Football
Former Arsenal Starlet Pleads NOT Guilty to £600k Drug Offence
Charlie has years of experience having been published on leading global sports content brands such as 90min.com and FootyAccumulators. He has a wealth of experience tailored towards news, long-form content and betting, but has also garnered experience in several roles in the fintech and crypto sector.
Get to know Charlie Rhodes betterPublished25 Oct 2024
Ex-Arsenal forward Jay Emmanuel-Thomas has denied his role in a drug trafficking plot worth over £600,000.
Jay Emmanuel-Thomas Pleads Not Guilty to Drug Trafficking Offence
Jay Emmanuel-Thomas, once a promising young winger/striker who impressed at Arsenal‘s Hale End academy, has been accused of plotting to smuggle over £600k worth of drugs into the UK.
The now-33-year-old has been on remand at HMP Durham, while co-defendants Rosie Rowland and Yasmin Piotrowska have been placed on bail.
All three of the accused deny the charge.
His most recent employers Greenock Morton of the Scottish Championship cut ties with Emmanuel-Thomas in September, after being arrested in Chelmsford.
Suitcases filled with vacuum-packed bags of marijuana worth over £600,000 were seized by border officials at Stansted Airport, where the National Crime Agency made the arrest.
The former Gunners forward is due to go on trial in May 2025.
Although Emmanuel-Thomas denied any wrongdoing for his role in the ordeal, his football career is almost certainly over.
He will perhaps be best remembered for a simply outrageous goal for Arsenal reserves against their Everton counterparts, where he pulled off what’s been coined as a ‘hocus pocus’ between two opposition defenders – see what we mean below.
After making just one senior appearance for his boyhood club, he would go on to represent a host of clubs in the Championship including Ipswich, QPR and Bristol City, where he enjoyed his most fruitful spell with 24 goals in 84 appearances.
He also impressed on three separate loan spells whilst still on the books at Arsenal, scoring five in 14 in a memorable stint at Doncaster Rovers.
Latterly his colourful career saw him head north towards the Scottish top-flight, where short-lived spells for Livingstone and Aberdeen where followed by an adventure to the Indian Super League in 2022.
A trial is expected to take five to seven days, and Judge Christopher Morgan said a further case management hearing is slated for January.