“One thing is for sure: he can score goals. That is a massive talent you cannot give to people — right foot, left foot, this guy is an unbelievable finisher, inside and outside the box.” — Arsene Wenger, Arsenal manager, 2010.

As the judge imposed a four-year prison sentence, the former footballer standing in the dock bowed his head. Jay Emmanuel-Thomas stood impassively, hands behind his back, flanked by two security officials.

He had once been a brilliant prospect for Arsenal and went on to become an accomplished centre-forward representing other clubs in England, Scotland and around the world.

Now, though, he was led away as an international drug smuggler who had tried to bring 60 kilograms (132lb) of cannabis, with a street value of £600,000 ($815,000) into England, duping his girlfriend into being one of his couriers.

His playing career is finished, aged 34, and that was described by his barrister, Alex Rose, as an “absolutely seismic shock” for a man who had “succumbed to temptation in a catastrophic error of judgment”.

But what led Emmanuel-Thomas to criminality? And how did a man with a 16-year career as a professional footballer — described in court as having led an “utterly law-abiding life” — find himself in this position?

Temptation, mainly — but also “stupidity”, by his own admission, and a level of financial hardship that demonstrates, perhaps, how the life of a footballer below Premier League level is not always as lucrative as many people believe.

Emmanuel-Thomas had blown his career earnings, the court was told, and was no longer attracting the big contracts that came earlier in his life. At the time of his arrest, he was earning £600 a week, plus bonuses, at Greenock Morton in the Scottish Championship, the second division of the game in Scotland.

“It is clear this (crime) was about money, despite you being in a position where you had the privilege of playing football as a living,” the judge, Alexander Mills, told him.

“It is through your own actions that you will no longer be known for being a professional footballer. You will be known as a criminal — a professional footballer who threw it all away, and put others at risk of imprisonment, in pursuit of money.”

It is 16 years since Emmanuel-Thomas captained Arsenal to a 6-2 aggregate win against Liverpool in the FA Youth Cup final.

Arsenal’s team for that two-leg contest included Jack Wilshere, Francis Coquelin and Henri Lansbury, all future Premier League players. Yet it was the boy known as “JET”, after his initials, who stood out — tall, imposing and broad-shouldered, scoring in each round and seemingly destined for stardom. Some of the Liverpool players refused to believe he was only 18.

Emmanuel-Thomas had got his first call-up to Arsenal’s first-team squad at age 17, and there were almost two years when the teenager trained under manager Arsene Wenger’s watchful eye.

Perhaps the truth, however, is that Emmanuel-Thomas, in pure sporting terms, has always been something of a puzzle. He was too good for Arsenal’s reserves, yet not quite good enough for their first team. Then, having moved away from the north London club, there were times when various managers with other teams saw him as an elegant frustration — likeable, talented and brilliant on his day, but falling short, ultimately, of being the player he was expected to be.

At Arsenal, he played in every outfield position bar right-back for the youth and reserve teams. Steve Bould, a first-team coach and a legendary figure at the club from his own playing days, had wanted to turn the lad into a centre-half. Wenger, however, made it clear he saw Emmanuel-Thomas as a striker, just as the player did himself.

Emmanuel-Thomas, centre left, captained an Arsenal team including Jack Wilshere, left, to 2008-09 FA Youth Cup final success (Jamie McDonald/Getty Images)

It was never going to be easy, though, for any player to break into that first team while Thierry Henry and Robin van Persie were on the scene. Even after Henry moved on to Spanish side Barcelona in summer 2007, the competition was fierce.

“It was a tough period because, at the time, the attacking players at Arsenal were immense,” Emmanuel-Thomas told The Athletic in 2021. “We still had Van Persie, Andrey Arshavin, Theo Walcott, Carlos Vela, Nicklas Bendtner. After those guys, I was the next choice. I’d already bypassed all the players from my year, and two years above me, in the academy but it was difficult to get (first-team) game time.”

In court, his legal team talked about his criminal record being “something he will have to live with, and the feeling of shame, for the rest of his life”.

