Sutton’s verdict on van Dijk deal
Football - Dundee v Celtic - Scottish Premiership - Dens Park - 22/4/15 Cetic's Virgil van Dijk celebrates with Leigh Griffiths after scoring the second goal for his side Action Images via Reuters / Lee Smith Livepic EDITORIAL USE ONLY. No use with unauthorized audio, video, data, fixture lists, club/league logos or "live" services. Online in-match use limited to 45 images, no video emulation. No use in betting, games or single club/league/player publications. Please contact your account representative for further details.
It’s one of his favourite topics and yesterday Liverpool proved him to be 100% correct.
For as long as he has been able to hold a BT Sport microphone Chris Sutton has been telling viewers that Scottish football undervalues it’s players.
In September 2015 Celtic picked up a fee of between £10-13m from Southampton for Virgil van Dijk.
A year later Manchester City splashed out £50m on John Stones to set a new record fee for a defender.
Yesterday that figure was smashed to pieces when Liverpool forked out £75m for van Dijk giving Southampton a £60m plus profit from less than 80 top team appearances.
.@btsportfootball Virgil van Dijk at 75 million more evidence why Celtic shouldn’t sell Dembele on the cheap… 12 million to Southampton a snip at the time! It’s about time the Scottish game stops selling their best players on the cheap!!!!
— Chris Sutton (@chris_sutton73) December 27, 2017
Remember this Bobby??? https://t.co/Z8BYpWul95
— Chris Sutton (@chris_sutton73) December 27, 2017
Celtic are due a cut on that profit with Brendan Rodgers likely to have his funds boosted by at least £6m but more importantly is the impact on future transfers out of Celtic.
Right now Moussa Dembele is rated as a better prospect than van Dijk was when he left Celtic.
Given the right circumstances and the hyper inflation of the English transfer market the striker could be a £100m transfer within two years of leaving Celtic.
If Sutton was negotiating his departure next month he wouldn’t settle for anything less than £30m- plus a good chunk of his next transfer fee.