Super Mario as Santa Claus: the weirdest Balotelli rumour yet?

Mario Balotelli attracts about five strange rumours every week, but the one that spread like wildfire on social media channels on Saturday night is the strangest one we’ve heard yet.

On the face of it, the Manchester City striker is preparing for Sunday’s big Premier League showdown with Arsenal at the Etihad Stadium.

And while we have no way of knowing whether the rumour which started doing the rounds on Twitter and Facebook last night is actually true, we admit that part of us was keeping our fingers crossed and hoping against hope that it was.

The rumour which started to appear around about 11pm last night, just 17 hours or so before kick-off against Arsenal this afternoon, suggested that Balotelli was carting around Manchester in a Santa Claus suit, doling out £20 notes to the happy proletariat.

And while scepticism was the stock reaction, there was also a significant proportion of people who conceded that the rumour was at least believable, given everything else that has gone on in the strange and wonderful life of Mario Balotelli over the past year or two.