A man has been convicted of breaking into the house of former Premier League footballer Ashley Cole and threatening to cut off his fingers.

Kurtis Dilks, 35, was part of a gang that smashed into the defender’s house wearing masks on 21 January 2020.

“I was on my knees, waiting to be killed,” Cole said in footage of an interview shown at Nottingham Crown Court.

He told police he “knew” he was going to die as the raiders tied his hands behind his back while he was holding his young daughter.

Dilks was the only one of the gang to be caught after his DNA was found on cable ties used to restrain Cole and his partner, Sharon Canu, the court heard.

The 35-year-old courier claimed his DNA was discovered on the ties, and also from a knife recovered from the scene in Fetcham, Surrey, because those items had previously been stolen from his van.

Nevertheless, he was convicted alongside five others over a string of robberies and burglaries between October 2018 and January 2020.

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Cole, who played for Arsenal, Chelsea and England, said at least four men broke into his home, shortly after he had settled down to watch Netflix.

He told police: “I was on my knees, waiting to either be killed… I’ll never see my kids again.”

Cole said he had just got back from working with Chelsea’s under-15s when he heard a “banging sound”.

He said: “As soon as I put Netflix on, literally 10 to 15 seconds after that, I heard like a banging sound.

“I could hear it was like outside of my bedroom, just to the left, coming through the window.

“The banging was vibrating up the walls into my bedroom. I literally looked at Sharon… and I said, ‘what’s that?'”

Cole said he then looked at the cameras on his phone to see if he could identify the intruders.

He said: “I could see they were carrying a ladder towards my balcony.

“I said, ‘Sharon, there’s someone in the garden trying to get on the balcony… call the police’.”

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