Saints Open Talks With Athletico Madrid Over Alderweireld

After several weeks of trying to hawk Toby Alderweireld to the highest bidder its seems that Athletico Madrid are now getting down to serious business.

Athletico have not been very moral about the way they have conducted the business over Toby Alderweireld, initially they tried to make out that Chelsea were desperate to land the central defender and spread rumours in the media to that effect, only for it to be discovered that the London club were not that interested and it was more the Spanish club trying to prise a player away from Chelsea without spending too much hard cash.

Tottenham have also been in the picture and again Athletico have encouraged this to stimulate a buying war for a player that a year ago they were happy to sell for £6.5 million and now are trying to drive the price up to nearer £20 million.

The Press Association is reporting though that as the media went into frenzy with Spurs interest, Saints have been going about their business quietly and have been in talks with Athletico already.

But ultimately it will come down to who puts in the highest bid and who the player wants to join and in this respect it is hard to work out who to believe with the media claiming that the player himself prefers Spurs whilst Alderweireld himself has been quoted as saying he would love to come back to St Mary's.

It looks like the situation will be sorted soon and hopefully Saints will get Toby back, if they don't then it is a question of taking last season's loan for what it was, a good piece of business where we got a great player who helpedus a step forward and who we got a nice pay off from Madrid at the end of it.

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