Former Rangers goalkeeper Roy Carroll has opened up on his battle with depression and alcoholism which almost cost him his life.

The Northern Irishman struggled with serious issues during his time at Manchester United, admitting he would drink alcohol most of the day during a spell on the treatment table out with an injury. He hit rock bottom when wife Kerry told him she was leaving after he failed to stay in a rehabilitation clinic to help him.

Carroll - who spent a season at Ibrox in 2007/08 - revealed on Manchester United's podcast that he would booze from 10am until dinner time and beyond, and that he only set himself on the straight and narrow after looking in the mirror and 'not recognising himself'.

"I think there were a lot of things happening,” he recalled. "I was injured and I got into stupid financial things with apartments and houses, so there were a lot of financial problems as well. It all happened, all at once in that year. 

"It was depression. Let me try and explain it. I was doing same thing every day. I was getting in that little hole, and it was getting bigger and bigger. 

"Because I was injured I wasn’t even going into training – they had told me to take two months off. So I was getting into a routine, waking up about 10 o’clock. Drinking when I got up, drinking at lunchtime, drinking at teatime. The wife and the kids would come in and I was depressed that I couldn’t do anything. It was such a horrible feeling.

"I couldn’t cope. I tried to hide it from my family. My wife knew. She knew I was in a bad way. That’s why I went to rehab. Basically my agent and my wife put me into rehab. For me I didn’t even know how bad I was at the time. I said, ‘No, I’m not going, I don’t want to go’. I ended up going for my wife and my agent. I just wanted to say I’ll go in for them. Mentally, in my head, I was thinking, ‘I’m not coming off the drink’.

"I was only in rehab for six days, I came back out and I was off the drink for a week and I had the press and everybody waiting outside my house. After a week they were away and I just went out drinking again.

"I didn’t want to go in [to rehab]. My problem was that I didn’t think I had a problem. That’s the big problem."

He added: "I woke up and I looked up in the mirror and I didn’t know who I was. I didn’t even recognise myself. I knew I had lost my family, I’d basically lost football as well. I thought I’m going to lose my life because the drinking I was doing was ridiculous."

Carroll went on to reveal he has been sober ever since, almost ten years dry.