Celtic manager Ronny Deila has warned Southampton Football Club that they will not get central defender Virgil Van Dijk on the cheap.

It is a crucial day for Saints in the Champions League, no you havent fast forwarded to the future, but Celtic's game against Azerbaijani side Qarabag could hold the key to how soon Saints could sign Virgil Van Dijk if at all.

Celtic hold a slender 1-0 lead from their game in Glasgow and if they go out in the 2nd leg played this evening then that could smooth the path to Van Dijk joining Saints.

Celtic want to secure their Champions League place before they let Van Dijk leave the club, however if they go out in this round that will see them perhaps eager to bring in cash from a big money sale to plug the financial gap left after failure to qualify.

If they go through however it will put them in the play off round tat will mean they will be unlikely to want to sell till after that is completed on 25/26th August.

But they are not going to let Saints get Van Dijk on the cheap and manager Ronny Delia after confirming that the club had not received a bid from Saints so far, let alone one for £7 million said.

"It is the same things I say all the time.

"We don't need to sell him, we want to have him here and it is a day before a very important game. Virgil is very focused, happy and really wants to play Champions League with Celtic.

"Seven million? You think we would say yes to that? They haven't bid. He is a top international player and everyone knows that.

"We want to reach the Champions League. We want to make this big club be successful, we need the best players and he is one of them."

Photo: Action Images

SaintBrock added 10:11 - Aug 5 "Warned"? Common sense alone tells us that we'll have pay the proper price. If Reed screws this one up as well he should resign, the Alderwiereld saga still sticks in the crawl.
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jmsaint added 10:58 - Aug 5 I hope you are joking. As a club, including Reed, we have done fantastic business this summer. (And last for that matter!). The only evidence we are actually in for the player are media rumours, we may well be and will have a value for the player so may or may not get him, or we may not be. We will have other targets, but again the club has learnt the hard way that you can't just through money at a problem, every transfer is a risk and they will know before we go into negotiations how much money they are willing to risk, if the selling club disagrees then there will be no deal. It is definitely not the case that Les Reed is individually negotiating and 'screwing things up'

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TreeHugger added 10:59 - Aug 5 I think Aldweriereld was a case of him not being honest. Everything was there, he clearly chose spurs over us and pretended otherwise. Good player, gutted he has left but it was his decision. What he was saying in the media did not mirror his actions.
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romsaint added 11:22 - Aug 5 "He's a top international player" Don't think he is Ronnie. Maybe when he moves to saints he'll get his first cap
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Jesus_02 added 11:25 - Aug 5 Personally I think that the Aldweriereld deal was badly handled. A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush and we screwed up plain and simple. I do however expect us to learn from the mistakes that we make, (Osvaldo, Foren included). I also hope that we don’t live in fear of making more mistakes in the future. Our transfer activity could improve but is overall pretty good. I don’t imagine Les will feel like he needs to get VVD through the door to compensate for not securing Aldweriereld. I’m sure that we have other options and with Caulker in we are by no means desperate. In short I can’t see us paying more than 10m and it will depend on what Stoke are willing to pay because if any of the “big clubs” wanted him he would be there by now.

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DPeps added 12:19 - Aug 5 We don't really know what happened with the TA deal. Maybe Reed dropped a clanger, maybe we were shafted. I don't resent the player's decision but just hope we can prove next season that he made the wrong choice. As for VVD: I think we're in the best position to sign him out of any of the supposedly interested clubs, assuming van Dijk is genuine when he says that his main desire to play international football. He'd probably struggle to hold down a regular first-team place at Man Utd or Arsenal, and I can't see Everton going in for him unless they sell Stones. This could all be idle speculation anyway. If Celtic get into CL group stages he may not go anywhere!

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bstokesaint added 12:53 - Aug 5 Fair play to Celtic for sticking to their guns. The truth is (much as we have found) it's ultimately the players that have all the power. I'm sure Ron will have a number of Dutch contacts who will have got a guide if the player is up for a move. It's just a case then of pitching an offer somewhere between what we are prepared to pay and Celtic's valuation. It wouldn't need to be a crazy offer if the player wanted the move (£10m maybe). That said if he doesn't go Reed will be a "pennypincher" and if he comes and is a flop he'll be gunned down for "another Osvaldo/Ramirez' situation. It's a fairly uneviable position for a man, who's generally done well for the club, to be in. Personally I'm prepared to back him as I'm not one of these people who thinks that there is a contract conspiracy which meant poor Toby had no choice but to go. If I wanted to play for Saints and my contract got messed up (worst case scenario that actually happened), I'd ask for a new one, I wouldn't bgger off up the road!

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schatfield added 13:20 - Aug 5 For all the comments above, the fact is Saints have NOT made a single bid for the player. That's it. How do we even know Saints want him? We don't. This is pure media driven speculation.
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SaintPaulVW added 13:44 - Aug 5 As has already been said on here I think Toby just didn't want to join us. The only thing Saints could have done was try to finalise it all at Christmas. Perhaps they tried this anyway. Until Celtic play their match not sure anyone can be sure what is happening with Van Dijk. Bit premature to be pointing the finger at Les yet, if Van Dijk doesn't want to leave, he won't leave. Given that there seems to be a fair bit of haggling in transfers anyway not sure you can really believe either side until the deal is almost signed. Delia is not going to want an unsettled player, so he is going to say anything to try to keep Virgil's mind focussed totally on the upcoming game.

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