House owned by footballer Benjamin Mendy & Preston’s Freddie Flintoff is on the market at bargain price

A former neighbour of Benjamin Mendy has claimed the ex-Manchester City defender has been forced to knock £1million off the price of his mansion as no one wants to live there.

The 29-year-old, who was cleared of charges of rape and sexual assault in two trials last year, has cut the price of his luxurious home from an initial £5M to £4M after failing to attract interest - and this is the second price drop since it was put on the market last summer.

Former owners/renters of the sprawling property include Top Gear star Freddie Flintoff - who never lived there but spent two years rebuilding the house -, celebrity couple Peter Crouch and Abbey Clancy, as well as ex-City manager Mark Hughes.

World Cup winner Mendy purchased the home from Flintoff for £4.8m in 2018 - a decade after the cricketer bought the property for £1.8m - and you can see the full listing online here.

The 11,000 square foot private residence sits on roughly 1.75 acres of Cheshire countryside and features six bedroom suites - four with dressing rooms - an open plan living area, home cinema, games room, swimming pool, gym, spa and steam room.

The huge six-bedroom mansion, in the village of Mottram St Andrew, stands on one of the most exclusive roads in Cheshire’s ‘golden triangle’, made up of villages between Prestbury, Alderley Edge and Wilmslow. 

Mendy, who is now seeking to rebuild his footballing career at French Ligue 1 side Lorient, first put the Cheshire property on the market in August last year. However a former neighbour of the French full-back says he believes the house has struggled to sell due to all the controversy surrounding the player while he was in the UK.

This ex-neighbour, who wishes to remain anonymous, said he used to see the 'humble' footballer around when he lived there, but he added it was obvious no-one now wanted to buy the opulent property without a major price cut.

Asked what it was like having Mendy as a neighbour, the Cheshire resident, who is a Man City fan, said: "It was OK, but you could see what was going on all the time, cars going in and out. As a footballer, you have to have more discipline. You can't be going out all the time. But you would see him in the street and he was normal as anything.

"He's taken a mil off because no one's going to pay the asking price for it. Obviously he got found not guilty of criminal charges, but the house has been dragged through the mud and it is definitely putting people off. It will probably go down [in price] even more. He's already lost £800,000 on it, and that's how much he owes HMRC. Nobody wants a house that's had so much bad publicity."

The description of the property, managed by estate agents Savills, points to the mansion's proximity to leading private schools, 'good restaurants and bistros' in nearby Prestbury, and 'lovely walks in the surrounding countryside'. However, it also states that the current price of the property ‘reflects the need for some remedial and refurbishment works’, including the ‘reinstatement of the swimming pool’.

Mendy joined City in the summer of 2017 from French club AS Monaco for a reported £52m, the world-record transfer fee for a defender at the time. He won the Premier League in his first season in England before being arrested for allegations of sexual offences. Mendy was subsequently suspended by City, and never played another match for the club.

In July last year he was cleared of rape and attempted rape during a retrial at Chester Crown Court. After his first trial at the same court, which ended in January last year, he was cleared of six counts of rape and one of sexual assault relating to four young women. Both trials heard Mendy had led a hard-partying lifestyle whilst at City, going out to nightclubs several times a week and having sex with numerous young women at his Chester home.

A hearing at the High Court following his acquittal heard Mendy was seeking to sell his home and was seeking millions of pounds in back pay from Man City in order to avoid going bankrupt. HM Revenue and Customs is seeking a bankruptcy order against the France international over a tax debt of nearly £800,000, a specialist judge was told.