I remember a thread on the old board suggesting we were very close to signing Schweinsteiger. Can't remember if it was a genuine link or an attention seeker but it had people going for quite a while.
In the 90s we were linked with all the best players in the world, especially Brazilians. Were we ever linked with Cafu?
We were definitely linked with Lineker towards the end of his career and Rooney said himself recently he was nearly set to move to Chelsea and go straight on loan to us.
Maybe one day we'll get back to this calibre of player being linked. It was fun even when they never materialised.