UK: Blackburn Rovers manager Steve Kean was given an 18-month driving ban and fined �1,800 today after being convicted of drink-driving.

He had earlier pleaded guilty but applied to escape the ban, claiming his drink was spiked.

But a judge at Macclesfield Magistrates’ Court in Cheshire rejected the “special reasons” application, saying Kean had failed to prove his drink had been laced.

The 43-year-old was almost twice the legal limit when he failed a breath test just hours after his side played Manchester United in the Premier League last May.

Kean, of Weybridge, Surrey, changed his plea to guilty of driving with excess alcohol shortly before his trial was due to begin today.

Kean was breathalysed after his black Mercedes was pulled over by police on the southbound carriageway of the M6 near Knutsford, Cheshire, at 8.30pm on May 14.

The prosecution say he sped past a marked patrol car at 90mph.

The officers, who were driving at 50mph, pulled him over and gave him a breath test which recorded 65 micrograms of alcohol per 100 millilitres of breath.

The legal limit is 35 micrograms per 100 millilitres of breath.

Kean admitted drinking two-and-a-half glasses of red wine with Sir Alex Ferguson after the game, and later a bottle of Budweiser at a pub near his Blackburn home.

A medical expert said that quantity of alcohol would have been insufficient to cause the breathalyser reading.

The defence argued that one of his drinks must have been spiked.

But the prosecution said there was another possibility, that Kean was lying about his alcohol consumption that day.