Personally, I think there's more to this than meets the eye behind the scenes as always.
Southampton are in a Catch 22 where they need to find a solid replacement before letting VVD go. Their defence coped reasonably without VVD for a good few months but the feeling is that as their squad stands without him they are likely to start haemorrhaging goals long-term, as is.
Their squad is too large to buy players without letting one go, due to the amount of players they can register and the fact that no fee has been agreed. Of the players that they could / would sell there is debatably only VVD and Florin Gardos in the conversation. This is why they haven't been buying players given their already quite bloated squad... Copious detail here for anyone interested -
http://redsloscf.blogspot.co.uk/2014/08/how-i-became-southampton-fc-fan.html?m=1And if they sell him for £60-70m plus before buying, then all clubs will know that they have a [oops] load to spend and this will inflate the prices they can buy at. Selling to us will only be accepted by their fans if there is a substantial premium to be paid (£5m-20m who knows), making this Catch 22 problem even more acute.
Therefore, if they are going to sell him to us - or to anyone at all - it would make sense to line up a replacement they can buy beforehand and immediately before selling to us.
So potentially the two deals could be lined up in parallel and I wouldn't be surprised if this went right to the wire and was announced in the last 24-48 hours of the window.
Alternatively it might not happen at all. But if it will, this is the only way I can see it playing out for all parties.
