His mother can still be found serving fry-ups at her ‘greasy spoon’ cafe among the clothes stalls and bric-a-brac of Harpurhey’s indoor market.
Lisa, a formidable presence behind the counter of Snack Attack, could easily have pulled down the shutters for good when Brandon Williams broke into Manchester United’s team and the money started to pour in.
That she decided to keep her daily routine, working beneath a mocked-up street sign for “Bitch BLVD”, says a lot about the family’s way of life before Williams’ arrival in the Premier League, seemingly with the world at his feet.
There is something profoundly sad, though, about visiting Snack Attack these days and seeing all the photographs and other mementoes that Lisa has put on display to show off her son and celebrate his career.
One shows him sitting beside Ole Gunnar Solskjaer, then United’s manager, on the day he signed his first professional contract. On the kitchen wall, there is a red and white scarf: “Brandon Williams, Manchester United and England.” Newspaper clippings, from happier times, are attached to the counter.
Lisa behind the counter of Snack Attack in 2020 (Daniel Taylor/The Athletic)
One has been snipped out of the Manchester Evening News. The headline (“It’s making my family and everyone around the area proud”) is a direct quote from Williams — the classic local-boy-done-good, raised in a part of north Manchester that has been stigmatised for longer than its residents would care to remember.
Now 24, Williams’ devotion to Harpurhey includes a sleeve tattoo showing his old street name, the M9 postcode and the “No Ball Games” sign that never put him off finding somewhere for a kickabout.
Yet it has been a while since customers would head to Snack Attack on Monday mornings for a chat with Lisa about how he had played at the weekend.
(Ash Donelon/Manchester United via Getty Images)
Williams’ time at United, the club he joined at the age of seven, ended on June 30 when his contract expired and the 20-time champions of England decided against offering him a new one. He has not found another club and there are no immediate prospects of a return to the sport.
In March, he will go on trial at Chester Crown Court for dangerous driving — a charge he denies — in relation to a high-speed accident on the A34 at Wilmslow, Cheshire, in August last year. At an earlier hearing, prosecutor Katie Johnson said Williams had been behind the wheel of an Audi A3 and was “seen by witnesses to have taken nitrous oxide from balloons”.
For now, it is difficult to know where he will end up next. Williams has not played in 2024. His story is complicated and, though there are lots of people who want to be supportive of him, it is no exaggeration to say his future is uncertain. Without wishing to sound alarmist, not everyone connected with United is convinced he will return to the highest level of football until he has fully reassessed his life and priorities.
(Simon Stacpoole/Offside/Offside via Getty Images)
That, in turn, will inevitably bring criticism from people inside and outside the sport. Many will question whether he made the classic mistake of getting his priorities badly wrong after the money and stardom arrived. The football world can be an unforgiving place when the public sees a non-footballing footballer and what, on the face of it, looks like talent going to waste.
Others, however, might prefer to look at the Williams story through a softer lens and adopt a more sympathetic view that takes into account how football, as an industry, can be filled with all sorts of challenges for young adults — and the hardest of those challenges, almost always, come off the pitch.
At Old Trafford, there was no rancour when Williams left. It was sadness, for the most part, because they were saying goodbye to one of their own. All sorts of people reached out to him to offer help and guidance without, it seemed, being able to get through to him properly. It has pained a lot of people that his story with United has been denied a happy ending.
(Robbie Jay Barratt – AMA/Getty Images)
For that, he may have to get used to some hard-faced responses on the battlegrounds of social media, where little time or thought is given to the human element, the potential for mitigating circumstances — and the strong possibility that, at the heart of everything, he must dearly wish it had not turned out that way.
But maybe, before rushing into judgement, we should perhaps reflect that Williams is also a prime example of the pitfalls that can distract players once they have navigated their way through an academy system to Premier League fame. The wealth, the stardom — not everyone can adjust to being catapulted into that world, away from what they know, without making some bad choices in the process.
Sadly, that appears to be the case here and there has been considerable evidence that, at some point, Williams let it affect his lifestyle and lost the mindset that was so apparent before and after he made his first-team debut in an EFL Cup tie against Rochdale in September 2019, a few weeks after his 19th birthday.
That is another clipping from the Manchester Evening News that his mum has on show at her cafe. The photograph shows Williams celebrating with Mason Greenwood, a long-time friend, after his fellow youth team graduate had opened the scoring. The teamsheet is attached, too.
(Alex Livesey/Getty Images)
Life was good back then. Williams could play on either side of defence. He was fearless in the tackle and had an old-fashioned combative streak that appealed greatly to Nicky Butt, the former United midfielder, then in charge of the club’s academy.
Ed Woodward, United’s chief executive, was so impressed he told people on a Europa League trip to Astana in Kazakhstan that Williams had replaced Luke Shaw, an England international, as the club’s top left-back.
But that was only two months after the teenager’s debut, and, on reflection, maybe it was just Woodward demonstrating that his knowledge of football was not perhaps as advanced as he liked to believe.
Others took a more conservative view and questioned whether Williams may have been elevated to United’s starting XI ahead of his time. Williams, it was noted, had been playing at left-back because he had not been able to take the place of right-back Ethan Laird, now at League One club Birmingham City, in United’s under-21s.
Nonetheless, there was a lot to like about the way Williams adapted to the Premier League, wearing United’s number 53 shirt, and the unpretentious story of a boy who planned to go into the army if he did not make it as a footballer.
