Speed’s death could have been accident

Cheshire coroner Nicholas Rheinberg gave the cause of death as hanging but said “the evidence does not sufficiently determine whether this was intentional or accidental”.

An inquest heard that Speed, who won the First Division title with Leeds, texted his wife days before his death and “talked in terms of taking his life”.

The couple also “had words” on the night before he was found dead after they had been to a dinner party at a friend’s house.

Speed, who resigned as manager of Sheffield United to become Wales’s national manager in 2010, was found hanged at his Cheshire home on November 27, last year by his wife Louise.

But in a narrative verdict Mr Rheinberg said Speed may have “nodded off” while sitting with cable around his neck on the stairs in his garage. The inquest heard no suicide note was found.

Mrs Speed told the inquest in Warrington that her husband had talked in terms of taking his life in the text exchange but that he “dismissed it”, saying that he was “excited” about the future with his wife and two sons.

The couple had an argument after a dinner party on the night Speed died. Mrs Speed said she left the marital home to go for a short drive to clear her head but only went as far as the end of the road before returning.

Unable to raise her husband on her mobile phone, she slept in her car before waking about 6am and going to an outside bathroom.

She noticed some shed keys missing and went to the shed to see if her husband was there, before moving to the garage where she saw him hanging from a bannister with a piece of television aerial.

Blinking away tears, she said: “I went to the window and there I saw him.”

She said she then woke their two boys, who had been sleeping upstairs, to let her into the house and called the emergency services.

The inquest also heard Speed’s former Newcastle United team-mate and fellow BBC pundit Alan Shearer remained bewildered at his friend’s death.

In a statement, Shearer said: “It just didn’t and still doesn’t make sense to me.”

Mr Rheinberg said the couple had clearly been going through a “difficult time” but it was “nothing that couldn’t be sorted out”.

He said: “It may have been that this was some sort of dramatic gesture, not normally in Mr Speed’s character, but nonetheless, a possibility.”

Carol Speed told the inquest her son “ was always a glass-half-empty person, certainly no optimist”.