Former Manchester United defender, Wes Brown has opened up on his struggles after being declared bankrupt last year.
Brown made 362 appearances for United and earned £50,000-a-week as a player at one stage, but HMRC filed a bankruptcy petition against him last February, and the petition was rubber-stamped at the High Court two months later.
The five-time Premier League winner, who also won the Champions League twice and was capped 23 times by England, split from his wife Leanne in 2022.
Brown, 44, has now opened up how things went wrong for him, admitting he did not have the ‘right people’ to guide him during his younger years.
‘I think the main thing is when you are making a lot of money, you need the right people, don’t you? And I would say that’s one of the things I didn’t have,’ he said on the Ben Heath Podcast.
‘It was a little bit different. It wasn’t lots of people you go and speak to and you maybe meet people and do this do that. I wasn’t interested in any of that. You said yes and got on with it.
‘It’s a long story and I won’t go into the detail, but it’s stuff that happened a long time ago with certain investments and getting into stuff that as a young kid, a lot of people go into, [but] don’t really understand it.
‘It’s what a lot of people are doing and then it came to a head last year, and that’s how it went.
‘It’s happened and I’m just getting on with it but it’s one of those things where you hope people, especially this generation, don’t get involved in.’
Brown revealed his current predicament is still ‘ongoing’ and was asked whether anyone had ever reached out to him to ask for advice on how to avoid going down the same path.
He replied: ‘No. I’ve had a lot of players that have said “I’m in the same thing”.
‘I won’t say names and it doesn’t necessarily mean that the same outcome will happen to them.
‘But it’s stuff like when you’re kids you don’t really understand it anyway, you just assume a lot of people are doing it and it’s fine. That’s not your life, you’re just playing football.
‘A lot of people have been able to get themselves out of it or they’re still involved in sorting it out or whatever, but I just couldn’t. There’s not much I could do.’
