Saints hopes of Virgil Van Dijk returning to the first team squad were boosted by last nights results in World Cup Qualifying Group A.

This week is a pivotal one in the Virgil Van Dijk saga, the Dutch defender is expected to return to first team training and put himself in contention for a recall to the team in the coming weeks.

The big question though is whether the player will do so albeit a bit reluctantly or whether he will continue to claim that he is not in the right frame of mind to play for the club.

However Saints hopes that he will return to action have been boosted by the results in Grouo A of the World Cup qualifying groups last night.

On Thursday this did not look to be the case after the French routed the Netherlands in Paris, meaning that it looked likely that Dick Advocaat's side could have been effectively out of the tournament on Sunday evening if they had lost to Bulgaria and the French had beaten Luxembourg, certainly it would have left them with only a chance of second spot to aim for and a slim chance at that with both Sweden and Bulgaria still having to play Luxembourg.

However with France only managing a home draw against Luxembourg and the Dutch beating Bulgaria it is now in their own hands going into the final round of games at the start of October.

If they can win their last two games the last of which is against Sweden then the Dutch could get what has looked like an unlikely reprieve at the last hour.

I am assuming here that the French do get the points needed to finish first.

It is going to be tight though, Holland have to go to Belarus and win and more to the point win well, they have to try and beat the score that Sweden manage against Luxembourg at home.

At the moment Sweden are six goals better off than Holland, so assuming that both beat their opponents in their penultimate game it is all lines up for the last game and will only be a question of if the Dutch can again win and then by how many they need to do so by.

If they manage to overhaul Sweden in second place then they will go into the play off round, that is assuming they are in the top 8 out of 9 runners up in the European group stages and that in itself is not as simple as it sounds.

This is where the Dutch revival can aid Saints chances of assimilating Virgil Van Dijk back into the team, they need Van Dijk in their side for these two games, they need to put out their best side if they are to stand any chance of getting what only yesterday morning looked an unlikely reprieve and if they manage this they then have those two do or die play off games as well at the start of November.

If they had been eliminated then perhaps Virgil Van Dijk would have had little incentive of returning to the fold at St Mary's, he might have decided that going through the motions for the next four months would have pushed Saints into selling him in January.

If we didn't then so what, with no World Cup next summer he had nothing to lose but a season out of the game.

But the balance of power has swung in Saints favour, the player knows that we are not going to be pushed around, but we have the bargaining tool now , at least for the next month and possibly beyond.

Surely Van Dijk will answer his country in their time of need and knuckle down and play the games in the Premier he needs to get under his belt to be ready for this brace of games in four weeks and if they get trough then he needs to keep playing and playing well, this can only help Saints in the short term.

But if the Dutch can get through to a play off then they have a good chance of winning it and if they do then suddenly Van Dijk has a big target to aim for, his first and perhaps only chance to play ina World Cup Finals tournament.

But the downsidefor him is that if the Dutch qualify then Saints have all the cards if he wants to play in that tournament, they will be under no pressure to sell him in January, but he will not be able to play in Russia unless he is playing week in week out and where he is playing will be firmly in Saints hands.

Although January transfer windows put up transfer fees so do World Cups and Saints will be quite rightly preferring to keep him till the summer.

In the next few days we will find out whether Virgil Van Dijk cares about football or he cares about money more, certainly I'm sure that every Dutch supporter is holding their breaths to find out what happens next.

Hopefully the player will see sense, the situation seems to have run out of his control this summer, he has been badly advised by his agent who seems to only care about getting him the biggest pay packet and not club, although Van Dijk is a grown man and should be capable of making his own decisions, he seems to have been carried along on his agents greed rather than what is best for his own career.

If he now chooses to continue the path he is taking his career could be affected going forward, as good as he is, defenders are not as sought after as attacking players and he is no Neymar or Coutinho, two players also attracting controversy, clubs do not like to sign trouble makers, if he still refuses to play even with his International future at stake then there will be serious questions asked about his character.

So we all wait with baited breath to see those first pictures of him training with Saints first team squad again, there could still be a happy ending to this situation for all concerned, but it could also see the messiest transfer story ever.

