Troy Deeney interview: 'I am not afraid to speak my mind and it gets me into trouble sometimes'

Four years ago the Watford captain was in prison, now he is on cusp of FA Cup glory. He speaks to Mark Ogden

Troy Deeney will lead Watford out against Crystal Palace (Charlie Forgham-Bailey)

The canteen at Watford’s London Colney training ground is being wound down for the day, another training session completed and all but one of Quique Sanchez Flores’s squad having made their way home.

But Troy Deeney is still there and the kitchen staff make sure that the Watford captain is fed from what is left of the lunchtime menu, despite the clock approaching 3pm.

“I am the last one here, but I don’t mind that,” Deeney says. “I’m the captain and I want to make sure I have done everything I can, done all that needs to be done.”

The 27-year-old would have arrived for lunch earlier, but a ten minute photo session turned into twenty-five and, well, ‘it’s fine mate, I don’t mind,’ he insisted.

Deeney takes his role as Watford captain seriously. If the press officer needs a first-team player to attend a community event or local appearance, it is Deeney who ensures that everyone does their bit and none of his team-mates is afforded special privileges.

Which is why he has stayed late on this occasion, and all the others. If the captain does it, then nobody else can complain.

“I appeared on Match of the Day as a pundit recently and I was a bit nervous about doing it because I had done Soccer AM and Talksport the week before,” Deeney said.

“That was during the international break, when there was no distraction, but this was after the Arsenal game (in the FA Cup), so I didn’t want it to be perceived that ‘we lost to Arsenal and he’s on Match of the Day.’

“We won that day anyway, but I am really conscious of what people think and I know the only reason these opportunities are coming around is because what the team are doing in the league, so that has to be the main focus.

“And as captain, you have to set the right example.

“But I am not afraid to speak my mind and it gets me into trouble sometimes. I am a man and if I have an opinion, I will say it. If I don’t like you, I will tell you, that’s it.”

Troy Deeney has scored nine league goals for Watford this season (Getty) (Getty Images)

Deeney’s life outside of football has been well-publicised, with the player spending three months in prison for affray in 2012, but he has emerged from his time behind bars with the outlook that opportunities are there to be grasped.

He has impressed during Watford’s Premier League campaign, scoring nine league goals as Sanchez Flores’s team comfortably secured their top flight status a year after promotion.

And with an FA Cup semi-final against Crystal Palace looming on Sunday, Deeney admits that he and his team-mates are now on the precipice of becoming iconic figures at Vicarage Road, potentially eclipsing the team which secured legendary status by reaching the 1984 Cup Final - losing to Everton - under Graham Taylor.

“There is a generation of fans that haven’t seen us in an FA Cup Final,” Deeney said. “The people at the 1984 game who were young at the time will now be 40-plus.

“But the only pressure is from ourselves. The fans should really enjoy it because you just don’t know when you will be in this position again.

“We know that if we win this game, we are on the verge of becoming club legends.

“Legend is word used a lot in football, but if we beat Palace and go to the Final and win the cup, that has never happened for this club before.

“That would take us beyond the likes of Luther Blissett and John Barnes. They had great careers at this club, but effectively, we would beat them because winning the FA Cup would be doing something that they couldn’t do.”

Deeney is a survivor of the Watford team beaten 1-0 by Palace at Wembley in the 2013 Championship Play-Off Final, but he insists that experience will only have a positive bearing on Sunday’s semi-final for Watford.

“The play-off game was a long time ago and we have completely different players now,” Deeney said. “There are only four or five of us left, and about seventeen managers and 900 players have been here since!

“But the main thing is to be focused and ready. In the play-offs, we didn’t turn up and we let the occasion beat us.

'If we lose to Crystal Palace, there is nothing to fall back on' (Charlie Forgham-Bailey)

“People say it is just a normal game, but it isn’t a normal game because you are at Wembley, 80,000 plus people, cameras everywhere, so you have to perform.

“I just look back to the Arsenal game in the last round. We weren’t playing well at the time, but before we got there, we just had the feeling it would be a good day.

“Everyone thought it would be an Arsenal win, that they would be too much for us, or whatever, but even the warm-up felt different that day.

“Arsenal hadn’t lost a cup tie for about three years, something daft, and they started like a house on fire, but we grew into the game and people have since said we were the better team.”

Neither Watford or Palace go into the semi-final enjoying the form which saw them surprise the established elite during the first half of the season.

Both clubs have banished fears over their Premier League survival, however, and Deeney dismisses suggestions that Watford have now tailed off under Sanchez Flores.

“I don’t think it has been a wobble,” Deeney said. “We have just levelled out.

“If you look over our games, the home and away games, it has levelled itself out over the course of the season. We lost to West Ham in midweek, but beat them at home.

“We just had an unbelievable start and it has carried us through a bit of a bad run and the distraction of the FA Cup, and I don’t mean distraction in the negative sense, because it has been good.

“We have beaten Arsenal and we now have a semi-final, which is massive for the town.

“But it has taken the focus a little bit away from the endgame, which was always to make sure we were safe.

“Look, I am old school - no news is good news as far as I’m concerned - and I think Quique has done a great job.

“We have 41 points and are in the FA Cup semi-finals, with four games still play and the FA Cup still to play.

“In most people’s minds, that would be an unbelievable season.


 Deeney has found little time to put his feet up this season 
 (Charlie Forgham-Bailey)

“If that was on offer at the start of the season, it would be a case of ‘where do we sign?’

“We wouldn’t even need a postbox to send that one back either - we would run it to wherever it needed to go!

“Expectations do rise and it is the life of a footballer unfortunately. You live and die by other people’s expectations.”

Sustaining consistent form and performances at the highest level has been a challenge that Deeney had not previously appreciated, though.

“You don’t appreciate the level of the Premier League until you are there,” he said. “In the Championship, you play Saturday / Tuesday throughout the course of the season and, when I was down there, I would wonder why the Premier League players would be complaining about their workload.

“But you can appreciate the level and how mentally good they are when you are in amongst it.

“It gives you a new-found respect for the likes of John Terry, Ryan Giggs, Steven Gerrard, who have played at the highest level for so long, because mentally, they have stayed at a consistent level for all that time and performed to the highest quality.

“The hardest part of performing in the Premier League is the mental side of it, with everything being scrutinised.

“We are a growing team and are not established like that.

“In the Championship, we would score the late goals and go and get a winner, whereas now, in some games you think, ‘We don’t want to lose this,’ and then we take a step back. But it’s not a natural thing for this team to do.

“We are used to going forward, but it’s a learning curve.

“We lost games against Manchester City and Spurs at Vicarage Road to late goals earlier this season, but in hindsight, you think with three minutes left, just see it out and kick balls into the corner. That is something we will learn from next season.”

Next season can wait, however.

Sunday is all about turning a good season into an unforgettable one for Watford, potentially even the most memorable in the club’s history, and Deeney insists it is now all or nothing.

“If we lose this, there is nothing to fall back on,” he said. “If we win it and we win the FA Cup, we get into Europe.

“But if we lose, nobody ever speaks about the semi-final.

“Somebody asked me who the semi-finalists were last year and I couldn’t remember.

“No-one cares and that is the harsh reality of the world that we live in.”