Three years after being handed a six-year jail term for causing death by dangerous driving, Lee Hughes walked out of prison yesterday and straight into Oldham Athletic, to the sound of Gary Megson, his former manager expressing doubts as to whether the former £5 million forward can ever recover after “messing up” his career.

Having agreed a two-year contract with the Coca-Cola League One club while serving at category C Featherstone Prison, near Wolverhampton, Hughes is due to meet his new teammates in the next few days, after taking a short holiday. He is likely to be on an incentive-based contract, but his basic salary is expected to fall short of the average wage at Oldham, believed to be about £2,000 a week.

John Sheridan, the Oldham manager, will be hoping that Hughes still has the talent to score 32 goals a season, as he did in 1998-99 to catapult himself into the national spotlight while at West Bromwich Albion.

Hughes, now 31, went on to score 68 more goals over the course of the next five seasons before he was convicted at Coventry Crown Court in August 2004 of causing the crash that killed Douglas Graham, a father of four, in Meriden, near Coventry.

The court heard that Hughes’s high-powered £100,000 Mercedes hit a vehicle carrying Graham and his wife, Maureen. Graham died instantly. Hughes fled the scene before handing himself into police.

He was sacked from his £16,000-a-week contract at West Bromwich, but Hughes is hoping to revive his career at Boundary Park. Hughes, who played in the top-flight for West Bromwich, has been keeping himself fit while inside and scored regularly for Featherstone FC, the prison football team, in the Staffordshire County League.

Yet Megson, his former manager at West Bromwich, believes that Smethwick-born Hughes will struggle after so long out of the professional game. Megson sold Hughes to Coventry City for £5 million in August 2001, but resigned him a year later for £2.5 million.

“His record as a striker before he went off the rails was second to none at Championship level,” Megson said. “But it remains to be seen how he will cope now. He will struggle in terms of the fact that he has been out of football for so long.

“What happened was horrendous and he should never have put himself in that position. But, from a footballing point of view, I think he will find it difficult. He has not trained or played professionally for three years.

“He has also got to deal with the situation he has found himself in and created. He has got to deal with the spotlight and how a footballer in his prime has messed up his career and spent the last three years in prison.”

Oldham, who lie eleventh after one win and one defeat from their opening two League games, entertain Bristol Rovers at Boundary Park on Saturday. But Sheridan is unlikely to consider Hughes for first-team duty until next month.

Oldham’s decision to employ Hughes is controversial, yet Barry Owen, the club director, has appealed to fans not to pass “moral judgment”.

“Oldham Athletic does not condone what happened and we are very sympathetic towards the family of the victim,” Owen said in May, when the deal was first announced.

“However, Lee Hughes is now nearing the end of his sentence and he has paid the price for what occurred. We would ask supporters and the general public not to pass moral judgment.”

Oldham were less forthcoming last night about Hughes’s impending arrival. Gordon Lawton, a club spokesman, refused to say when Hughes would be meeting his new team-mates. “We’ve been told not to say anything,” Lawton said. “At the appropriate time, we will hold a press conference.”