Yes but the stark reality for Southampton, is that they have a player who doesn't want to play for him, if they force him then at best he will not be the player he was. That player has said he wants to come to us and we have plenty of money to spend.
Southampton need to swallow their pride and do what's good for business and sell VVD to us for a HUGE profit which they can then reinvest on other players.
Southampton are well within their rights to do what they are doing...holding their player to his contract. If this was the other way around (think Suarez) you'd be happy for LFC to stand it's ground.
That being said, no club is going to turn down a crap ton of money that could be reinvested appropriately if they know a player wants to leave and is going to throw a fit to get out.
My original point is, had we just made a bid in the beginning, then at least we could have got the ball rolling, we could have put pressure on the club itself and then Van Dijk if he really wanted to come could have submitted a transfer request to show his intent.
At this stage, it's just as much his fault as Soton's as he's not taking the necessary step to publicly signal that he wants to move on.
If we don't end up signing him (which I don't think we will) then we completely deserve that outcome from the way we humped this whole transfer up from the start.
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