Nathaniel Clyne's believes the Champions league is the natural next step in his progression and although this is in one respect a drawback for Saints, in another it shows how far the club has come.
The national press have of course chosen to take Clyne's comments and make them fit the best headlines, of course Nathaniel Clyne is ambitious so why should he not talk of those ambitions, speaking at a FootballFightingEbola event he said.
''I'm flattered by the interest from the big clubs. It shows that I'm doing well and I've had a good season.
''I'm definitely ambitious. Every player would love to be playing in the Champions League and winning trophies and titles. That's what you play football for - that's the dream."
''I would say Champions League football is the next step in my progression. I think I need experience playing European football. We're doing well with Southampton and hopefully we can get there. That would be great. So I'm just concentrating on Southampton. There are a few more games to play, so I'm just concentrating on getting to the fourth spot.''
These are all comments that you would expect from an ambitious player, after all what would you expect him to say "Im not ambitious at all I prefer fighting relegation or mid table mediocrity to challenging for honours"
But in today's modern game any hint of ambition from the latest player to be supposedly in demand is an indication that they are desperate to leave their current club and join Manchester United/Manchester City/ Chelsea/Arsenal.
But although Saints fans don't like to read these headlines linking our players with big money moves, we should be happy, it shows that we have players who are good enough to compete at the top level, would we rather be in the bottom half of the table with a squad that no one above us wants anyone from ?
I would say the answer to that question is no ! but we also have to recognise what football has become these days and what our natural steps of progression are.
The reality is that Saints have to accept that in football the big clubs will always look to pick off the best players, they can do that because of the Champions league and they can do that because they have the financial clout, being blunt Nathaniel Clyne is a great player who would naturally want to play for the biggest club he can, at the highest level that he can and the reality is that the clubs at this level are going to pay him more money that Saints could afford, we have to accept that at the moment we are a level down from those big clubs.
But that does not mean that we cannot make steps forward ourselves with our own natural progression, that means continuing to develop the likes of Clyne through a good transfer policy and at the same time utilising the youth system to bring on the likes of Shae and Chambers.
Of course in an ideal world we would keep all of these players, but the world is never ideal and we have to work the system and keep progressing ourselves.
That means continually reinvesting transfer money received into strengthening the squad as a whole, we did this last summer and although there can be no doubt that if we had held on to certain players we would have been stronger still, overall we are a better squad for the trials of last summer as has been shown by what we have achieved so far this season.
Our next natural step is European qualification and if we do that then it will be easier for us to sign quality players, even though it may only be the Europa League it is still an incentive for good players to join the club, I said this a year ago when our ex manager was saying that the Europa league would not be good for Saints, by that statement he showed that he lacked ambition, he was content with avoiding relegation, not with competing in the cups either domestic or European.
Now it is a different matter, it is likely we will lose a player or two in the summer, the good news is that big money will come in and that we are already identifying the replacements, that is called pre planning and it is why we prospered after the rape of our squad last summer.
So we should not be afraid of one of our players making statements about ambition, it shows how far we have come, we now have players that are good enough to have those ambitions and there are now plenty of up and coming players who have ambitions to play for Southampton Football Club and that is a good sign.
Yes it would be nice to be one of the big clubs, but we are not, but we can become at the forefront of the next level and that would enable us to compete for trophies not to mention for a Champions League spot.
The best football clubs are built on solid foundations and building foundations takes time, we are doing things the right way.