Liverpool could have snapped up Virgil van Dijk for £12m when the Dutchman was at Celtic, but Brendan Rodgers wasn’t convinced he’d be an upgrade on the likes of Dejan Lovren, Martin Skrtel and Mamadou Sakho.
Our giant central defender eventually joined Southampton, before heading to Anfield in a world record £75m move this January, but we could have saved a monumental fee if we’d taken the risk two years previous.
According to John Collins, who worked with van Dijk north of the border, Rodgers had reservations about whether the defender would improve us, due to the fact he was very composed and apparently a little lackadaisical on the ball.
You can listen to Collins’ comments on beIN Sport, below:
Interesting stuff in studio today from John Collins on how and why Arsenal turned down VVD pic.twitter.com/fxfZ0oBCIl
— Matt Critchley (@MattCritchley1) September 22, 2018
To be fair, no other big club went for van Dijk at the time either.
Now though, thanks to Jurgen Klopp’s guidance, aged 27, he’s the best centre-back on the planet.