Last April, you might remember that we got ourselves involved in an argument with a journalist at The Guardian, Sachin Nakrani. Having never previously heard of him, attention was drawn to Nakrani after reading his response to the FA publishing their report on Luis Suarez’s punishment. It was meant to be an informative piece about the FA’s handling of the Evra/Suarez case but Nakrani was guilty of making comments that completely contradicted what the report actually said. It became apparent that Nakrani was a Liverpool fan but even writing with bias shouldn’t mean writing blatant lies.

For example, Nakrani argued that this case was “a row that boiled down to one man’s word against another”. If Nakrani had read the report, he would see the opposite was true and even Suarez’s defence lawyer, Peter McCormick OBE, agreed.

To quote the report: “215. It was accepted by both Mr Greaney and Mr McCormick in closing submissions that this is not simply a case of one person’s word against another.”

So when Nakrani reared his ugly head in April, lying again, plenty of reds were totally unimpressed. This time he claimed that he was getting abuse on Twitter from Manchester United fans because he had criticised Chelsea fans jeering the minute’s silence for Hillsborough victims.

What had actually happened was Nakrani had posted a picture of a Chelsea fan doing a Nazi salute from Liverpool’s FA Cup semi-final against Chelsea at Old Trafford six years ago and claimed it was from that day’s game. Fans of all teams told him he was wrong and fans of all teams (mainly United) questioned how he could be so quick to condemn Chelsea’s racist fans when he had been happy to write lies in a national paper to defend Suarez’s racism. That was it. When you looked through his mentions, there wasn’t a single United fan giving him abuse for criticising the minute’s silence, as he had claimed.

Nakrani had a decision to make at this point. Either come clean and admit he had made up the accusations of abuse or continue the row. Sadly for him, he chose the latter. When repeatedly asked why he lied, Nakrani told us he would explain himself face to face, but in London. When he was welcomed to Manchester for the discussion, he refused, and blocked the @R_o_M account.

The Red Issue account was amongst the United fans who were not too impressed with Nakrani’s behaviour and they were offered the same deal. Come down to London and discuss it face to face.

In October’s edition of Red Issue, a brilliant story unfolds. It is their story but it’s a good one. Are you sitting comfortably? Then I’ll begin…

Several months passed since the argument in April but the next time someone from RI was down in London they paid Nakrani a visit, just as he had told them to, to discuss the lies he had been telling about United fans.

“His nervousness gave way to what looked suspiciously like terror. His lips a-quivering and voice a-stuttering. Nakrani attempted to grasp at anything and everything that would show how this had been all one big misunderstanding.”

Nakrani proceeded to shit himself, told the receptionists to call the police and urged security to eject the RI man from the building. He didn’t need security to escort him out, so he made his excuses and left. As he was walking down the road, Nakrani left the building and started shouting at the RI man with the security man following behind him.

“What occurred next was comedy gold. Nakrani stopped a safe enough distance away and, pointing at his chin, shrieked, ‘GO ON THEN! HIT ME! HIT ME YOU COWARD!’ As the security chap attempted to rein in the hysterical chump, passing office workers on their lunch breaks looked on amazed, ‘You and your shitty little fanzine – you’re taking on the big boys now!’ Nakrani continued.”

The story could end there and it would be good enough. Nakrani created an argument through his lies and has been suitably embarrassed. Amazingly though, the story gets so much better. It’s a real gift.

When Nakrani returned to the office he was shaken and keen to resolve the problem, according to someone in touch with RI at The Guardian. He asked for some way of contacting RI so one hack handed over an e-mail address for an old contributor.

The next time Nakrani and RI had a row on Twitter, another account piped up, CharlieClitLicker (@charlieclit), asking about whether an old contributor still writes for RI and enquired about his e-mail address. By incredible coincidence, this was the e-mail address of the former contributor that had been given to Nakrani. How strange.

Having a look through @CharlieClit’s timeline, it turns out this account had tweeted RI in the aftermath of the London visit and, as it would happen, addressed RI by the name given at reception on the day of the London visit. The only other person to do this is Nakrani. What a coincidence, how strange.

The rest of @CharlieClit’s timeline was filth, with him tweeting obscenities to pornstars and random girls.

Another coincidence is that the ten normal people that the @CharlieClit account followed were also followed and tweeted by Nakrani. One of them even had Nakrani and @CharlieClit next to each other in their “followers” list, almost as if they both followed her one after the other. How strange.

The strangest thing of all though, a real spooky coincidence, is that the day after the edition of Red Issue with this story on a double page spread went on sale, the @CharlieClit account was deleted (thankfully screenshots like the ones you see above were taken confirm it wasn’t all just a dream). You’ve got to think it’s really considerate of whoever owns that perverted account to delete it as soon as the story started circulating Twitter, obviously not wanting people to incorrectly think Nakrani was in any way connected to it. I mean, it would be horribly embarrassing for Nakrani if people thought he was a sex fiend, wouldn’t it?

I’m sure he wishes that back in April he had just come clean and admitted he lied though, so that none of these humiliating but unconnected coincidences ever found their way to the public domain. Oh well. Better luck next time, eh Sachin?

If you aren’t at Old Trafford on match days, you really should subscribe to Red Issue.