Photo: Action Images

SonicBoom added 11:08 - Sep 4 I'm pretty sure he will just come back, train and play. Theoretically he is here for another 5 years. OK we would have to pay him his salary if he didn't ever play, but he would miss a huge chunk of his career. OK that's not going to happen but that is the strength of the hand the club has.
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highfield49 added 11:23 - Sep 4 He'd be even more of a hypocrite if he chose not to play, particularly after rambling on ( in his manufactured transfer plea offering) that injury had made him realise how short a football career could be.
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SaintNick added 11:26 - Sep 4 If he stayed and refused to play we would be able to fine him so theoretically we could keep him 5 years and probably not have to pay him a penny. Grame Sounness when he fell out with Graham Roberts at Rangers relegated him to the youth team who played in the Highland mens League and then picked him for every youth team game meaning he had to travel in a mini bus to some god forsaken ground only to be told he hadnt even made the bench maning he had to stand around in the cold for hours before another cramped trip home. Souness proved his point

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IWOZTHERE added 11:45 - Sep 4 And so it goes on, and on, and on.....Messy and unnecessary. On the face of it we've two problems, Van Dijk and lack of goals, Both these problems (and more poss.) could have been resolved if we had sold him. I originally supported the 'stand' and still do to a point, but realised that we were never going to spend the amount of money needed to strengthen at the front of midfield or in attack unless we cashed in on him. 'Quality out' is always a shame, but for this fee we could have got 2x 'quality' in where we need it most. Back to the article.... There have been a lot of 'triumphal' WE KEPT HIM noises being made and justified by this Holland thing and 'he won't want to sit around doing nothing till he's 27' for instance. Holland are still unlikely to qualify, so he 'may' decide to just sit it out. Do WE want to continue paying him £80k a week without him playing for us ? His value may appear to increase,but so would the cost of anyone we might want to sign. Factor in his wages and a slight depreciation in value as he gets older and it doesn't add up. Ok, this window has gone, but ASAP get rid, get some quality in to improve us to a level where top players WANT to stay, and perhaps we won't have so many of these recurring nightmares.

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SanMarco added 11:59 - Sep 4 I have sympathy with what you are saying IWOZTHERE ((I posted on deadline day saying I was pleased with the stand and on the same day posted that I hoped he was sold to Barca - contradictory or what?) but surely the point is that making a 'stand' 'to a point' is pretty self defeating. Very difficult to make a partial stand on something like this. We made a stand - it will have some negative consequences but either you 'make a stand' or you don't. I don't think we have seen the end of VVD's scheming and certainly the 'saga' overshadowed the fact we didn't make any attacking signings but overall I am glad that Saints stuck to their guns. To have given in after Kreuger's definite statement would have been a bigger disaster than the short-term fall out over whatever happens in the next few weeks. "We are definitely not selling him - oh alright, we might" was not the way forward.

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SaintNick added 12:09 - Sep 4 "get some quality in to improve us to a level where top players WANT to stay, and perhaps we won't have so many of these recurring nightmares." All good in theory but the fact is we have only sold to clubs who are a level above us, we might be able to finish above them every now and then but the reality is they are streets ahead in terms of not only foundations but financially, everything. The realist in me says we are at our highest level attainable, at least in the fact that it is sustainable, there has to be a touch of reality here, look at Leicester they won the title but all their players still wanted out.

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skiptonsaint added 12:15 - Sep 4 VVD and his family have no loyalty to saints. We all understand that. But walking around your home country or looking back in future years and you have to explain why your were very selfish in helping your country to try to qualify for a World Cup ? That's a bit different.
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bstokesaint added 12:18 - Sep 4 This is way bigger than VVD. He might think that the world begins and ends with VVD, but it really doesn't. Like Marco says, this was a far bigger statement. If we come out and make noises about the club no longer being a selling club and retaining our best players, what's the point of all that if we caveat all of those statements to death. It makes us look weak and vulnerable to the PL's vultures. We might 'lose' some money on VVD's next transfer fee, but this could pale into insignificance if it means we stem the flow of our best players leaving the club in the future. I've no doubt we did the right thing and had we not Ralph would have had to have walked and the board would be viewed as a laughing stock. On the subject of Ralph I still maintain he is one of the best things to happen to this club. When things seem like they are heading out of control he is the one who comes out and puts everything on the line. He is a man of his word and that integrity in the modern game is in short supply right now.

