Newcastle United's window is ending how it started, with links to the most weird and wonderful names in the football world.
In a window that kicked off with an audacious link for Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang and dozens of others across Europe along the way, the insane nature of the January window peaked in terms of madness on Thursday morning as Bild reported Newcastle were interested in Bayern Munich and Germany legend Thomas Muller.
The winter trading period began with Eddie Howe insisting that "99%" of the names linked with United was inaccurate, which had dropped to 50% at his last Press conference.
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Whatever anybody says, Newcastle have been offered an incredible amount of players by agents while they have been forced into making more enquiries than ever before.
Some agents have also thrown United's name into the conversation during a fraught month and at times it has paid off for them with their clients earning moves elsewhere.
Go back to October when Newcastle lost to Wolves in Mike Ashley's last game as owner and the thought of Newcastle reporters checking with Muller's agent where the story had come from would have been laughed off!
But here we are, today alone Muller's name was merely the start and was followed by Napoli's Victor Osimhen then Mitchel Bakker of Bayer Leverkusen before being rounded off by Ashley Young.
In between the daily saga involving Diego Carlos at Seville saw their director of football Monchi try to push the deal forward until the summer while an anxious wait continues on Bruno Guimarães of Lyon.
Then there was talk from Brighton on Dan Burn with a fresh bid needed to persuade the Seagulls to sell.
Newcastle started the window hoping to sign five or six new faces, with three days left they have two on board in Kieran Trippier and Chris Wood.
Howe expects more and will face the media from Jeddah tomorrow with questions about recruitment certain to be high on the agenda.
But this will merely be the build-up to an intense weekend and then an excruciating finale on deadline day.
Newcastle are yet to move players on but somebody is going to face disappointment.
Somebody will be loaned out, some could be sold and some may end up without a squad number and find themselves dropped to the status of a training player.
And it will be in keeping with what has been a testing and difficult month for the club's new owners.
However, the big positive is that no stone has been left unturned, nobody can say Newcastle aren't trying to improve these days.
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