Saints fans will not be happy to hear that Virgil Van Dijk has ditched his agent and joined Ronald Koeman's !
Media sources are now claiming Everton are favourites to sign Virgil Van Dijk after the Dutch defender ditched his agent Henk-Maarten Chin to join the London-based Wasserman Group.
The Wasserman group are headed up by Rob Jansen who Saints fans will remember was closely linked with Everton and then persuaded Ronald Koeman to leave his then agent to join him at the Wasserman group only a few weeks before Koeman finally said yes to the Toffee's after turning down earlier advances.
This leads to the media concluding that Everton are now going to be throwing a lot of effort in trying so sign Van Dijk and it is not going to help Saints cause when his new agent is also not only closely connected to Everton but the agent of Koeman and with a vested interest in getting Van Dijk to Goodison park.
There are two big reasons why Everton won't succeed with Van Dijk.
The first is that the player is tied to a long term contract, unlike Koeman where Saints hand was forced, Saints can call the tune to a big degree and although ultimately it won't see Van Dijk staying long term, in the short they can hold firm and drive up the price.
Secondly is that Everton are probably not big enough for Van Dijk, his stock has risen greatly this season and he has gone from being the best kept secret at the end of last season to being a big target for some big names in European Football.
The player himself will know that Everton are in disarray, Koeman's job is not safe and the fans are on his back, it is not an environment geared towards taking on the big six at present and although they are better placed than they were in terms of money, it is still a lot less than those they are looking to compete with have to hand.
Everton famously lured Koeman with a £100 million transfer kitty, so far it it exists it remains untouched with Koeman only spending what he raked in from the sale of John Stones, if he does have access to £100 million then he is going to have to spend a lot of that in getting Van Dijk and that will leave little to rebuild the squad.
That means that Van Dijk will jump into a worse situation than he is currently in and he is at an age where he needs his next move to be to a big club with the stature and resources to match his talent.
So the fact that Van Dijk has a new agent is not helpful for Saints, especially as he has a reputation for forcing moves for his clients, but it does not necessarily mean that Van Dijk leaving is any more likely to happen soon than it was before the defender signed up for his new man.
Indeed it means that when Van Dijk does move it is likely to be for far bigger money than we would perhaps have got, when Koeman joined Everton Saints stood firm in their demands and that pushed up the compensation, that is likely to happen again if the Toffee's want Van Dijk, but this time there will be other bidders and that will be good news for Saints but not Everton.