Saints now appear to be favourites to land Celtic central defender Virgil Van Dijk however they will need to move fast with other interested parties.

Celtic are usually keen to hang on to their players until their fate in the Champions League qualifying games is known one way or the other, however with injury problems in the back four Ronald Koeman would like to tie up a move for Van Dijk sooner than later.

Although he will maybe feel that his current back four can cope with Vitesse at home he would ideally like to have Van Dijk in the squad ahead of the away leg, however even that is pushing it a bit now.

Van Dijk himself has already indicated that he is also keen to move stating publicly that if he were to play in any of Celtic's Champion's League fixtures it would cup tie him and therefore lower his transfer value to Celtic and has told them he wants to go and he wants to be able to play in Europe or any new club.

Van Dijk is also keen to break into the Dutch side ahead of the European Championships in 2016, he is as yet uncapped but is aware that it is difficult to push his cause playing in a league that has no effective opposition to his club and he is open to a move to one of the big leagues with the Premier being his first choice

There has been other interest for Van Dijk though, Arsenal and Manchester United have been linked but Saints have been instated as the favourites

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