When Danny Ings came off the bench to face his former club on Friday night with only 6 minutes left, it highlighted not only how far his career has gone downhill since joining Aston Villa, but what is missing at Saints and what might have been had he stayed.
When Danny Ings left St Mary's just over a year ago, most Saints supporters had assumed he would have only left for a club in the Champions league or at least the Europa League, certainly one who would have been challenging for a top 4 place.
So it was a shock when he joined Aston Villa, a bigger club than Saints, that could not be denied, but certainly not one that had done much challenging in the past decade or indeed one that after finishing 11th the previous season looked like moving much higher in the near future.
You could understand that at 29 Ings might want to have had one last shot at glory, you could have understood if he had gone to one of the so called Big Six, but at Aston Villa he wasn't likely to get much more glory than at St Mary's.
You would have also thought that with a World Cup looming as he turned 30 he would have wanted to be pushing his way back into the England squad.
With 3 solid seasons under his belt including the previous one where he had notched 12 goals in 29 Premier league appearances, unless he was going to a big club, then why rock the boat, stay at Saints, be the big fish in a small pond and score the goals that gets you in contention for a World Cup.
What hurt Saints fans was the way he left, allegedly even his own team mates did not know he was off as they prepared for a pre season friendly at St Mary's, but the news broke that it was Aston Villa he was going to and Southampton fans who had considered the local lad their own asked the question Why ?
Ings himself must now be asking the same question and now at Villa Park he is reduced to the role of bit part player running the clock down, with Saints chasing an equaliser in injury time, his fall from grace was completed as with the Saints keeper Gavin Bazunu in the Villa half and an open goal albeit from distance looming, he blazed his shot far wide.
Of course he never said it, he told the media he was going to Villa Park for a project, although few could see what that project would be, but everyone knew that he was leaving for money.
That although he was being offered a deal at St Mary's that would make him the highest paid player in the club's history, Villa were offering him more.
In real terms probably about £30k a week more, but that was enough to make him think about his bank balance more than he would of his England chances in a World Cup a little over a year away.
Sadly for both Danny Ings and Southampton Football Club it was a bad decision for both.
If Ings had stayed at St Mary's last season he would have surely been a regular starter and maintained his goals per game ration that at 34 Premier League goals in 67 games was better than a goal every two games.
At Villa Park he has scored just 8 times in 36 games, that's just a goal every 4.50 games.
Had he stayed at St Mary's then he would surely have also started this season as the main striker and as we have seen we have been lacking one of those not just last season but this as well, a striker that just has that knack and scores for fun.
Saints have sorted out their issues at the back, now their scoring problem needs to be solved, if Danny Ings was at St Mary's he could now be the icing on the cake,how much better would we be if we had Danny Ings scoring 4 goals in our first 8 games.
But that is all wishful thinking now, Saints will soldier on and so will Danny Ings at Aston Villa, he will be moving on to another project now, that will be browsing the holiday brochures to see what he is going to do in the middle of November for a couple of weeks, just over a year ago he would have been thinking that he would be going to Quatar.
This story could have had a happy ending for both Danny Ings and Southampton Football Club, but the truth is Ings made a decision where he decided to chase money rather than goals and as Ralph Hasenhuttl said at the time, players don't want to become club legends anymore !