Neil Warnock claims he tried to sign defender from Celtic, explains scout dig at Scottish football
Neil Warnock has claimed that he tried to sign Virgil van Dijk from Celtic while he was in charge of Crystal Palace, but got put off the deal when his chief scout talked him out of it.
Now at Cardiff, Warnock has revealed that the Hoops had slapped a £6million price-tag on van Dijk’s head in 2014, a year before the Netherlands international left Parkhead to sign for Southampton for double that fee.
On Wednesday, Van Dijk was confirmed to be joining Liverpool in January for a fee widely reported to be worth up to £75million, making him the most expensive defender in world football.
However it could have gone very differently for Palace if Warnock had ignored his chief scout’s dig at Scottish football when he was talking about the possibility of signing the Dutchman from Celtic.
“When I was at Palace I went after a centre-half at Celtic called van Dijk and they want £6million so I said ‘we’ve got to buy him don’t we?’,” he said, as quoted by Alan Brazil Sport’s Breakfast’s official Twitter account on Thursday morning.
“But the chief scout went to see him and said ‘he’s not very quick; it’s Scottish football’.
“That was before Southampton came in for him.”
It has been widely reported that Celtic have earned 10 per cent of the fee Liverpool paid to sign van Dijk, meaning that Brendan Rodgers is set for a healthy boost to his transfer budget ahead of the January window opening next week.
Marvin Compper has already been snapped up by the Bhoys and Rodgers has previously made it clear that he wants to add a number of new players to his squad in January.
In other Celtic news, the Hoops’ odds to sign this midfield dynamo have been slashed and they are now joint favourites with Rangers.
We’ve launched a << BREAKING NEWS FEED>> exclusively for your club. ‘Like Us’ on Facebook by clicking here if you want 24/7 updates on all Celtic breaking news.