Pellegrino on van Dijk: Everything is back to normal

Southampton manager Mauricio Pellegrino claims everything is back to normal now Virgil van Dijk has returned to training with the Saints first team earlier in the week.

Van Dijk was previously forced to train with the Saints youth team after trying to force a heavily-reported move to Liverpool during the summer transfer window.

Though the towering Dutch defender is nowhere near match fit given his ankle injury which ruled him out of action since January, van Dijk is now battling in training to make a return to first-team contention.

“Now he [van Dijk] is training with the team again. It depends on the player now,” Pellegrino said at his pre-match press conference ahead of Watford’s visit to St. Mary’s on Saturday as per Sportsmail.

“We know he is coming from a long period of time without playing, he needs to train and to play games, but we will decide in the future. The best thing in football is that you have to show on the pitch how you are, but now everything is normal, and this is good news for us.

“I always talk to my players, and I have done with Virgil, but it is something private. But I repeat - now everything is normal, he is training with the team, he is at the same level training with us.”

It will be some time until we see van Dijk don the red and white of Southampton once again, but many Saints fans will be pleased at the thought of that unexpected luxury given a tumultuous summer transfer window.