Earlier in the summer, Liverpool somehow escaped transfer sanctions for their illegal tapping up of Southampton centre-back Virgil van Dijk and publicly ended their interest. Now things have taken a 180, and Jurgen Klopp seems to be back in for the Dutchman after Southampton have reportedly left him to train alone. Van Dijk did not travel with the Saints for their French preseason camp, but Mauricio Pellegrino will be keen to keep his captain and star player.

The Argentine shouldn’t be too worried though. His squad will be fine even if their star joins Liverpool’s ex-Saint contingent, because selling their key player is Southampton do and it always seems to work out .

Since the 2014-15 season, the Saints have had a lot of success replacing their stars and replacing van Dijk shouldn’t be too difficult either. In the summer of 2014, the club sold Rickie Lambert, Dejan Lovren, Luke Shaw and Adam Lallana and replaced them with Graziano Pellé, Toby Alderweireld, Ryan Bertrand and Sadio Mané. Not bad.

A year later, Nathaniel Clyne, Morgan Schneiderlin and Alderweireld were replaced by European Champion Cédric Soares, Oriol Romeu and van Dijk. Another set of pretty good replacements.

Nathan Redmond still has some time to live up to Mané’s ability and this summer former Lech Poznań centre-back Jan Bednarek has been brought in to replace former captain José Fonte. The club have somehow continued to do what managers across the globe wish they could do consistently in replacing their stars with more stars, whether they come from Chelsea or Red Bull Salzburg. Most clubs these days are determined to keep their star players no matter what, but over the years Southampton has continued to find the perfect player to fill the squad’s newest hole.

It remains to be seen if Mauricio Pellegrino can conjure up the same magic that Mauricio Pochettino and Ronald Koeman did before him, and that ability will likely decide his overall success at the south coast club. The Saints have become a Premier League mainstay and solid competitor since their return to the top flight in 2012. Their ability to take advantage of the transfer market has earned them Europa League football and a spot in the EFL Cup final, and their future success will be tied to how well they continue to replace key players.

Holding onto a player of van Dijk’s quality would be vital for most clubs, but not Southampton. They know how to replace a talent of that magnitude. They’ve done it before.

https://video.footballfancast.com/video-2015/PL25(07-08).mp4