Saints Chasing Toulouse Central Defender Sunday, 23rd Apr 2017 09:50 Saints are being linked with yet another central defender, which in turn leads the media to froth at the mouth that Virgil Van Dijk is leaving. The latest target is Christopher Julien of Toulouse who on the face of it does have the attributes that Saints usually look for so it would be natural that we would be linked with him. But that does not signal that we are about to sell Virgil Van Dijk, the media conveniently forget that before we replace VVW, we have to replace his former central defensive partner at St Mary's Jose Fonte. That is the first priority rather than replacing a man who we might not actually decide to sell. Indeed ideally Saints would make two central defensive signings this summer, one to replace Fonte and one to cover both VVW and our new man and eventually enable us to cash in on the Dutchman, sadly we have to accept that it is inevitable that Van Dijk will leave it is only a matter of when, that is football that is reality, however the difference between now and the summer of 2014 is that we have all our players on long term deals and are now in charge of the timescales. Going back to Julien the Frenchman seems to tick the right boxes for a Saints target, he is described as very much in the Van Dijk mould, 6ft 5 inches tall and able to not only win the ball but use it well. He has been something of a late starter, he turned 24 in March and this season with Toulouse has been his first in the French top flight, however he has been a revelation and has been a regular in the Toulouse defence. His relative anonymity means that he would be relatively cheap and could be signed for around £10 million bringing comparisons with the signing of Dejan Lovren in 2013. Photo: Action Images Please report offensive, libellous or inappropriate posts by using the links provided.
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