Trent Alexander-Arnold was fully entitled to make his move to Real Madrid this summer.
Fans may like to romanticise the notion that being a boyhood fan of a club, rising through their ranks, and becoming one of their most important players should be enough for anybody. For some, it would be. But a player only gets one career, and the heart wants what the heart wants.
Alexander-Arnold's told him that he had already achieved everything he possibly could at Anfield. With Premier League, FA Cup, League Cup, Champions League and Club World Cup medals already in his collection, he was correct to think so. "And Alexander-Arnold wept, for there were no more worlds to conquer." At least not at Liverpool.
Trent Alexander-Arnold must live with Liverpool backlash
We can only assume that those same fans who booed Alexander-Arnold have never applied for another job with a different company, and that on point of principle, they will refuse to cheer anything Alexander Isak does in a Liverpool shirt, given the nature of his exit from Newcastle. Anything else would be rank hypocrisy and pure self-interest.
But football fandom doesn't work that way. When you choose a club to support - or, in many cases, when it chooses you - there is no paperwork to sign agreeing to be entirely coldly logical in how you react to things.
Just as Alexander-Arnold was entitled to leave, so too is every fan entitled to their own opinions about it - however irrational and purely emotional they may be, short of some of outright inexcusable and hateful abuse (of which Alexander-Arnold received plenty, for the record). Self-interest, from football fans? Yes, of course, why care about anything else?
In light of that, if Alexander-Arnold expected Liverpool fans to be understanding, then that was naive. The problem he has now is that a large part of the reason he took that move to the Bernabeu was to take his legacy to the next level. Instead, he may simply have ruined it.
Alexander-Arnold has not enjoyed the smoothest start to his Real career, alternating between a starting berth and the bench before suffering a hamstring injury last month that now has him sidelined.
That is a temporary setback - but it is already clear that Real are never likely build their side around a right-back with the same willingness and latitude that was afforded to him by Jurgen Klopp and, for one season only, by Arne Slot.
Alexander-Arnold's repeated defensive failings were more than forgiven in light of the fact that for each goal he cost Liverpool, he would help them create two or more, often in a fashion that no other player would have been capable of executing.
Real fans are infamously far more impatient than that; Gareth Bale never got Los Blancos onside regardless how many brilliant goals he scored or how many Champions League trophies he helped to inspire.
That precedent puts enormous pressure on Alexander-Arnold to live up to the standards of a new set of fans with whom he does not have the benefit of being a local lad done good.
The 26-year-old was explicit about his ambitions of winning the Ballon d'Or last year, and his move to Real seems like a calculated bid to increase his chances of doing exactly that.
That individualistic outlook is part of what rankled with some Liverpool fans. If he does not get anywhere near achieving it, he won't just have Reds fans to contend with, but Real fans too.
More to the point: he will have tarnished his Liverpool legacy with very little to show for it, at least from a career point of view.
But hey, who knows? There may still be hope for Alexander-Arnold even if things don't work out how he hopes at Real Madrid.
Where some players never recover their former clubs' affections after ignominious exits - ask Michael Owen and Raheem Sterling - there are examples of fans' attitudes changing over time.
It once would have seemed unthinkable that Fernando Torres would be rapturously received by an Anfield crowd ever again after he left for Chelsea in 2011, when the rivalry between the two sides still burned hot.
But Torres was given a notably warm reaction when he played and scored in a charity 'Legends' friendly against Ajax last summer.
Incredibly, that was not the first time it had happened; Torres was similarly received by Reds fans when he turned out in a charity game at Anfield as far back as 2015, just four and a half years after his infamous departure.
Is there any chance Alexander-Arnold might get a similar response if he goes back to Anfield for a testimonial or a charity game in, say, 2030? At the moment, it feels unlikely...but you can never say never.
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