Drunk car crash gave Drinkwater ‘biggest wake-up call’ as he sat in prison cell

Former Chelsea midfielder Danny Drinkwater has called a drunken car crash his “biggest wake up call”.

Drinkwater was signed by the Blues for an eyebrow raising £35million back in 2017. The Englishman had looked to make the next step up in his career after winning the Premier League with Leicester, but his time at Stamford Bridge barely ever got into second gear.

He made just 23 appearances in a five-year spell, repeatedly being benched, suffering injuries and failing to get first team minutes in a bitter cycle. Drinkwater was sent out on loan four times before finally being released in 2022.

The 33-year-old has now told Sportbible he knew he had made a mistake after only his first season in west London and recalled thinking “this is messed up”.

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And several on and off the pitch problems saw his mental health deteriorate at the end of the 2018/19 season, resulting in him going on drinking escapades.

That culminated in one drunken incident where the central-midfielder crashed his Range Rover through a wall in Cheshire in the early hours of the morning. In his £125,000 car were two female passengers, and Drinkwater was arrested, slapped with a 20 month driving ban and ordered to do 70 hours of community service.

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Speaking candidly about being put in a prison cell, he said: "When you've got a young kid at the time as well, your perspective changes, I remember being sat in the prison cell afterwards.

"It was the morning I was supposed to pick my son up. I rarely got a morning, as well. In my head, I was thinking, 'You're an idiot. You've had a car crash after a night out and for what?’

"It hit me like a ton of bricks. I was like, ‘f***ing hell, you need to fix up really fast’. That was the biggest wake-up call ever."

With his mental health at an all-time low and having beaten himself up about his situation, Drinkwater went on to talk to a sports psychologist. He explained how getting things off his chest made "everything calm down".

His transfer to Chelsea is still widely perceived to be a total failure and the turning point in his career.

Since becoming a free agent at the end of his loan spell with Reading last year, the former Leicester star is yet to play a minute of professional football.

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