Ex-Aston Villa and England footballer Gary Charles was yesterday found guilty by a jury of attacking a woman after she joked about his career.

In a drunken rage, the twice-capped 36-year-old punched Elizabeth Wedge to the ground and kicked her after she quipped "You can't be that good - you never played for Manchester United".

The attack happened in the booking office of A2B Taxis, in Clay Cross, Derbyshire, on September 9 last year. After a three-day trial at Derby Crown Court, a jury of eight men and four women found the former Derby and Nottingham Forest defender guilty by unanimous verdict of assault occasioning actual bodily harm.

Charles, wearing a white shirt and dark trousers, glanced briefly at the public gallery on hearing the verdict.

Mr Recorder David Grant told him it "may be inevitable" that he faces jail but granted him bail until a sentence hearing on July 25.

It would be "a matter of some seriousness", he said, if Charles breached the bail condition, which requires him to co-operate with the probation service until sentencing.

Charles, of Stretton in Derbyshire, had denied the attack in court, but admitted he was an alcoholic and remembered little of the night in question because he was so drunk.

Miss Wedge had been returning from a night out when she came across Charles in the taxi rank.

Charles was too intoxicated to book his own cab home so she tried to help.

Opening the prosecution case on day one of the trial, Siward James-Moore said: "It was at this point, without any provocation, that his tone and attitude changed. He shouted at Miss Wedge 'Do you know who I am?'. He said he was a

professional football player." Miss Wedge, who is a Manchester United fan, joked Charles had not been good enough to play for her team.

"The response she got to that was the defendant lashing out at her without warning," said Mr James-Moore.

"He began punching Miss Wedge, knocking her to the floor."

Once she was on the ground, the lawyer added, Charles started aiming kicks at her head.

The victim said the attack left her with facial injuries and memory loss.

The defendant's intoxicated state and the swift intervention of a taxi driver stopped more serious harm, the court heard.

Charles was arrested and spent the night at a police station.

The next day, he told a police officer he could not remember why he was in custody.

Later, he was to tell police that he had been hit before the incident in A2B Taxis, but he could not remember who dealt the blows.

The case at Derby Crown Court was a retrial because a previous jury had failed to reach a verdict on the allegation.

Between trials, Charles was behind bars because he breached a bail order by turning up at court drunk.