DUPED: Manchester United fan Stuar Slann

Stuart Slann spent nine hours in his car travelling to Aberdeen believing he was about to enjoy his first night of romance with a girl called “Emma”, whom he had never talked to but had been sending him suggestive email messages for over a month. But when Stuart, 39, from Sheffield, South Yorkshire, finally got to the remote farm in the north of Scotland where “Emma” had told him she lived it was locked up and deserted. He then got a text message saying she was delayed at work and that he would have to wait. After sitting in his car growing increasingly cold and frustrated for over three hours, Stuart finally called “Emma” and was horrified to hear a man with a Liverpool accent answer and say: “Hello Stuart, do you remember us? It’s them Scouse lads who threw you in the pool. You’ve been framed.”

To complete Stuart’s misery, his wife Louise, 34, now knows about the “affair” on the Facebook website and has left him. Last November Stuart, a lifelong United fan, fell out with the two Liverpool supporters who were staying in the same holiday hotel in Cancun, Mexico, after chatting each day about football. During one row beside the pool during his three-week break the two Liverpudlians, who are both professional Cage Fighters, got so fed up with Stuart’s claims about how much better Manchester were than Liverpool they threw him into the water, accidentally breaking his ankle and smashing one of his ribs.

But their revenge didn’t stop once they got home to Merseyside. The pair then tricked Stuart into sending emails to “Emma”, a fictional girl they had created on the Facebook website. The tricksters, under the guise of “Emma”, contacted Stuart and claimed to like the look of his photo on the web and share his love of United. During the nightly email exchanges that followed, “Emma” told Stuart how she couldn’t wait to meet up and make more of their budding relationship.

To make matters even worse, as Stuart drove to Scotland he was even persuaded in a text message to use his mobile telephone to send a rude photograph of himself to “Emma”, who he mistakenly thought was excitedly waiting for him to arrive north of the border. Now the two unnamed Liverpool fans have posted that photo – and a tape of the telephone conversation when Stuart finally discovers who “Emma” really is – on the YouTube website, where it is proving a huge hit. Even websites for supporters of Liverpool, Manchester United and Sheffield Wednesday are now advertising where to find the footage and last week it began appearing on internet pages in Holland, making him a laughing stock with football fans across Europe.