A football bad boy has opened up on his harrowing prison stint when he found himself locked up behind bars and sharing a jail cell with cockroaches
Football bad-boy Nile Ranger says it’s “b******s” that he was sent to prison and made to sleep with cockroaches.
The ex-Newcastle forward was banged up in 2017 after pleading guilty to conspiracy to defraud. Ranger got sent to Pentonville, one of the oldest prisons in the UK. His solicitor told him he shouldn’t have gone to jail but he thinks the judge wanted to throw the book at him.
“Obviously in there it’s c***,” Ranger said. “Banged up 23 hours out of the 24-hour day, get to socialise for an hour. It’s just b******s. And I’m a guy who can’t sit down for too long. It was so old, the cockroaches. It was just horrid in there.
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“Boring, c***, everyone’s not really got no emotion. It’s not a place for someone with ambition and wanting to do better for themself.”
Ranger has dealt with off-field issues throughout his career. He earned an FA fine for homophobic posts while at Newcastle and was sentenced to a 12-month community order for assault in 2013.
He is looking to give back now, helping raise up to £500,000 for charity with a fight against former Arsenal youngster Jay Emmanuel-Thomas.
“I’ve always had a bit of something to me, ants in my pants, always getting into trouble here and there, fast money fast life at like 19, so I can give guidance to these youngsters,” he said.
Emmanuel-Thomas has also been behind bars after pleading guilty in 2024 to involvement in a plot to smuggle £600,000 worth of drugs to the UK. The 35-year-old, who played for Arsenal and QPR, was released on parole in 2025.
“Obviously it’s never a good scenario,” Emmanuel-Thomas said. “Eleven months or dealing with situations and solicitors and legals and court and it’s very overwhelming.
“But the aim was to, once out of that dynamic, being able to focus my energy into the right stuff, the right people and just make sure that I can get my feet back on the ground and get back to doing the right things.”
Nile Ranger and Jay Emmanuel-Thomas will fight at Pro Project Promotions’ A Night to Remember III at Grosvenor House Hotel in London on October 22