My dad was diagnosed with cancer of the oesophagus in February 2012, and finding that out really messed me up.Collection: Dad
Dad was involved in a lot of crime and the police were regularly coming to our door looking for him. From the age of three he always made sure I had a football and he'd make me play with much bigger kids. But he'd tell them, 'Kick him and if he moans he'll come in.' So I got taught to grow up very quickly.Collection: Dad
When you talk about bullying I always go back to when I was at school, a bully was a big kid picking on a little kid.
There's much more to life than football.
I loved watching Arsenal, my son's an Arsenal fan.
Whenever I play against Arsenal - and this is just a personal thing - I go up and think 'let me whack the first one, then we will see who wants it.'
I have never been to Jamaica and in footballing terms, I feel English because this is where I grew up and played all of my football. That is not to say I don't have immense pride in my Jamaican heritage - I certainly do.
There's no loyalty in football and you take it with a pinch of salt.
We do not stand for racism on the pitch, in society or anywhere else it rears its ugly head.
When I got to jail, it was a blessing in disguise because it made me reevaluate and check who I am as a person.
If I scroll down my Instagram replies, the tenth one down features a racist emoji - which is not unusual. So I follow the protocol, which is to block the user and report the message under the category of 'hate speech and symbols.' Then I am told that an emoji with a monkey and a banana is not considered racist.
To be perfectly honest, most fans see a different game to players. I am not being rude when I say that.
None of my friends are big posters - we're old school. We text, phone and meet up and have a beer or have a curry.
I remember a life before social media. I remember phone boxes, that's what I grew up on.
I just got a lot of expectations and pressure on me, but it is what it is. I've got the best job in the world, I work two or three hours a day and get paid handsomely for it.
I still find it a bit surreal that Sir Elton John can call Troy Deeney from Chelmsley. It's quite entertaining but a bit surreal.
I don't mind women's football. I am of the business understanding though, when people say 'it should be equal pay.' If the business makes sense, it does.
How many women's football matches are selling out week in, week out, 20,000 plus? They're not.
As footballers that's what we do when it comes to bonuses. we don't sit there and go 'yeah can I get £20million as a bonus.' You have to sit down, 'how much money does the club make, what's their reported loss.' You have to sit and go through it all and go OK, this is what you take, we feel that we should get that if we do this.
I work harder than 90% of people.
Alex Ferguson, Mourinho, Pep you can always see the vision.
I play for Watford, it's not the biggest team in the Premier League, but I go to Antigua, I go to different countries and people go 'you're Troy Deeney.'
I enjoy those physical battles and I've been on record saying Virgil van Dijk is the best defender in the world.
To hear that someone right around the other side of the world actually knows who Troy Deeney is, is quite surreal.
I've said for a very long time that I've got a massive respect for Joe Gomez.
When you are not having the best of moments in front of goal, just smash it down the middle.
I always break it down I am three different people. I'm Troy Deeney the footballer, I'm daddy who the kids get to see and I'm Troy which a few of my mates get to see.
I'm genuinely a big softie, I put this front on, and I'm just a laid-back fool really.
Everyone's got issues. There's a stigma in football that you earn a certain amount of money, how dare you have issues.
It's perceived that money can take care of anything but in my experience it makes everything 15 times harder because you can't act 'normal' and you're not allowed to be vulnerable or weak but we all are.
I'm from the era before the Internet, so I know what's real and what's not so you've just got to learn to roll with the punches.
I would go on record saying that there is probably one gay or bi-person in every football team. They're there, they are 100 per cent there. I think people that are gay or from that community definitely are very worried about having to shoulder the responsibility of being the first. I think once the first comes out, there would be loads.
Whenever you play against Fred - we certainly did it - you let him get it because he has to take three or four touches. He doesn't know how to do one or two touches. Anyone that watches his game, he gets it facing the wrong way, turns, turns, chops, chops and he'll give you the ball three or four times a game.
Obviously everyone wants to play a certain way but when you get into certain moments you need someone to hold it up or if you are losing a game, go long.
When you get into that mould of being a super sub you can't go back.
When you get to Spurs you know the difference between the lesser clubs and the big boys. It's a different experience.
I know what I can do and what I can deliver and there's not many people who can do what I can do.
I saw some comments in regards to my son, people saying: 'I hope your son gets corona.' That's the hard part for me. If you respond to that, people then go: 'Ah, we've got him' and they keep doing it.
It's heartbreaking for the people who work behind the scenes. A lot of people who are at clubs normally get affected by relegation. We feel sorry for them.
Things happen in football and you have to be man enough that things come and go.
There were bigger and better players before me and there will be bigger and better after.
Do I give up? No.
Everyone's got bills, everyone's got heartache, and everyone's got problems.
There's always going to be setbacks.
I'm just a normal kid, really, from an inner-city background.
Going back to 2012, it was a bad year for me. I lost my dad as well, so burying him a week before I went to jail, just having all of that emotion, it just hit me hard.
Since coming out of jail, I still made mistakes daily. Don't me wrong, I'm not an angel by any stretch of the imagination, but my mistakes are just normal ones now like forgetting to go to the shop when the missus asks or not putting the bins out, stuff like that.
I'm really a nice guy, aren't I? Not many people know that.
My cousin Joe was just the coolest kid and I wanted to be like him. He had girls, could do whatever he wanted and he was a bricklayer, so I decided to do that.
My dad was well known on the streets, shall we say, and he had a different lifestyle, which could spill into the home setting. Being exposed to that at a young age was difficult.