What can also be said with certainty, however, is that — even ignoring, for one moment, the events that brought him to Chelmsford crown court in Essex, east of London — this is a story of what might have been.

“Arsene Wenger thought he could go to the very top with Arsenal,” says Steve Cotterill, who managed Emmanuel-Thomas at Bristol City in the English third tier from 2013-15. “So, no, he didn’t achieve his full potential. But there are so many players who I’ve seen over the years like that, so he wouldn’t be different to a lot of them.”

After deciding to leave Arsenal in 2011 following a series of loans to clubs in the second-tier Championship, Emmanuel-Thomas had two seasons in that division with Ipswich Town, and was rewarded for his gamble by playing 42 of their 46 league games in his first season. The 2013 move to Bristol City came next, and it was there that he played arguably the best football of his career.

“I knew straight away that he had great ability,” says Cotterill. “He could go on some of the best 70-yard runs you’ve ever seen in your life. He could beat five players on those runs. He was a really powerful boy, he had a great left foot and a great understanding of the game for someone so young.”

Was he a popular member of the dressing room? All the evidence says that, yes, he was liked and respected by his team-mates at all his clubs.

“JET was always a big character, always smiling,” says Aaron Wilbraham, another City striker from that time. “He was good with the older lads, the younger lads — it didn’t matter to him. He was a friend to everyone, including me, which he didn’t have to be, considering I was his competition.”

Emmanuel-Thomas played some of his best football at Bristol City (Paul Gilham/Getty Images)

Staff at Arsenal took pride in seeing one of their academy graduates making a decent career for himself in the lower divisions of the game. Yet the player was held back at times because of weight and other fitness issues and that, perhaps, was the first indication he was not taking his football as seriously as he should have been.

“Because I was nearly 35, I was brought in to push JET on,” says Wilbraham, who joined from the Premier League’s Crystal Palace. “I remember Steve (Cotterill) pulling me in on my first day and saying, ‘Jay has got unbelievable ability, but he needs a bit more of a professional attitude, like you — I think you’ll be a good marker for him, but push him.’

“I think Jay struggled because he was one of those lads that carried a bit (of weight) anyway. He probably never bought into the diet side of things or tried to have a summer where he properly went for it and was like, ‘Right, I’m going to train all summer, strip down and go back in pre-season an absolute monster.’

“If he had done that, I think he would have been playing in the Premier League, because that was how good he was.

“He could have been unbelievable because of the ability he had — miles more ability than me, in his feet and his vision. Some of the stuff he used to do… even his penalties, when he used to walk up really slowly and look at the goalkeeper. He used to have the goalkeepers out after training for ages, trying just to save one.”

Emmanuel-Thomas moved on to Queens Park Rangers in the Championship as a free agent in summer 2015, shortly after helping Bristol City win the League One title. During three years with QPR, he also had loan spells with fellow EFL sides Milton Keynes Dons and Gillingham without ever replicating the form that brought 21 goals in his first season at Bristol City.

Although it was not mentioned in court, he also had 15 months out of the game when a proposed transfer to a Chinese club had to be abandoned in 2020 because of the outbreak of Covid.

Then, in the past five years, he has played briefly in Thailand for PTT Rayong and then in Scotland with Livingston, Aberdeen (both in the top-flight Premiership) and Greenock Morton, either side of a brief stint in India with Jamshedpur and nine games for Kidderminster in England’s fifth-tier National League.

One finish, in particular, for Livingston against Hamilton Academical in March 2021, is a reminder of his eye for the spectacular: flicking the ball up, with his back to goal, then firing a swivelling volley into the roof of the net.

‘That’s magnificent from the man they call Jet’ 😍

Jay Emmanuel-Thomas scored an audacious volley in Livingston’s 2-1 win against Hamilton Academical 👏 pic.twitter.com/fZoXJig60Z

— BBC Sport Scotland (@BBCSportScot) March 15, 2021

It was voted Livingston’s goal-of-the-season award and was likened to his former team-mate Henry’s famous volley for Arsenal against Manchester United in 2000. “Proud of this one,” Emmanuel-Thomas wrote on his Twitter page — an account that, noticeably, introduced him as an “entrepreneur” rather than a footballer. 

