The Virgil Van Dijk Stays at Southampton Thread

Well the lad has been linked with nearly all the top teams this summer. Even with the window closed this will go on until eventually he will go, probably in next years summer window. That is because of the reputation Saints have earned for themselves as a selling club. If they give in now they will never get rid, so Imo they have to make a stand at some point, maybe nows the time to do so!!

 

An apology is an admission.

 

The only way that Les can back down is if:
1) Our owners change
2) The money is so obscene that everyone laughs and says we will have a bit of that.
3) VVD becomes the bad guy, throws his toys out of the pram, and hands in notice.*

*No sign of that so far, other than childish posturing to show he's been thwarted.

 

I'd be very surprised/annoyed if something did happen on the final day. I'd like to think we'd get a replacement bedded in if we had any intention at all of allowing him to leave (which this year I don't believe we do. Least of all to Liverpool).

 

No and No.

 

Virgil will have to accept that he is here for another year or be the bad guy and give up his share of the transfer fee. He seems to be training well, but then he would whether he was staying or going. Do we accept that he is unable to do contact practice yet? Who knows? It does make we wonder if he is going to have some permanent problem...took a long time to recover. Is he going to settle down....not sure as he isn't going out of his way to calm things down. In fact, he's being bloody annoying. May be a good player, but I don't even like him anymore.

 

I think it's the Premier League and it's veneration of money and greed that I dislike, rather than any individual clubs.

 

And you say I'm in a bubble.

If you hadn't done anything slightly unlawful then you wouldn't have needed to apologise and "drop interest".

 

Les has a big silver button on his desk. When he presses it, a draw will slide open and with an evil grin, he'll remove the document case ready to present....

 

No, I don't think this has anything to do with Saints reputation as a selling club. It is the nature of the modern game, & it stinks. It's bloody rotten actually.

The media that is selling off our players is currently doing the same for tottenham for instance, touting Alli and Dier as the next to fillow Walker out the door. It's not a Saints thing, it's a PL thing.

 

Arsenal preparing £45m bid according to the rags.

"Man the shredder"!

 

****it. If he's really acting the arse (though we don't actually know that he is) then I say sell him to Arsenal for £45 mill rather than Liverpool for £90 mill.

And take Chamberpot back to sweeten thd deal.

 

We did some tapping up, that's normal in football btw.

The FA investigated and didn't have enough evidence to take it furher, or Southampton didn't give all the evidence as they know deep down they'll have to sell at some point.

https://www.theguardian.com/footbal...ent-for-alleged-tapping-up-of-virgil-van-dijk

You think what we did was bad, Lukaku has said he's been talking to Jose since he took over at Utd about joining. But that doesn't matter as Everton didn't bother saying anything. It's a bizarre rule that it's almost a given it's allowed, until a club wants to make a complaint.

 

And no one will follow through on a complaint because everyone is at it.

 

If everyone was punished for tapping up we might as well scrap everything and start from scratch.

 

We didn't give any evidence because you can't threaten somebody with punishment that they've already received. It would defeat the point of making the complaint in the first place. We have left the case open.

We might consider a serious bid but if Liverpool try and get Virgil to force a leave at a lower price then Les will press that silver button.

 

...

 

Jumpers for goalposts?

Personally I wish we could start again, because greed has killed the game for the true fan imo. I would like to see a maximum wage, but it will never happen.

I genuinely did prefer League 1 to the PL, all things considered. I am aware that's a minority view though.

 

The dossier sits on Les Reeds' desk ready to be rushed by courier up to London to the FA should Klopp so much as come sniffing around VVD again.

 

I wouldn't bother rushing. It'll sit unopened on some FA officials desk for months if it gets that far.