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Just Who Is Leading The Chase For Virgil Van Dijk ?

If you believe the media then one of the greatest chases in history is taking place right on our doorstep in Brittania Road.

There have been some great chase scenes in movies, The Blues Brothers, The Italian Job even our own local comedian Benny Hill used to end each show being chased.

Now it looks just like the end of a Benny Hill show if you substitute Virgil Van Dijk for the Southampton comedian and put in a plethora of football clubs instead of a bevy of scantily clad women.

That is of course if you believe the media.

The latest rumours started where else but Merseyside, that is the natural place to start given Liverpool's well know defensive problems and their failure to address them over the past five years or so.

It all started in the usual manner, with little to write about a lazy hack put out a story about Liverpool ready to launch a summer bid for Van Dijk after Chelsea had pulled out and it esculated, before long every media outlet was carrying the story.

Bizarrely the journalist also claimed that Liverpool felt they would be able to knock Saints down from £50 million to £40 million due to the fact that they felt they had a good working relationship with us after signing so many of our players.

Soon it was getting worse and Liverpool fan websites were telling the World that Liverpool were already in advanced negotiations with Saints and about to agree a fee.

Then the rest of the World were in on the act, alternate headlines would claim that Chelsea were either pulling out or about to launch their own bid, that Manchester United were interested.

The Liverpool Echo even got in the act claiming that Saints were desperate to land Mamadou Sakho and were therefore going to use him as leverage in the deal, but wherever you look this morning there is a story about Van Dijk going somewhere.

The only thing they have in common is the name of the player and the name of Southampton Football Club, after that each story starts to change a little, this is because the media have to generate page hits or sales, you cannot regurgitate the same rumour 50 times, so you have to have a different angle on it to attract the attention of the reader.

The question at the start of this story asked " Just who is leading the chase for Virgil Van Dijk ?" the answer is very simple THE MEDIA !

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