Toby Alderweireld is looking forward to a reunion with his former Southampton team mates at St Mary's on Saturday.
Toby Alderweireld has spoken on Tottenham Hotspur's official website about how he is looking forward to returning to St Mary's but is focused on helping his new employers get all three points.
"I will be happy to play there again and to see all the guys but it’s all about a good performance for us," Alderweireld told Spur's official website.
"I’m very thankful to Southampton and we helped each other. "
"They needed a centre-back and I had the decision to stay at Atletico or come to the Premier League."
"They haven’t got the results they would have wanted in the last couple of games but they are doing well,"
"They have a very decent team and have played well this season. If you look player by player, it’s a strong squad.
"They are consistent and capable of beating anyone and they have something special there."
Nice words from Alderweireld and it is certainly true that he was a key component in last season's Saints squad, although many of the St Mary's faithful believe that in Virgil Van Dijk we have a better all round player than the Belgium.
Alderweireld's move to White Hart Lane left a sour taste in the mouth of many Saints fans, the player himself had expressed a desire to stay beyond his one season loan deal and Saints believed that they had the option to buy at a fixed price at the end of the season, well below the eventual fee Spurs paid.
But when Tottenham came a knocking in their usual inimitable style that meant Athletico Madrid were keen to get the best price rather than sell to Spurs.
That having been said Alderweireld himself was the man in control and could easily have said it was Sants he wanted to go to.
But the player was being tapped up publicly by Belgium International side team mate Jan Vertonghen who seemed determined to wage a one man recruitment campaign in the national press urging Alderweireld to join Spurs and if that was the tip of the iceberg then under the surface that would have been multiplied by ten.
At the end of the day the player himself made the decision, that was his choice and we Saints fans shouldn't get too upset in that he was never our player in the first place, the fact that we got him on loan was a minor miracle in that we were not the most attractive of clubs to join in the summer of 2014 with a depleted squad being rebuilt and many predicting a doomsday scenario.
Yes it did all end on a sour note, but on the plus side we used the loan system to do a job for us on a temporary basis whilst we reshuffled and regrouped and overall it was better to have had Toby Alderweireld last season than not have him.