Newcastle striker Callum Wilson insists Sandro Tonali wasn't the victim of prank over his visit to Weatherspoons last week.
Tonali popped up at the restaurant chain with photos taken with staff.
I come into training one day when it happened and we were sitting at breakfast," Wilson recalled on the Footballers' Football podcast.
"Everyone was like 'did you see the pictures of Sandro in Wetherspoons yesterday?'. I was like, surely not. And they were like 'yeah, look'.
So they were all showing us pictures of it round the table at breakfast. Then he come into the canteen and it was one of those awkward moments when you're talking about someone and they enter the room. It just goes silent.
One of the lads goes 'Oh Sandro, did you enjoy Wetherspoons last night?'. He was like 'Yeah, yeah, it was good', so we just left it at that. Then people were starting to say 'did you know there are better restaurants', but I'm not sure if he's just Googled a good rated restaurant and that's come up. I didn't get to the bottom of it."