Trialist Brandon Williams on his difficult past and a brighter future

Brandon Williams has opened up on his troubled past as the former Manchester United starlet seeks to revive his career with Rotherham United.

The 25-year-old came through the youth ranks at Old Trafford and made than half a century of appearances for the Premier League giants before experiencing problems in his personal life and finishing up with a suspended prison sentence for a driving offence.

His glory days with the Red Devils came six years ago and he has been on trial with the League Two Millers all summer in a bid to earn a contract at AESSEAL New York Stadium.

The left-back says he has only himself to blame for his fall from grace.

"I’ve learned from my mistakes," he said. "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."

Williams played 51 times for Manchester United and had loan spells at Norwich City and Ipswich Town before leaving Old Trafford in 2024 and ending a 16-year association with the club. A move to Hull City didn't work out and he arrived at Rotherham in late June as a free agent.

In May last year, he was given that 14-month suspended prison sentence, and three-year driving ban and ordered to complete 180 hours of community service after pleading guilty to dangerous driving while he was with Ipswich. In court, it was said that he was speeding at up to 99 miles per hour in a 70mph zone in his Audi A3, collided with a Ford Fiesta and crashed into the central reservation.

The defender struggled with the attention as he made his breakthrough with his hometown club but that didn't stop him becoming first-choice left-back, ahead of England international Luke Shaw, for a spell.

His issues really began when he moved out of his family home as a teenager to live by himself.

"To this day, it’s one of the worst things I’ve ever done," he said. "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.”

Williams admits to inhaling nitrous oxide (laughing gas) from a balloon, in the past.

"I look back at myself now and think what an idiot I was," he said. "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."

Nitrous oxide is now a banned substance and he says he experimented with it in a misguided bid to ease the pressure of his high-profile existence.

"It makes everything 10 times worse, but you don’t realise that when you’re doing it," he said. "I’ve seen people who can’t walk anymore. And that just takes one of them (balloon). It’s horrible."

His lowest point came with the car crash when he was driving with a female passenger.

"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," he said. "It was a proper wake-up call. I wasn’t the Brandon that everyone knows. I was a completely different person."

While he has been training with Rotherham, he has been getting taxis to the training ground from Manchester or lifts from teammates.

Leaving Manchester United, where he'd been alongside the likes of Paul Pogba, Juan Mata, Bruno Fernandes and Harry Maguire, hit him hard and he spent a year without a club before a short spell with Hull that ended in February this year.

"A couple of months passed (following his Old Trafford exit) and I was thinking: 'Oh my god, what have I done?'. It was all I’d known all my life from seven years of age. It was a gutting feeling."

"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 of going back to football for that whole year. Then I was like: 'Right, I miss this now, I’m ready to go back, I am ready to get back into football.'"

Williams is still with Rotherham and waiting to hear if an offer will be put on the table.

Noe in a stable relationship, he wants to play again for himself and for his family.

"My nan is on at me because she’s got a frame where it’s me playing at 18, 19, 20 and 21," he said. "Every time I go to see her, she points at it and says: 'I want you to be doing that again.' That’s my motivation.

"I know it’s not going to be a quick process, I know I’m not going to be in the Premier League next year. I’m ready to climb the mountain and get back to the top of it."