Here’s one of those rumours that proves you can have baseless transfer speculation outside of the transfer window.

The Turkish website Star claims that Fulham want to sign eccentric Italian forward Mario Balotelli from Adana Demirspor to spearhead their Premier League campaign next season. The former Manchester City striker, recently recalled to the Italian national set up by Roberto Mancini has scored 11 goals in 24 appearances since moving to Turkey from Monza on a free transfer last summer.

The accuracy of the report is undermined in the very next paragraph when Star suggests that Balotelli will become Marco Silva’s main striker next season as Aleksandar Mitrovic, who has scored 34 goals in 31 Championship appearances this season, will not be at the club next season. Fulham are set to sell the Serbian to Juventus, apparently. We’d file this in what we used to call our ‘silly season’ section but we can’t stop laughing.