These days Saints have a different type of player than ever before and it is this hunger for success in their players that will drive the club forward, but it does have both its plus and minus points.
Morgan Schneiderlin's over to Manchester United was a sad day for Saints fans, Morgan had grown with the club and been on a roller coaster journey with us that saw us plunge to the depths of League One and rise to the top 7 of the Premier league, perhaps that is the biggest reason why we are sad to see him go.
But Schneiderlin certainly wasn't the first Saints player of recent times to want to leave the club and he wont be the last, the downside of success is that yes you get better players join you, but eventually they will outgrow the club.
That may not sound good news to Saints fans, but until we sit in our own 50k capacity stadium with a stream of trophies in our cabinet then it is going to be reality, the natural pecking order is there and we have to work around it and not against it.
That mean accepting how the club needs to work, that is buying in players at th right price and knowing when to move the on and repeat the process, of course their will be failures along the way, but if you make the percentage that fail small and in the main succeed in the task then the club will keep moving forward.
But in today's game players are different, the game is different and that is where we need to use the ambition of players to our own ends. We want players who hanker to play for Manchester United, who see Saints as a stepping stone as that being the case they are going to put in the effort to make sure that they achieve their goals and if they put themselves in the target line of the big clubs they are doing something right.
In the past it was different and at Saints we had a different culture back then, we looked to keep a squad together and only have to sell a player every now and then, but that perhaps tells us ore about the quality back then and where we are now
Of course we don't wan to lose players and over a period of time we would hope to grow as a club so that we are challenging for honours and players want to say longer, but that will take time and we need to kept our strategy right now and that means making profit and reinvesting it back in the squad.
It will be tough to see players go but the key will always be what we do next and so far we haven't done badly, measuring success will now get harder, the jump from 7th to 6th is that much more difficult than 8th to 7th, we are now trying to compete with the big boys, that is not as easy as some would have you believe.
But Morgan Schneiderlin moving once again highlights the positive side of Southampton Football Club these days, it shows us how the club now works, with £25 million in the bank we can look to buy two additions to the squad to replace Morgan and if they follow him to be worth that £25 million themselves then we will have progressed.