6 Dec 2011

Wallwork to spend time in jail

6:01 am on 6 December 2011

The former Manchester United footballer and Premier League winner Ronnie Wallwork has been jailed for 15 months after pleading guilty to breaking up stolen car parts in a scrapyard.

Wallwork was named Manchester United Young Player of the Year in 1996 and gained enough first-team appearance to be awarded a Premier League winners medal in the 2000/2001 season.

But Wallwork, who failed to break into the United first team and retired from professional football in 2008, fell on hard times financially and in an earlier hearing pleaded guilty in a UK court to three counts of receiving stolen goods.

Wallwork's decline from football's upper echelons to prison was interspersed with a string of controversies, including a ban for attacking a referee while on loan at Belgian side Royal Antwerp.

He was also stabbed several times in a Manchester bar, causing him to miss more than two months of the 2006/2007 season while on loan at Barnsley.