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Ralph Hasenhuttl Addresses Saints Fans On Ings Transfer

As you can imagine social media went mad when the news came out that Danny ings had departed suddenly for Aston Villa, strangely the early reactions from the club have been deafening, but the manager has spoken.

When it emerged last night on Aston Villa's official website that they had signed Danny Ings the internet went mad, all the big media outlets carried the story and social media went into meltdown.

But one website was strangely mute, that of Southampton FC, who made and as of 7.30am Thursday morning still have not made an official announcement that Ings has left the club.

This suggests that they are not happy with his departure, they will have been aware that he may leave, there is no doubt of that, but it seems that the events of Wednesday came right out of the blue and gave them no opportunity to try and create a market where they could potentially drive up the price.

Most were surprised that it was Aston Villa that he signed for, Saints fans could accept that he would leave for Champions league football, even Europa League, but to go to Villa a club who finished 11th last season and are in the process of selling their best player suggests that Ings had been made an offer he could not turn down financially and was not willing to wait to see if he could get a move to a big club.

Villa have a lot of money to spend, but not a lot more and in some cases less than the 10 clubs that finished in front of them last season.

But although the fans will feel a little let down, this is football and it is just business and Ralph Hasenhuttl will know that as well as anyone and he may well feel that the money received from Ings will enable him to strengthen his squad.

In simple terms he has to find 12 Premier League goals next season, can he buy a striker that can achieve that, ironically a year ago Aston Villa signed Ollie Watkins from Brentford who did that and more, could Adam Armstrong replicate that.

This is what Ralph had to say:

"We had a fantastic player over a few years who helped us a lot staying in the league,”

"Finally, he didn’t decide to sign a new contract for us. He’s decided to go somewhere else, which is his right, but we lose a fantastic player and person, and get a lot of money for him with only one year left."

"I think it’s a deal where we only have winners on every side. We can replace him and we must replace him to get a player who scores goals for us."

"I know that we have a few others in our team who must step up now, but it is clear that we have this money, and we need this money for maybe bringing two more players into this squad that we need.”

So of course Ralph will be disappointed to lose Danny Ings, but he is also confident that he can reinvest the money well and move the squad forward.

Lets be honest this is not a new situation for Southampton FC and the one good thing is that it has happened early on and we have time to replace Ings.

The one thing we all have to do now is give the manager and Southampton Football Club some time to show they can use the situation to their advantage, after all it was only 3 years ago some were complaining that we had signed a crock from Liverpool and two years ago many suggested that he was not worth paying £20 million for.

All I am saying is that let's not moan about something before it has happened or in this case hasn't happened. !

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