Confusion has spread throughout the Liverpool camp on their pre-season tour as former striker Andy Carroll has been found in Bangkok with a fake Uruguayan passport and full Liverpool kit, according to sources.
Having recently moved on from Championship side West Bromwich Albion in the hope of playing Premier League football next season, the Newcastle-born player is understood to have attracted the attention of local authorities with his inconspicuous behaviour on a football pitch in the Thai capital.
“He’s 6’4 and moves like a lorry, so hardly goes unnoticed,” a local police spokesman said.
“It’s hard to believe he pulled on a Liverpool shirt and blasted a sitter over the bar in front of a worldwide audience – did he think Interpol wouldn’t pick up on him impersonating a footballer?!”
However, Liverpool are yet to confirm if it was a disguised Andy Carroll on the pitch during their 4-0 defeat to Man United or if it was in fact new £85m striker Darwin Nunez, unsure as to which would be the least embarrassing for the club.
“Darwin Nunez came here with a big reputation as a deadly finisher, yet he looked clunky, awkward, spoke in an accent nobody could understand and missed an open goal,” an Anfield insider said.
“It’s easy to understand that, on first glance, many could have mistaken him for big Andy cos of this, but he had a sip of Newcastle Brown Ale in the dressing room after the game and said it tasted like p*ss so we’re pretty certain it was the new lad called Darwin,”
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The confusion hasn’t benefitted the lanky Geordie in his search for a new club though, with the display putting off several potential suitors who believed it was the now-33-year-old ex-Magpie.
‘The phone’s gone dead since that game!” we were told by associates of the striker. “He’ll have to pay a club to let him play thanks to Nunez – even The Dog and Duck won’t have him unless he lifts out the empty kegs and mops up the lavs.”
And alarm bells are said to be already ringing around Anfield following the performance, with Jurgen Klopp spending the evening on the Benfica website looking up the club’s returns policy.
“We know Jurgen has kept the receipt, so assuming the big lad is undamaged, he should be able to get a full refund or at least an exchange on him,” we were told.
“Under his statutory rights, the boss still has another month before he needs to make a decision, and might try him out a few more times before sending him back in the original packaging.”
*Paddy Power’s breaking football news coverage is 100% fake news*
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