Footballer Jay Emmanuel-Thomas has been sentenced to four years in jail after last month pleading guilty to a cannabis importation charge over an attempt to smuggle £600,000 of the drug through Stansted Airport from Thailand.

The 34-year-old striker was sacked by Scottish Championship side Greenock Morton after his arrest last year. The former Arsenal academy product initially denied the charges but changed his plea to guilty at a hearing on May 7 at Chelmsford Crown Court in Essex.

"It is through your own actions you will no longer be known as a professional footballer," Judge Alexander Mills said before informing the footballer of his sentence.. "You will be known as a criminal. A professional footballer who threw it all away."

The footballer, whose former clubs include Ipswich, Bristol City, QPR, Livingston, Aberdeen and Thai side PTT Rayong, had spent the past eight months on remand.

Emmanuel-Thomas, of Cardwell Road in Gourock, Inverclyde, Scotland, was arrested in the town by National Crime Agency (NCA) officers in September 2024 after the NCA seized an estimated £600,000 of the class B drug as it was being smuggled through Stansted on September 2.

Border Force officers detected roughly 60kg (132lb) of the drug in two suitcases, which had arrived via a flight from Bangkok, Thailand. Co-defendants Rosie Rowland and Yasmin Piotrowska, who both denied charges having flown with the drugs, were already informed that they face no further action after prosecutors offered no evidence in their case.