German paper claims Tottenham agreed personal terms with Kevin Wimmer

We're not even close to the end of the season and already you can start to feel the transfer narrative around Tottenham Hotspur starting to shape up. Today's rumor comes courtesy of German newspaper Express.de which claims that Spurs have agreed personal terms with FC Köln's Austrian central defender Kevin Wimmer. Here's the relevant part of the article:

Dass der Abwehr-Shootingstar den Verein im Sommer verlässt, gilt inzwischen als sicher. Tottenham Hotspur ist sich nach EXPRESS-Informationen mit dem Österreicher einig, schon bald dürften die Briten auch beim FC Nägel mit Köpfen machen.

I haven't studied German since grad school, and Google Translate is pretty lol in this case, but the implication is that Wimmer is pretty much a lock to leave Cologne this summer for England. There's something idiomatic going on in that second sentence, because "Tottenham Hotspur after the EXPRESS information with the Austrians agreed soon expected to make at FC hog the British" doesn't make a lot of sense [Edit: it's an idiom, meaning "put your money where your mouth is"], but the gist of it seems to be that Spurs have agreed personal terms with him. The article goes on to claim that he's already visited England, ostensibly to scope out a few clubs.

What does this mean, exactly? Well, probably not much. Wimmer is still under contract with Cologne until 2019, and technically Spurs can't make formal approaches to players before reaching an agreement with the club, so this is probably just informal agent-speak. Someone from Tottenham, likely speaking in hypothetical terms, probably spoke to Wimmer's agent to gague how much it would take in wages for him to come to England. Moreover, people smarter than me have described Express.de as "the German Daily Mail," so take that for what it's worth.

European papers have seen enough of Mauricio Pochettino to know that he is emphasizing rebuilding Spurs around a core of talent, and supplementing with rising young "moneyball" signings. Wimmer seems to tick all the right boxes: young player (he's 22), central defender (a position of need), under-the-radar signing for a relegation-threatened club, willing to come to Spurs for not-insane wages. Spurs should be linked to a lot of players like Wimmer from now until the end of the summer.

All indications are that Wimmer's a perfectly cromulent young center back. I can't say that I've seen him play, so I won't speak to it. However, stories like these, regardless of their #batcountry status, are indications that Pochettino's reputation for attracting and developing young players has not gone unnoticed.