It has been revealed that Saints act of reporting Liverpool to the Premier League comes after months of Virgil Van Dijk's agent attempting to sell his client to the highest bidder.
In modern football it would be very naive that the rules are adhered to to the letter, although a player or his agent should not speak to a club until it has been sanctioned by the selling club, the reality is that it is hard to monitor and there are constant breaches, indeed few transfers go through without some form of pre agreement between an agent and the buying club before the approach is made to the selling club.
However it is accepted that this contract can happen as long as the talks are fairly informal and not a lot more than finding out what the players wage demands would be and whether he would be interested in a move.
But the situation that has taken place between Liverpool and Virgil Van Dijk have apparently grossly overstepped the mark, even in today's game where the big clubs try to ride rough shod over the smaller ones, who in their opinion should be grateful that they are allowed to feed at the same trough as the big boys and doff their caps and say nothing when the "lords of the manor" decide to claim their conjugal rights.
Yahoo sports has revealed the extent of the underhand dealings that have been going on to persuade Virgil Van Dijk to leave Southampton and that the situation has not just happened but has been going on for several months to the extent that Saints eventually could ignore it no longer.
Yahoo claim that the players agent is the main instigator, but Liverpool and other clubs were happy to breach the rules.
Yahoo claim that Van Dijk:
Staged one-on-one talks with Liverpool and Klopp
Received video messages detailing how he would be used in the Reds team
Had Already finalised personal terms with Liverpool
Has now ‘kicked up a fuss’ in a bid to be sold by Southampton, even though he still has five years left on his current contact with the club.
They also say that Manchester City, Chelsea and Liverpool have been in talks over a deal to sign van Dijk for several months, with sources close to Southampton telling Yahoo that the agent at the centre of the deal is eager to force through a move to Anfield as that will secure him the biggest personal pay-off.
Van Dijk joined his current agent in December 2016 as was reported on this site when he joined the Wasserman group, who 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.
Although Liverpool have now apparently backed off as they are frightened that the Premier League will impose transfer sanctions with this being far from their first offence, that Chelsea and Manchester City remain keen, but that Saints are now determined to hold on to Van Dijk unless they receive "Silly money" even though they may have a player on his hands that is far from happy.
A source said to be close to Saints told Yahoo.
"The club had to take a stand this week as we have been aware of what has been going on for months and it has gone too far,” the source told us.
"Southampton have told the player that we don’t want to sell him this summer, but he thought he could kick up a big enough fuss that he would be sold for £50m."
"That is never happening and by holding talks with the player, sending him video clips of how he will fit into their team and doing this all without the permission of Southampton, there is no way he will be sold to Liverpool at this stage."
"Of course, every player has a price and if £100m or something close is put on the table, then it will be considered, but Southampton do not need to sell van Dijk this summer.”
Van Dijk has remained silent on the subject although reports have said that he altered the details on his twitter account to remove a picture of him in a Saints shirt to replace it with one of him in Holland kit and removed mention of Saints in his bio, although this has since been restored.
Saints now really need to make a stand and have already taken the first steps, certainly those who are not members of the so called big six will be glad to see Saints standing up for their rights and will hope that the Premier League will start to get tough on situations like this rather than just brush it under the carpet.