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highfield49 added 12:22 - Sep 4 Even those of us who wouldn't have been hugely disappointed if he had been sold, preferably abroad, were defeated by the fact that no team actually made an offer. Whether that was a"gentleman's agreement" backed by other clubs with similar spoilt brats on their books we don't know. Chelsea haven't, seemingly, managed to get Costa to even keep fit! As for Sounness proving a point Nick, I guess currently he'd have sold Roberts to whoever was willing to tap him up?

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Abbosaint added 15:06 - Sep 4 VVD has got to ask himself what he has got to gain if he decides not to play for the Saints up to the January transfer window. By then he will not have played any Premier League football for nearly a year. Having had a serious injury, and not having proved that he is still a top class player since his recovery, what team is going to 'risk' £70M plus on him? Also, as Nick says, serious questions will (or should) be asked about his character.

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sambat added 18:43 - Sep 4 If VVD does not want to play for Saints then loan him out to Eastleigh where he can get some exercise. I cannot see RK making a stand in August, then giving in when the January transfer market opens, that would be a total waste of time.
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OhBlox added 19:29 - Sep 4 highfield - My guess for why no offers were received was that everyone knew that if an offer came in and was considered then it would have opened the door to Liverpool making an offer, and all the other clubs who were interested calculated that Liverpool were probably willing to outbid them. So it made the most sense to simply not bid and therefore not help strengthen another club they would consider a significant threat.

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BoondockSaint added 23:09 - Sep 4 Nick, if we were selling only to Barca, Real, ManCity, Chelsea, etc, the super rich clubs, OK ,we are not at that level-yet. However, continually selling to those around us or just below us on the table not only weakens us, but helps them. Yes, Spurs and the Scouse (both clubs) have more shirt sales than us, etc., but we are helping them financially by propping them up on the table. A couple of years of under-performing and they will start sliding down the financial slope-less TV money, fans staying away, less shirt sales, etc. Ralph is supposed to have a hockey background, yet seems to ignore the lessons of the great Montreal Candaniens general manager Sam Pollock who built a dynasty by not only strengthening his club, but making deals to undermine Les Canadiens competitors If the club and supporters take the attitude that this is as good as we can ever get, they are just like our players, who as of late, are more than willing to settle for a draw. We might as well have printed under the crest "A Subsidiary of LFC". Is that something to be proud of? Come on! Sports are about trying to win! The players and board should be striving to win. We are Southampton and we are not here just to make up the numbers!

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skiptonsaint added 23:27 - Sep 4 Ohblox has it the same way thisisanfield seems to have it. They are saying that it could be down to fine print if they can come in in Jan or not as it's another window. If not and it plays out like it did in the summer I can see the bigger prem clubs using the same tactic again. This Liverpool or nothing from VVD camp has made this a right mess. Lessons for players in future no doubt.

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OhBlox added 00:09 - Sep 5 Not sure about that skiptonsaint. Fine print or not we know that there are no guarantees about the PL authorities taking any significant action and January may be enough of a gap for Liverpool to feel they can make a move. However all that aside I would expect that Saints wont consider a January move unless VVD has failed to reintegrate and maybe not even then as it would be rewarding unprofessional behaviour. We can expect the club to sit down with the player this week and discuss the way forward with the most likely plan being for him to commit to the club for this season and then get a move next summer with the support of the club, specifically ruling out a January switch. If that approach fails then the situation is likely to get very messy for both the club and the player.

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aceofthebase added 08:08 - Sep 5 Why we (Saints) should contemplate selling VVD in one year baffles me. Ok if it suits saints because of an enormous offer but it was a six-year contract, not an ongoing contract for another year if you are a good boy
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IWOZTHERE added 11:55 - Sep 5 Nick, your post was well 'plussed', but I bet I'm more cautious/realist than you. VVD is world class and WILL move on. surely it is more realistic to accept that as inevitable, and bring in two albeit lesser names, good enough to improve us, and who WANT to play for us? If as you say, our current position is as far as we go, all the more reason to replace VVD cos he'll never be happy. The point San Marco made about sticking to principles is valid. I joined the 'out' lobby as things didn't seem to be developing in the club's favour the longer it went on. As long as we didn't sell to the scousers, I think most would have accepted that honour was satisfied.

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SaintBrock added 19:28 - Sep 5 Chapter Fifteen The young van Dick has a change of heart Author: Nick Fiveshillings Worth
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