Ex-Portsmouth, Bristol Rovers and Wimbledon man Lee Brown: I was a ghost, mentally broken. I had to quit football - or I was a goner

For public consumption, the narrative depicted a wise-cracking two-time Wembley winner striding away from the game last summer to focus on his booming multi-million pound Surrey-based property company.

Glimpsing beneath the mask, however, reveals a 33-year-old forced to prematurely retire from football following a mental breakdown.

The immense pressures of juggling a thriving business with a League Two playing career saw an exhausted Brown emotionally collapse in October 2023, culminating in him crying in the office of Wombles manager Johnnie Jackson.

A subsequent two-week leave of absence, publicly portrayed as a back injury, proved to be nothing more than a short-term fix for the ex-Pompey and Bristol Rovers man.

Six months later, the defender quit football for good - and now he’s ready to explain why.

‘This is the first interview I’ve done on this. You know me, it’s all a laugh and a joke, let’s all have a good time. Life and soul. When you go through a period in your life like I did, sometimes it’s good to talk, but I’m not one to talk, I really ‘ain’t,’ Brown told The News.

‘People wouldn’t know, they still ask “Why has Browny retired?”. They don't know the real reason. I could easily have played on for another year or two, but I was on the edge - and football had to go.

‘Naturally everyone wants to play football, play for as long as possible, it’s the best job in the world. You don’t get that buzz anywhere else, believe me.

‘People know I used to love it, that’s my bread and butter, Lee from football. So when that goes, there must be a reason for it. When you retire, probably everyone has a bit of a story behind it.

‘With me, it’s not the case that I couldn’t get a club, I was offered a new contract at Wimbledon. But I had to quit for my own sake. I was in a dark place, I’d had a mental breakdown, something had to give.

‘I could no longer juggle football full-time and run a full-time business. The weight of it eats you up, mentally money is a killer, especially when things don’t go to plan. I had to put on a front. Lee Brown, he’s bubbly isn’t he. It’s an act really.

‘I was working until 1-2am every day, even working before training. You speak to anyone in the last couple of seasons at Pompey, the whole time at Wimbledon, and they’d tell you: “Browny wouldn’t get off his phone”.

‘I was building six houses over in Purley, two in Cobham, while training every day and playing matches on a Saturday. I lived in a pressure cooker, rocking in the chair at points because of so much stress.

‘I could not cope, physically or mentally. I had to give up football - or I would have been a goner.’

Creating a £10m business from scratch

Brown was aged 26 and playing for League One Bristol Rovers when he clambered onto the property ladder in 2018.

The left-back ploughed his entire football savings of £25,000 into purchasing a house in the Filton area of Bristol on a 10-per-cent buyer mortgage, before building another residence in its garden.

Now, seven years on, his business B3 Homes has built 34 family properties, employs 20 staff, including Brown’s own construction company, while its portfolio of luxury family homes sell on average for £1.25m each.

He added: ‘I bought a house in Bristol with a garden on the side. A couple of houses in the same road had planning permission to add another property - and I wanted to do the same.

‘However, as I didn’t have any more money left, I ended up working on this four-bedroomed house myself. The boys at Rovers still laugh about it now, their team-mate turning up to play League One football in his white van!

‘I’d never held a tool in my life, but I have this obsessive nature where I need to learn about everything. If I was doing the plumbing, I would research how to be a plumber and, all of a sudden, knew how to run pipes. I would sit there until 3am until it sunk in.

‘A little Polish guy called Jarek helped me, who was on a day rate. I hired brickies and the roofer, while pulling in favours with Rovers fans, but we did everything else. I absolutely winged it, I'm really not handy!

‘Then it was onto another one and it gathered pace. I buy plots of land, design what I want to go there, build them and sell them. Over the last seven years it has been 100mph.

‘I ended up running too fast, though, growing at a rate of knots I couldn't keep up with. Lots of people rely on me to pay their bills, I cannot afford to make business mistakes. That’s some burden on your shoulders.

‘I’m a workaholic and a bit of a control freak, which has probably contributed to my downfall. I want to control everything, the planning, the buying of the sites, the whole building programme. I also have to find the money to fund it - all while being a professional footballer.

‘It isn’t just a case of I’ve had a tough day. We are talking months and months and months of abuse to your mental state, overloading, the strain, the stress, the worry. To the position where it reached breaking point. My body was saying “I’ve had enough”.

‘You can’t have it all, trying to be everywhere, a footballer, a developer, a dad. Something had to give.’

Breaking down in AFC Wimbledon manager’s office

During negotiations over a new two-year Pompey deal in August 2020, Brown reached a gentleman’s agreement with manager Kenny Jackett that he would employ a chauffeur.

The Blues boss had grown increasingly concerned over the 2019 Checkatrade Trophy-winning defender’s susceptibility to injury, believing the daily grind of driving from his home outside Cobham was impacting his hamstrings.

Likewise, the possibility of being driven to training hugely appealed to Brown, enabling him to devote more time to his property work during the two-hour round trip.

Subsequently, when the opportunity arose to move to AFC Wimbledon in January 2022, thereby allowing him to be closer to his business, he leapt at the opportunity after 131 appearances and six goals at Fratton Park.

However, 18 months later, he suffered a breakdown under the pressure of attempting to combine both jobs.

