Southampton have pushed up the price for Virgil van Dijk to £70m.
According to a report in The Mirror, Southampton are unimpressed by claims that Chelsea and Manchester City are preparing bids around the £50m mark.
A trail of players have been sold by the Saints in the last few years with Victor Wanyama sold to Spurs for just £15m last summer as he entered the final year of his contract.
Nine months after buying van Dijk from Celtic a new six year contract was signed taking his wages to around £80,000 per week.
The defender missed the last four months of the season due to injury but that hasn’t put off any of the interested clubs.
Last summer Manchester City signed John Stones for £50m from Everton with Chelsea paying a similar figure to bring David Luiz back from Paris St Germain.
Those deals set a new benchmark for defenders. If van Dijk is sold the fee will be a new world record for a defender with Celtic due a slice after selling the defender for £11m in August 2015.