Baffling Newcastle United transfer story has appeared from Brazilian media - might just be the most nonsensical yet

Newcastle United are now just one of a few football clubs owned by the Saudi Arabia Public Investment Fund (PIF) after they bought up a whole bunch of clubs in their homeland to kick off a Saudi Pro League.

The Saudi Pro League has done what many new, rich leagues do and bought up a lot of high-profile players on insane wages to generate interest in their product.

A quick glance at the attendances in the Pro League could suggest it's not working, but the PIF and their fellow owners don't seem to be deterred.

While Newcastle shares owners with several Pro League clubs, only one player has made a switch between Newcastle and Saudi Arabia, and that was Allan Saint-Maximin. He moved to Al-Ahli for around £25 million, which is probably less than what we could have got elsewhere, but still clubs went mental at us trading between clubs owned by the same entity - ironically, it was clubs who had previously sold average players to Saudi for high prices.

This is one of those stories that should be ignored but it's too wild not to mention

If Brazilian journalist Jorge Nicola is to be believed, and he absolutely shouldn't be, that could all be about to change, as he has reported on YouTube (h/t Sport Witness) that Bruno Guimaraes is wanted by Al-Hilal if they can't land their primary target, Bruno Fernandes.

To be honest, we doubt that even Bruno Fernandes is a realistic target, but to suggest that the PIF would launch an attack on their flagship club for its captain and one of its most beloved players is some leap of logic.

Bruno Guimaraes is highly unlikely to be sold by Newcastle, to anyone, but they certainly wouldn't go out of their way to jeopardise their own team by buying him to take him to another one of their clubs.

Will Al-Hilal throw £250 million at Newcastle for Bruno Guimaraes?

Unless, of course, Al-Hilal plan to spend an extortionate amount of money on the real Bruno to give Newcastle a nice PSR boost so they can replace Bruno with two or three players of a similar quality.

But can you imagine the backlash if they even tried to do that, given the overreaction to selling ASM to a PIF-owned club?

Even Sport Witness says to take this one with a pinch of salt. I'm not sure there is enough salt in the world for this one.