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Once upon a time, Tottenham nurtured a brief but significant fascination with Croatians. The squad that entered into the club’s first Champions League season in 2010 featured fully four players from the former Yugoslav republic: goalkeeper Stipe Pletikosa, defender Vedran Ćorluka, attacker Niko Kranjčar and legendary midfielder Luka Modrić.

It’s fair to say that it was a mixed bag. Pletikosa was gone by the next season having not made a single appearance for the club. Ćorluka and Kranjčar meandered around the pitch for a couple more years before being shuffled off to decidedly less green pastures. And Modrić broke Tottenham’s heart by leaving for Real Madrid in 2012.

Tottenham didn’t spend too long mourning the loss of their Croatian contingent. They moved on and in short order found a new niche nationality to hoard: Belgians. That’s a story for another day, though.

It seems now though that Tottenham didn’t entirely forget about Croatia. The club’s scouts have been busy this season flying back and forth to Ukraine, or so the Daily Star says, attempting to get a measure of Dynamo Kiev’s 26-year-old Croatin international defender Domagoj Vida.

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The move obviously seems motivated by something more than nostalgia. Vida’s made 91 appearances in all competitions for Dynamo since his arrival in 2012 at both centre-back and right-back, and he’s only gotten better over his time in the Ukrainian capital. His performance in Dynamo’s Champions League draw at home against Chelsea put him on the radar of several big clubs around Europe.

Regardless of his quality, Tottenham’s interest in Vida is telling. Clearly the club believes it cannot rely on Federico Fazio even as a fourth-choice centre-back, so it makes sense that they might to find some options elsewhere in January. Vida’s rumored bargain basement £7 million pricetag might add a bit of incentive as well.

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Where does this leave summer arrival Kevin Wimmer, though? And what of up and coming academy product Miloš Veljković? Would Vida’s arrival compromise either’s ability to make it into the first team?

More importantly, what do these rumors suggest about Tottenham’s assessment of both of those players? Wimmer’s barely had four months to make an impression on Mauricio Pochettino and his staff, but perhaps he’s not exactly what the club thought they were getting. His lack of playing time even in Europa League games has hinted at this possibility before. If the Vida rumors intensify, it would only add further credence to the idea that the former Cologne man isn’t up to Spurs’ standards.

Veljković’s situation is harder to parse. The Serbian has been dancing on the dividing line between development squad and first team for at least the last year, though still seems more likely to move out on loan somewhere than show up on Tottenham’s bench.

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Just as puzzling is what exactly the club would do with Vida were they to convince him to move to North London. With Jan Vertonghen and Toby Alderweireld both performing exceptionally well together in the center of defense and Kyle Walker is in the form of his life, it seems unlikely that Vida would get anywhere close to the starting XI barring injury. Given his age and the prominent role he plays at his current club, would that be acceptable to Vida?

It’s questions like these that poke holes in the quality of certain transfer rumors. Tottenham might very well be in the market for another centre-back, but moving for a veteran player in January is something only desperate teams do. Perhaps Tottenham would simply jump at the chance to acquire a quality defender at a cut rate, regardless if he’s needed at the moment or not. Doing so runs the risk of damaging the confidence and aspirations of both Wimmer and Veljković however.