One of the more shocking parts of this court case concerns the way Emmanuel-Thomas tricked his girlfriend into being a part of his criminal operation.

Raised in south London, by Caribbean parents, Emmanuel-Thomas was on a six-month contract at Greenock Morton when the police arrived outside his house on September 18 last year.

As he ran out for a game away to Queen’s Park four days earlier, the former England Under-19 international must have known the law was about to catch up with him. His final match as a professional footballer — Morton announced his sacking on September 19 — ended in a 1-0 defeat. Emmanuel-Thomas was substituted after 65 minutes.

On September 2, Border Force officers had stopped two women at London Stansted Airport. One was the player’s 33-year-old partner, Yasmin Piotrowska, a fitness trainer from Kensal Green, north-west London. The other was her friend, Rosie Rowland, 29, from Chelmsford.

Detectives discovered via WhatsApp messages and voicenotes that Emmanuel-Thomas had persuaded them to travel to Thailand and act as couriers in return for £2,500 in cash and an all-expenses-paid trip, flying in business class via Dubai.

The women had been told it was gold they were bringing back. Unknown to them, it was actually cannabis, a class-B drug under UK law, vacuum-packed inside four suitcases. Each case had Apple AirTags to make sure the drugs weren’t lost.

Emmanuel-Thomas was arrested and, on his way to custody, he told officers from the National Crime Agency (NCA): “I just feel sorry for the girls.”

Yet he continued lying to Piotrowska after she had been arrested, sending her a WhatsApp message with instructions to “delete everything from our chats if you can … this is impossible, I’ve never been involved in anything like this in my life. You know it should be only gold and cash.”

The player deleted his own messages, disposed of his phone and bought a replacement to cover his tracks. After being arrested, he refused to answer questions from the police. Then, in his first series of court appearances, he denied any wrongdoing, insisting he was innocent and would fight the charges.

In reality, he had carried out “extensive research” to set up the operation and had even arranged a dummy-run two months earlier to make sure everything went smoothly. Detectives believe his connections with the criminal underworld in Thailand may have begun during his 2019 spell there playing for PTT Rayong.

“Organised criminals like Emmanuel-Thomas can be very persuasive and offer payment to couriers,” says David Philips, the NCA’s senior investigating officer. “But the risk of getting caught is very high and it simply isn’t worth it.”

The two women had the criminal charges against them dropped at a court hearing last month, in which the prosecution accepted they had been duped and Emmanuel-Thomas changed his plea to guilty. Piotrowska dabbed her eyes with tissues. Rowland could be seen shaking her head in apparent disbelief. A month on, a tearful Piotrowska was back in court on Thursday to see Emmanuel-Thomas sentenced.

“Most of the boys (at Bristol City) would be amazed at what’s happened,” says Cotterill. “If you’d asked me, ‘Do I think he would have got involved in anything like what’s gone on?’, no, I wouldn’t. He was an easy-going, laid-back character. That’s why I think this comes as a shock to probably everybody.”

Cotterill and Emmanuel-Thomas after Bristol City won the EFL Trophy final in 2015 (John Walton – EMPICS, via Getty Images)

Will Emmanuel-Thomas have to spend the full four years behind bars? No. He has been on remand in prison since he was arrested and the judge told him he would have to serve 19 months in total before being released on licence, depending on good behaviour. The court was told he had already established himself as a mentor to younger inmates inside Chelmsford prison.

In a letter to the judge, the footballer described his arrest, and everything that had happened since, as “the most painful and eye-opening experience of my life”.

It was the hardest letter he had ever had to write, he stated, explaining how he had let down his family and friends, as well as everyone he knew in football, including the supporters of the clubs where he had played.

He went on to talk about his deep shame, as a dad-of-two, bearing in mind he had looked upon his own father as a role model who led him away from temptation. His daughter had visited him in prison and the former Arsenal rising-star explained how “that broke me — I never wanted her to see me in that light”.

(Top photos: Getty Images; design: Dan Goldfarb)