Former Blues loanee Brandon Williams has spoken about his curtailed spell at Portman Road last season.

The 24-year-old admitted pleaded guilty to dangerous driving and driving without third party insurance at Chester Crown Court earlier today, offences committed four days before he joined Town, and will be sentenced on 9th May.

The former England U21 international made 10 starts and seven sub appearances for the Blues, scoring twice, and initially impressed.

But he played no further part after returning to parent club Manchester United in January, “getting assessed by their medical team”.

Speaking on the More Than a Match podcast, Williams spoke about his time at Town where he linked up with Kieran McKenna, who had been his coach at Old Trafford and other familiar faces now part of the Town boss’s staff.

“I just went in in the summer and went to the manager [Erik Ten Hag] and said I’m going to go and play in the Championship and experience something and obviously Kieran was there,” he recalled.

“At that point I was in a bad situation off the pitch, stuff was going on. Kieran got in contact with me, ‘Come down here, it will be good for you’.

“So I spoke to him and I was like, ‘OK’. Went down and then Kieran was there, Martyn [Pert] was there, the other coach, and Granty [Lee Grant] was there as well.

“Granty’s now one of my coaches, I shared a changing room with him, so I could speak to him on both sides, I can speak to him seriously on football and I can speak to him like that as well.

“Ipswich, I really liked it. It was good, it was going well, we were doing well, team was great, it’s a proper, serious football club with what they do. The standards are like, if you aren’t training, you’re noticed, you don’t look good.

“I had a couple of injuries, but that was about it and then we got to January and then a lot of things were starting to go crazy off the pitch with friends and stuff like that.

“And Kieran could see that in me, so Kieran was like, ‘Go back to Manchester for two weeks, go sort out what you need to sort out and then come back to who you are’. I said, ‘OK, no worries’.

“Prior to that, he could see it coming. Granty was picking me up to take me to Starbucks and we’d go and have a chat in his car and we’d speak about things.

“I ended up coming back to Manchester, sorted a lot of things out. Things got worse, so then the process didn’t really get me back down there.

“Then we got to March and I started training at the Cliff by myself and [Manchester United academy coach] Mark Dempsey and I was training good.

“They were fighting for promotion, so it was just better for me not to go down there and because my head wasn’t there.

“Obviously buzzing that they ended up getting promoted, that was a good feeling. I was still supporting them, I was watching them every single game.”

Having taken a break from football and Manchester over the summer, Williams says he’s now in a better place mentally and physically.

“I’ve been training now since July every day in the gym,” he said. “Ended up getting back on the pitch in October/November and now I’m nearly back there.”

Photo: Matchday Images

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