Blackburn manager Kean given 18-month ban after pleading guilty to drink-driving

He had earlier pleaded guilty but applied to escape the ban, claiming his drink was spiked.

A judge at Macclesfield Magistrates’ Court in Cheshire rejected the “special reasons” application, however, saying Kean had failed to prove his drink had been laced.

The 43-year-old Scot was almost twice the legal limit when he failed a breath test just hours after his side played Manchester United in the Premier League last May.

Kean, of Weybridge, Surrey, changed his plea to guilty of driving with excess alcohol shortly before his trial was due to begin yesterday.

Kean was breathalysed after his black Mercedes was pulled over by police on the southbound carriageway of the M6 near Knutsford, Cheshire, at 8.30pm on 14 May.

The prosecution say he sped past a marked patrol car at 90mph. The officers, who were driving at 50mph, pulled him over and gave him a breath test which recorded 65 micrograms of alcohol per 100 millilitres of breath, well above the legal limit of 35 micrograms per 100 millilitres of breath. Kean admitted drinking two-and-a-half glasses of red wine with Manchester United manager Sir Alex Ferguson after the game, and later a bottle of Budweiser at a pub near his Blackburn home.

A medical expert said that quantity of alcohol would have been insufficient to cause the breathalyser reading. The defence argued that one of his drinks must have been spiked.

But the prosecution said there was another possibility, that Kean was lying.