Brandon Williams opens up on receiving suspended prison sentence after 99mph crash

Ex-Man Utd player Brandon Williams opens up on receiving a suspended prison sentence after a crash at 99mph three years ago.

He reveals he struggled with the attention he got during his breakthrough season (2019-20) at Manchester United, the Covid pandemic, struggling with fitness and life at home.

In May 2025, Williams was handed a 14-month suspended prison sentence for dangerous driving and driving without insurance after reaching speeds of nearly 100mph (161km/h) in an Audi A3, leading to a crash on the A34 near Handforth, Cheshire, on August 20th, 2023.

Involved in the collision was a Ford Fiesta, causing extensive damage and injuries, including whiplash and psychological trauma to the Fiesta’s occupants.

Williams and his passenger were seen with yellow balloons, suggesting nitrous oxide use, though he was not under its influence.

He was banned from driving for three years, ordered to complete 180 hours of unpaid work, and expressed remorse for his “stupid” and “ostentatious” driving.

After just one appearance for Hull in the 2025/26 season, he has most recently been training with League Two side Rotherham.

‘I’ve learnt from my mistakes. I take ownership of everything that’s happened to me’

A raw and revealing interview with Brandon Williams

He spoke to me about his time at Manchester United, his mental health struggles & advice to younger playershttps://t.co/wgsF97jrt1

— Tom Burrows (@TBurrows16) August 9, 2026

Brandon said in an interview with The Athletic: “I’ve learned from my mistakes. I take full ownership of everything that’s happened to me. That’s why I always say to myself, ‘I got myself in this mess, I am going to get myself out of it.’

“I’ve let a lot of people down, to be honest, and I want to prove a lot of people wrong as well. That’s one thing that is left to do in my life, to get back onto the football pitch and show what I can do.”

“To this day, it’s one of the worst things I’ve ever done. I really should have stayed.

“I just think as a 19 year old going to move away from home, playing for United, there’s a lot of things that can go wrong.

“I was too immature. I wasn’t aware of a lot of things as well, so I should have stayed with my parents at home to keep that situation under control.”

He moved to somewhere bigger, but that also came with problems, from people to distraction and an unhealthy lifestyle, but his parents did keep him ‘grounded’.

Williams went out on loan to Norwich for game time, finding living arrangements tough. Then returned to United, but with an injury.

He continued: “The difficulty is when you’re not being told anything and you’re just in the dark. You’re just a passenger at that point.”

There were initial hopes ahead of the 2023-24 season, being part of Man Utd pre-season: “But when I got back, I just wasn’t involved in anything, so I was like, ‘what is going on here?’.”

He then went out on loan to Ipswich, working with Kieran McKenna: “Then a lot of stuff happened in the October-November time.

“Kieran could see that I wasn’t myself. On the New Year’s Day game, we had Stoke away. He said, ‘I want you to go to Manchester and have two weeks off. I want you to come back down here as Brandon, I don’t want to see this Brandon’. I was like, ‘OK, no problem’.”

After 17 games and two goals, his time at the Tractor Boys came to an end, he spoke with a psychologist over personal issues: “He [Michael Farrell] would come and knock on my door in the morning, because I had an apartment in town, and he’d be like, ‘Brandon, come on, we’re going to get a coffee’, because I’d literally just be in bed all day. It helped me have that to get up and be like, ‘Come on, stop feeling sorry for yourself’.”

On being released by Man Utd: “At the time I was just like, ‘Whatever, it is what it is’, but I was in a dark space.

“And then a couple of months passed and I was thinking, ‘Oh my god, what have I done?’. Then it hit me that was what I’d known all my life from seven years of age. It was a gutting feeling, especially when you are by yourself and you’re just thinking about it. It’s a dark place.

“I didn’t want to play football again. It was difficult but I just knew I had to go and train for my mental side of things — I knew I had to do something. I had no plans on going back to football for that whole year. It went on until the start of the new year that I was like, ‘Right, I miss this now, I’m ready to go back, I am ready to get back into football’.”

Reflecting on his crash and being given a suspended prison sentence: “It made me grow up as a person and realise that this is real life, this isn’t GTA (Grand Theft Auto) or something like that.

“It was a proper wake-up call. Since then it was about building and changing a reputation that I had and that’s not me.

“I wasn’t the Brandon that everyone knows. I was a completely different person.”

The court heard how he was someone “who had little guidance on the pitfalls of being a young, high-earning footballer”.

“It does put a lot on you — there are not many people who have done what I’ve done, so it is difficult. You’re at a club that’s worldwide but you feel very lonely sometimes and it’s difficult to navigate what’s right from wrong, especially at that age, because you’ve got the freedom to do whatever you want.

“I was 19, I was like, ‘I know what I’m doing’, but I was immature and stupid.”

Brandon now looks back on his time at Man Utd, feeling much more positive about it, and has found a love for football again, trying to kick start his career.

He also spoke on how he wants to help others, going through similar situations, from troubles on and off field, to sharing his experience and knowledge: “I look back at myself now and think what an idiot I was. That is not what an athlete does, it’s not what a footballer does, it’s not what a grown man does. It’s stupid stuff.”

Court was informed that he admitted and regretted using nitrous oxide, also known as laughing gas, in the past, but he didn’t do so just before the crash three years ago.

Brandon added: “It makes everything 10 times worse, but you don’t realise that when you’re doing it at the time.

“I’ve seen people who can’t walk anymore. And that just takes one of them (balloon), it’s horrible.”

Brandon Williams is here incase you was wondering, 📸 @Nelsonrufc1925 pic.twitter.com/YMQs08n8nX

— 𝕏Scott Kent𝕏 (@MightyMillers20) August 4, 2026

In mid-July, Millers boss Alex Bruce said to Rotherham Advertiser: “Brandon has a good pedigree. He’s worked with the very best and played against the best. He was showing me a game between Manchester United v Liverpool at Anfield where he was playing. We know what he’s capable of.

“He’s had a tough couple of years. He’s not done a proper pre-season for two or three years now and he’s had a few problems with injuries. It’s a case of just seeing where he’s at, getting a good pre-season into him and seeing where we go with it.”

When asked if there’s a chance of offering a contract, Bruce added: “He’s going to continue training, we’re going to have a good look at him. I think he’s enjoyed it here so far. So we’ll give him time, get the fitness levels into him and then, when both parties are happy, we’ll try to make a decision.”