No, we did breach the unwritten code of conduct. This was Edwards's first attempt at landing a big fish and he messed it up - prior to that Ian Ayre had led on doing deals. There's a kind of gentleman's agreement that you let your counterparts know when you're sniffing around one of their players. If they tell you to fuck off then you do everything officially (you can sort a lot via agents but you don't meet directly with the player), if they don't tell you to do one then it's implied that they're OK with you speaking to the player.
In this instance, Edwards didn't speak to Southampton and the next thing Virgil and Klopp were spotted at Blackpool Airport (why Blackpool still eludes me to this day). Saints complained to the FA who were poised to investigate. Their investigation would have run "Please send us the details of any flight manifests for [date] where the flight was commissioned by the club". That would have revealed that we paid for a return private flight from Southampton to Blackpool, sole passenger Mr V van Dijk. We'd have been bang to rights and probably got a transfer ban, so we backed off.
The player was sold on joining us by Klopp and Saints knew we were the only destination. They weren't trying to keep City interested, they were using the prospect of a transfer ban to get the fee they wanted and/or to keep the player. Fair play to them, we were out of order, or more particularly, Edwards didn't play by the rules.