He said: ‘It was October (2023), we were at the training ground one Tuesday morning ahead of training. I was sitting in the dressing room with the boys, everyone was having a laugh and a joke, but I couldn’t take it any longer.

‘I walked upstairs to the manager’s office and told him I needed to leave. I broke down in front of him and started crying. I’d been at breaking point for two years - at that moment it became too much.

‘I’d go into training and the boys would say “Blimey, you look tired, Browny”. I’d laugh and brush it off, but the truth was I would stay up all night, not sleeping, just thinking. Sitting on my phone contemplating how the hell I was going to get out of my latest business worry. It wasn’t for a week, this was over 18 months.

‘I was in the changing room with 19-20 year olds and whose life is football. So was mine aged 22-23. They’re so tunnel visioned, as fit as hell, everything is football, football, football. I was just at a different stage of my life.

‘One time I needed to find serious, serious amounts of money, which I didn't have. The manager’s trying to talk to you, the players are thinking about winning on the Saturday, while I’m thinking “How on earth do I pay John, Paul and Eddie?”.

‘My head wasn’t there, I squashed it and squashed it for a long, long time. People were trying to talk to me in the dressing room and I was staring through them, not even in the room.

‘My two close friends there, Harry Pell and Alex Pearce, knew. They knew what sort of person I was - so when that person changes, people notice. They tried to talk to me and I was a ghost.

‘People were seriously worried about me, yet I shut off everyone close to me. I didn’t speak to anyone. I didn’t ever think about doing anything silly, I just needed to get through it, which meant pushing away my mum, my dad, family, friends, anyone who tried to contact me.

‘The truth was they couldn’t help. I was in a hole financially and needed to find serious amounts of money. This was my problem, I needed to fix this - so I shut myself away.

‘I used to love going out with my mates, being around people, Yet for two years I was a recluse. I wouldn’t even pick up the phone, I kept it very private.

‘My Wimbledon manager Johnnie Jackson was unbelievable, he gave me a fortnight off to get myself out of that hole, there was never any pressure to come back, and he frequently checked in on me. I came back too, I didn’t want to let him down, while it was only right to honour my contract.

‘I have so many good memories of football, I love that environment, love it, but when you are so burdened with stress, it’s probably the worst environment. I didn’t want to play football any more.’

Offered new Plough Lane contract

Brown’s two-week leave of absence consisted of three league matches, with the left-back’s sudden exclusion publicly passed off as a short-term back injury.

He returned in November 2024 as an unused substitute in an FA Cup win over Cheltenham. Then, three days later, started in a 2-0 success over Crystal Palace Under-21s in the Vertu Trophy.

From that point, Brown made 22 appearances, including 19 starts, as he re-established himself back in Jackson’s side. Such were his impressive performance levels, the Wombles even offered the then 33-year-old a fresh 12-month deal.

However, the former QPR man had to walk away from the game for his own sanity.

‘I’m more than good. I’m happy’

Brown added: ‘Despite everything, I was playing my best football at Wimbledon in the second half of last season, operating on the left of a back three.

‘In terms of my mental state, Monday to Friday I was horrific, so, so bad, I wasn’t even in the room. Yet Saturday a switch flicked, for that hour-and-a-half, everything went out of the window. All my personal problems, all my financial problems, it was like a huge relief. That was my therapy. If anything, my performances got better.

‘As we approached the end of the season, they were saying they wanted to offer a new deal, putting numbers to me. It was never about the money, this was more about my mental state. Whatever they offered wouldn’t have made any difference.

‘The manager was ringing me throughout the summer wanting me to sign, the door was always open, even in September. I would have done him a dis-service if I’d signed. I needed to call it a day.’

Since retiring, Brown’s morning routine now includes playing padel at CourtFit Padel in Cobham, becoming proficient enough to jokingly declare himself the ‘Padel King’.

Last month he turned his hand at co-commentary, working for BBC Radio Solent covering Pompey’s 1-0 defeat to Millwall, while is scheduled to appear on the club’s in-house station Pompey+ for the March 29 visit of Blackburn.

Brown is also planning on taking his three children - Mollie, Maisie and Lee - on holiday in May at a destination still to be determined. As ever, dad’s not short of ideas.

As for his job, his only job, B3 Homes are presently building two £1.5m houses in Warlingham and another in Purley, with business continuing to flourish.

Brown added: ‘It has taken me 7-8 months post-retirement to get to this point, but now I am into my routines. My work-life balance is a lot more stable, I am settled, in a fantastic place.

‘Everything I’ve worked so hard for over the last five years is coming to fruition. Now I want to live my life a little, I want to reap the rewards.

‘I want to spend time with my three kids. I’ve pushed them to the side a bit. You’re trying to play football, to be a dad, to run a business, and I’ve neglected them. I have neglected everyone around me.

‘Now I’m in a position where I can give all my love back to them. Being present there for my kids is probably the biggest thing for me right now. I’ll never ever get myself into that position again. Ever.

‘There were one or two people I let in close and leaned on through that period. They dragged me though and I will be forever grateful. Without them, God only knows if I would have ever made it out of that hole.

‘I had to sacrifice my football career after biting off more than I could chew. But, sitting here now, I am good. Actually, I’m more than good. I’m happy.’