Southampton chairman Ralph Krueger has claimed that Liverpool and Chelsea target Virgil van Dijk is not for sale and will be welcomed back into the Saints first team fold once he accepts this.
Van Dijk has been strongly linked with a move to Liverpool all summer though talks between the Reds and the Saints were complicated by the fact that Jurgen Klopp’s team were forced to apologize to their Premier League counterparts after being found guilty of tapping up the player.
The Dutch international van Dijk is keen to move on from St Mary’s, having handed in a transfer request to his club last week.
Despite the saga though, Krueger has remained adamant that the player is not for sale and said, “Our stance remains based on our strategy from May when we spoke last. I already told you the numbers that we have transferred in and transferred out and it is time to stop that.
“We really thought this was a good summer for that. The strength of the contracts, age of the group and the experiences of last year, like going to a cup final [the EFL Cup], gave us the feeling this is a group that tasted winning and keeping them together would give us the chance to reach another level.
“Virgil is not the only player that is involved in this; he is part of the whole strategy of not selling. Nobody is for sale that we don’t want to sell, so he is not for sale in this window. We have said it more than once.”
