After several weeks of trying to hawk Toby Alderweireld to the highest bidder its seems that Athletico Madrid are now getting down to serious business.

Athletico have not been very moral about the way they have conducted the business over Toby Alderweireld, initially they tried to make out that Chelsea were desperate to land the central defender and spread rumours in the media to that effect, only for it to be discovered that the London club were not that interested and it was more the Spanish club trying to prise a player away from Chelsea without spending too much hard cash.

Tottenham have also been in the picture and again Athletico have encouraged this to stimulate a buying war for a player that a year ago they were happy to sell for £6.5 million and now are trying to drive the price up to nearer £20 million.

The Press Association is reporting though that as the media went into frenzy with Spurs interest, Saints have been going about their business quietly and have been in talks with Athletico already.

But ultimately it will come down to who puts in the highest bid and who the player wants to join and in this respect it is hard to work out who to believe with the media claiming that the player himself prefers Spurs whilst Alderweireld himself has been quoted as saying he would love to come back to St Mary's.

It looks like the situation will be sorted soon and hopefully Saints will get Toby back, if they don't then it is a question of taking last season's loan for what it was, a good piece of business where we got a great player who helpedus a step forward and who we got a nice pay off from Madrid at the end of it.

Photo: Action Images

Frank_Steel added 12:31 - Jul 2 Go on Les! I'd happily put Dejan's £20M on the table. What's the limit, you reckon?
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Jeanette_Kranky added 12:33 - Jul 2 Aboot time too!
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BaselSaint added 12:40 - Jul 2 I'm quite heartened by that news. I would think we can match a Spurs bid and Toby will come back. He may be tempted by higher wages and the smell of `the Smoke` though.
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SanMarco added 12:55 - Jul 2 If Toby does choose Spurs over us then he will be yet another case for the argument that footballers are better keeping their mouths closed when it comes to their future hopes and plans. He was unequivocal in saying that he wanted to remain here...
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bstokesaint added 12:58 - Jul 2 I kind of the impression that Toby would like to come back to Soton, but if Spurs were interested he'd be happy there too if it meant linking up with his national team partnering centre back. I think this will come down to money offered to his club and given that we currently have that, we should break the transfer record for him. I can't see Spurs going much above £10m given their estimations of Schneirderlin and J-Rod.

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REEDYREEDOREEDZ added 13:20 - Jul 2 C'mon Saints! Get this deal done! I wouldn't want us to pay more than £20m, but hopefully we can get him for £15m or £16m. I think as soon as Atletico agree the fee, then Toby will sign for us. We've just got to hope that one of the big teams don't come in at the last minute. Someone like City, Chelsea or United could blow us out of the water.
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sidsaint added 14:31 - Jul 2 If, as is reported, Levy is in Madrid then I hope we are also showing how determined we are. Toby is a class act and we should pull out all the stops to get him
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schatfield added 16:21 - Jul 2 tricky one to call. Toby has said before he liked spurs cos of all the Belgium int's that play there, and i dont agree we could blow them out the water with the fee - they have just sold around £20M worth of fringe players. We need to bid around a club record of £18M i think if we want to get him.
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gpsgm added 18:46 - Jul 2 I'm glad you lot aren't looking after the cash at the club you seem very ready to spend vast lorry loads of it. I'm not saying I wouldn't want us to pay whatever we need to, but I'm not convinced we need to go from £6.5m to £18-20m quite so easily. Listen, I shop at Waitrose sometimes but lets get things in proportion here. The only alleged competition seems to be Spurs so I'm going to plump for us getting him for £10-15m and I'm sure Les will be aiming for the lesser of those.

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redwight added 18:57 - Jul 2 Great to hear that Levy is in Madrid. With his track record of insulting offers and hard ball tactics it won't take him long to wind up the Athletico board. Could be our trump card. Go get him Saints!
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