Gary Neville, a former United full-back, meant it as a compliment when he said Williams “would eat his opponent’s nose to win”. Solskjaer eulogised about him. Everything happened very quickly and, by the end of the 2019-20 season, Williams had played in a Europa League final, won his first England Under-21 call-up and made 36 appearances for a team that finished third in the Premier League. It is no wonder his Instagram account, last updated 13 months ago, has more than a million followers.
His career since then has taken in an aborted season on loan at Ipswich Town, having previously spent 2021-22 with Norwich City, and it may not be a coincidence that United thought it might be useful to put some distance between Williams and Manchester.
(Julian Finney/Getty Images)
Williams had spells of good form for both clubs. The fans appreciated his all-action style and the way he would fly into tackles, rise to his feet and pump his fists at the crowd.
Over time, however, information started to get back to United, revealing that he had not been living his life in the way that would ordinarily be expected of a professional sportsman. Erik ten Hag, United’s manager, had already decided that Williams was not for him, but the club were alarmed by what they heard.
There was evidence of a young man who had started to lose his way and was not listening to the right people. All sorts of hangers-on had attached themselves to Williams, as often happens with young United stars, and perhaps he was not worldly or experienced enough to appreciate it might not always have been good for him.
There was also the damage caused by a photograph in The Sun, published in March last year, that showed him allegedly inhaling nitrous oxide in the passenger seat of a car near United’s training ground.
Nitrous oxide — also known as laughing gas or hippy crack — is classified as a Class C drug in the United Kingdom and its recreational use has been a criminal offence since November. Users inhale it for a short-lived burst of euphoria that can make them feel relaxed and light-headed. However, it is also possible to become psychologically dependent on it. Repeated use can lead to neurological and health issues, including damage to the nervous system.
Tottenham Hotspur suspended midfielder Yves Bissouma from their opening match of the season against Leicester City after he uploaded a video in which he appeared to be inhaling nitrous oxide from a balloon. The player issued a public apology, admitting it was a “severe lack of judgement” and acknowledging “the health risks involved”.
Khiara Keating, the Manchester City and England women’s goalkeeper, will go on trial in November next year after pleading not guilty to a charge of possession.
But its use among footballers is not a new issue. The list of players who have experimented with nitrous oxide over the years is considerable, even in an era when football clubs make sure to warn their players about all the potential risks.
In Williams’ case, he has never been short of people at Old Trafford who cared for him and wanted the best for him, with the emotional attachment that came from seeing a local lad go all the way through the youth system to the first team.
Williams captaining Manchester United Under-18s against Newcastle Under-18s (John Peters/Manchester United via Getty Images)
If you are not familiar with Harpurhey, it is still suffering, reputation-wise, from being named by a government study in 2007 as the most deprived neighbourhood in England and also being the subject of a BBC Three series, People Like Us, that held it up for ridicule in what one newspaper called “pantomime poverty”.
With his tough streetwise edge, Williams was a product of that environment. His first experiences of football came on a concrete caged pitch, often against much older boys. His cousin is the former Commonwealth and European super-featherweight champion Zelfa Barrett. It is a United-supporting family — dad Paul made his living as a window fitter on the skyscrapers that have changed Manchester’s cityscape — and how can you even imagine their pride when Williams made it into the first team from the same age group as Greenwood, James Garner and Angel Gomes? In interviews, the former Harper Mount school pupil often talked about how proud he was to be from Harpurhey and how he wanted to show what was possible through talent and hard work.
It is a difficult, complex story, therefore, to understand what went wrong and the non-football issues that disrupted his momentum.
His last appearance was Ipswich’s goalless draw at home to Queens Park Rangers on December 29 last year, when he was substituted after 63 minutes. He returned to Old Trafford for “assessment” in early January and, after that, it became apparent in the following weeks and months he would not be going back to Portman Road.
At the end of the season, however, he did plan to join the Ipswich players on a trip to Las Vegas that had been arranged to celebrate promotion and, as such, was never going to be a quiet affair. Ipswich got wind of it and, collectively, it was decided that Williams’ involvement would not be a good idea in the circumstances. This story, above all, maybe sums up his jumbled priorities at a time when he is also trying to rescue his career.
(George Tewkesbury/PA Images via Getty Images)
As for what happens next, it has to be hoped that at some point Williams can get his life fully in order and find himself in a position where he can start again.
There are people close to Williams who insist that is happening already, that he is working every day on his fitness and committed to the idea of finding a club in the January transfer window. Since June, he has been having regular sessions with an experienced personal trainer called Wayne Richardson as part of a team of fitness experts. It was something Williams arranged himself and that alone is a step in the right direction.
He could, of course, join another club at any time now he is a free agent. But that is not on the cards, which is hardly a surprise given Williams was often an absentee on United’s training pitches in his last six months at the club. Physically, he has had a lot of catching up to do and, two months since United let him go, it is vital he takes strong guidance. He has an agent, Rob Segal, who is an experienced figure in the industry and his inner circle includes a lawyer, Gareth Darbyshire, who is known to have become a big influence in his life. There should, in theory, be clubs who are willing to take a chance on a former United star-in-the-making, providing he is in the right condition.
At Snack Attack, meanwhile, Lisa has a chopping board that she keeps on the wall, with her son’s face printed on the wood. It was a present from one of her customers — a reminder, perhaps, that the people around here wish him well. But this is not really a story any longer about where he came from, it is about where life takes him next.
(Top photo: James Gill – Danehouse/Getty Images)
