Ian Wright: I was close to bankruptcy after poor financial advice

Former footballer Ian Wright fought off the urge to declare himself bankrupt after feeling the effects of poor financial advice at the height of his career 20 years earlier.

Wright, 52, a BBC pundit, revealed he is "at the complete mercy" of HMRC as he deals with the consequences of leaving his financial affairs to dubious advisers who targeted professional football players in the 1990s.

Having once owned "eight or nine" properties, the former Arsenal player was left with a single house he had bought for his mother.

Despite advice from lawyers in recent years to declare himself bankrupt, Wright refused out of fear he will never recover.

Wright, who won 33 caps for England, revealed his predicament, along with a frank account of his at-times turbulent personal life, in an upcoming autobiography.

"The only serious cloud in those skies is the income tax issues that have been with me for a while now", Wright said.

"It's not just me, either: there's a whole generation of footballers out there who are in the same boat and were wrongly advised and badly treated.

"The wave of financial advisers that appeared around the 1990s took our money to carry out the advice we paid them to give us but never paid the tax".

Wright insists that now he is "doing OK" financially, although he has been left having to work hard to support his family.

The striker refused to declare himself bankrupt because he believed it would take "decades" to recover.

"I wish I'd given more money to my family instead of financial advisers. I still wouldn't have any money but I doubt I'd have this tax bill", he said.