer in 1992, yes he was home grown, albeit he was from Newcastle and an adopted son, but we knew he was destined for better things and it was only a matter of time.
The late 1990's saw players come and go but in the main although the departure of the likes of Kevin Davies was a blow, the club was very good at signing replacements.
Even when Davies's replacement James Beattie left it was not with the rage that would be the norm in the future it would seem.
Perhaps it was the dawn of social media like Twitter, it gave everyone a chance for a 168 word or the like rant, no need for explanations just a rant.
The first great transfer meltdown came in the summer of 2014, some would say that this would never have happened if Nicola Cortese had still been at the club, he would never have let a player go, only he had, even he could not hold on to Alex Oxlade Chamberlain in 2012, ironically the player had wanted to stay another year at least, but by all accounts allegedly our Chairman had fallen out with the players father.
In 2014 suddenly everyone was leaving, but each of the 5 players who left seemed to have a different reaction in the supporter base, Rickie Lambert who was an absolute God went quietly, most accepted that at 32 his best days were behind him and he was living a dream to go to his boyhood heroes Liverpool.
Luke Shaw and Callum Chambers were seen as good pieces of business, big money for players who were destined for bigger things.
But two players attracted hatred and for two reasons.
The first Dejan Lovren was the subject of the ire of the Saints fans for the way he demanded a move and made it clear he would not even try to play if made to stay, given he had only been here a year, the fans were aggrieved and quite rightly so, it doesn't matter what club you support, if you buy a player you have a right that he will honour his contract, yes if he does well you expect him to attract attention, but he hadn't paid his dues.
The second departure attracted wholesale abuse, but it was a player who had been in our first team for 6 years, he had paid his dues. surely he deserved a big move to a top club, the answer was yes he did, perhaps he did not go completely the right way about it, but Adam Lallana should have gone with the best wishes of the supporter base ringing in his ears and a welcome back home anytime just as Mike Channon had received 35 years earlier.
But Adam Lallana was different, if Rickie Lambert was loved, so was Adam Lallana he was adored because he was the (almost) local lad made good, he had stayed loyal through the dark years of administration etc and alongside Lambert had led us to the Premier League and to the England side, we not only loved him we were proud of him and that is a rarity in football.
Most players are just loved by the fans, but it is the home grown ones that instil a sense of pride, so when they leave it is like losing a child and the breakdown of a marriage rolled into one.
There is no heartbreak that compares to either one of those traumatic events in life and if you roll them into one it is hard to take.
So now we have that feeling with Danny Ings, his situation is different to that of Lallana, he was born here, but made his name elsewhere, when he came home in 2018 it was very much a question of the prodigal son coming home.
His first season on loan was good but not great, in truth if we had not exercised the option to buy his story might not have been the same, but we did and like Lambert suddenly his career kicked back into life after several injury hit years.
But we did go through with the option to buy and as much as Danny was good for us, we were good for him.
We knew that he would be in demand and most Saints supporters had come to a sense of reality that there is a pecking order in football and that these days some clubs can pay a lot more than others and I mean a lot lot more.
Ings of course spoke about how he was happy at St Mary's but if a big club came in then he would want to consider the offer, we understood and even accepted that.
But the events of Wednesday were totally out of the blue, it was like coming home after work and finding a note on the mantlepiece from your wife saying she has run off with the window cleaner.
You could understand if she had run off to live with Robbie Williams or Ant & Dec to live in luxury in a big mansion somewhere, but the Window cleaner !!!!!! (With respect to window cleaners who may be reading, It used to be the milkman wives run off with but there don't seem to be any these days)
This was not Adam Lallana or Mike Channon moving to a bigger club, it was a move to Aston Villa.
Now I accept that Villa are a bigger club than us, but these days where the premier League is polarised there are four clubs bigger than all the rest, then you have Spurs, Arsenal & Leicester, then you have 10 other clubs most of whom could finish anywhere between 8th and 17th this season.
Turning 29 this is the last big move for Danny Ings, perhaps he has accepted himself he is not going to get a shot at the highest level so he might as well take the highest offer, that seems to be the way it is to the Saints supporters.
Ralph Hasenhuttl made a comment that players don't want to be club legends anymore a few days ago, we didn't take it too seriously at the time, now we know what he was alluding to.
Football is a business, no one denies that, but there are still ways to do things, if Danny Ings had gone to Manchester City then no one could have begrudged him the chance to win a trophy, a week or so ago he seemed to think that way himself, if he wasn't going to go to a club with a shot at a trophy he might as well stay at St Mary's, that seemed to have been what he had told the club.
Then suddenly bang he was gone and not even a note on the mantlepiece, for that matter not even a note in the dressing room to his team mates.
Money can turn everyone's head and football agents are very good at encouraging their players to chase the biggest offer and it seems to me that there was a lack of big clubs coming in for Danny Ings, something his agent would have been promising a few months ago and was now not materialising, so the agent would have changed tack, if he wasn't going to get glory then go for the biggest pay day.
I can understand that, but does Danny Ings truly need the money, he will be rich already, at Villa he will by all accounts only get around £1.5 million a year in wages more than our offer, that is a lot for supporters, but for a Premier League footballer it is a drop in the ocean.
I wonder if now the dust is settling a little that Danny Ings realised that he has made a big mistake, he is uprooting his family from their home and moving them to the Midlands where if he doesn't come up with the goods he is not the local boy made good, but the scapegoat.
He has thrown away as Ralph Hasenhuttl said the chance to become a club legend, he will no longer be able to walk the streets of his home town without at best people turning away in derision and at worst some idiot hurling abuse at him or more.
For Saints fans like the transfer of Adam Lallana this will hurt for a while, it has broken the hearts of Southampton, not just the fans but the City as well, one of our own has kicked us in the teeth and it is hard to forgive and forget.
There were no wild horses dragging Adam Lallana from St Mary's to Anfield as some would like to think and that team of horses wasn't in Southampton again on Wednesday night to drag Danny Ings kicking and screaming to Villa Park.
He wanted to go with indecent haste, if he truly cared about a big club and chasing glory then he would have bided his time and waited to see if that big club came in as the transfer window neared its closing.
But he wasn't willing to do that, he wanted out to the highest bidder and it seems that he had to do it now before that highest bidder gave the money elsewhere, perhaps I am wrong, but my heart and my head tells me I am not.
Some will say it's just football, but when has football been just football, it is a passion in this country and although all have different levels of support, something like this matters to us all.
So for Saints we have to move on, just as we did back in 1982, when Keegan left and a youngster called Danny Wallace came through and we went on to better things, or in 1998 when Kevin Davies left and a saviour from Blackburn arrived in James Beattie and again we went on to better things.
Or even 2014 when Rickie Lambert & Adam Lallana left and in came Pelle and Tadic and we went on to better things.
I don't hate Danny Ings I just feel saddened because I thought he was different.
Hopefully that will be the case this time around, certainly Ralph Hasenhuttl has slowly built up a squad with depth, last season it was stretched to the limits, we know that, but now we have some money to strengthen it, yes we need to find the 12 Premier League goals Danny Ings scored last season, but we can do that.
People are quick to point out that we will be relegated due to the form in the second half of the season, but slow to recall that in the first half we topped the Premier League for the first time ever.
This coming season we are one of 10 clubs who could finish anywhere between 8th & 17th, we have to make sure that it is the higher end of the mid table and not the lower.
Spending money is no guarantee of success, Everton have spent 10 times what we have in the last 5 years yet have fared little better, Villa have spent more and had the same results.
As is the Southampton Way, we have to spend what we have and spend it well.