FOR a 25-year-old footballer Andre Gray has had more than his fair share of ups and downs, both on and off the pitch.

Released by then League Two Shrewsbury Town as a youngster, Gray dropped into non-league before fighting his way back up the ranks and into the Premier League with Burnley this season.

Off the pitch, the Wolverhampton-born forward was stabbed in the face on a night out in 2011 and this season was banned for four games after homophobic social media posts from four years ago resurfaced just hours after he had scored his first Premier League goal.

Gray, who is playing top flight football this season just three years after being in the Conference with Luton Town, knows he can act as a role model for youngsters who have had a similar upbringing to his, steering them down the right path and using his experiences to help guide them.

He is working on setting up some kind of foundation or youth scheme back in the Midlands, while also trying to continue making strides with the Clarets on the pitch, having taken his tally to five this season over Christmas, and Gray believes he has plenty to thank football for in changing him as a man.

“People come from all sorts of backgrounds. Where I am from certain things were not exposed to me,” Gray explains.

“Thankfully football set me free from those kind of things.

“You meet people and you see other sides of life, the way people live differently. It opens your eyes in terms of sexuality and religion and everything.

“You realise that everyone is the same at the end of the day. The way I was brought up, and how I was as a youngster, was completely different to that.

“Football has brought me out of that, helped me a lot in my life, and that’s why I am where I am today.”

When Gray’s tweets from 2012 came to light in August of last year, hours after he had scored in the stunning 2-0 win over Liverpool at Turf Moor, the striker took to Twitter that night to apologise and explain that he was a different person now to then.

“It was frustrating more than anything,” he said. “I am a role model now, to young people, they see what I am now.

“It’s frustrating that it gets brought up to look like it’s the present when it’s the past. It’s five years now, it was a long time ago. I was a completely different person.

“People look up to me now I’m playing for Burnley, and to see that and the way it was portrayed was obviously difficult, especially when you want to explain that it was a long time ago.”

As part of his punishment Gray had to attend an FA education course, which he did last month.

He said he found the one-day course ‘really interesting’, adding: “I felt I could open up about things and get my point across.

“Sometimes it’s difficult to word it at times, especially when you are put on the spot, but it was good to hear their point of view on discrimination and stuff.

“They were very understanding and it helped me a lot to understand where people come from. I’ve been exposed to more now, about people’s beliefs, religion and sexuality and so on.

“It was good to hear other people’s point of view and to get my point across as well.”

Gray is a fluent talker on how his life has changed through football, twice saying the game has ‘set him free’.

Of his upbringing in the Midlands, he said: “I’ve just got stronger as I have gone on and certain things have happened to me personally. I’ve had to get on with it.

“My mum’s brought me up, but she can’t teach a son man things, it’s not in her nature to do that, and it’s hard for a woman to try and raise a man, so I’ve had to practically raise myself, but with her support.

“It’s difficult when you’ve got people against you in your own family, it does make it harder, but you’ve got to get through it.”

When Gray posted the tweets that landed him in trouble in 2012 he was playing for non-league Hinckley United and had 50 followers on Twitter.

Now he is in the Premier League spotlight and has over 40,000 followers.

That is just one sign of how his standing has changed, and his celebrity relationship with Little Mix pop star Leigh-Anne Pinnock is another, with Gray determined to keep his private life just that.

But he is keen to use the position he has now fought to reach for good, saying involvement in a youth scheme ‘is in the process of happening’.

He added: “It’s something I’d like to do, but it’s difficult. I had people talking to me when I was 13 and 14, and when you’re in the situation you’re in you don’t want to listen.

“So it is hard to get through to people, and sometime you have to learn the hard way – and I had to. But it is something I enjoy doing and I’m open to do more.

“But it is difficult when people are trapped in their own little world – and I was lucky to have football to set me free from it, and expose me to all sorts of positive things.”

Gray remains in touch with most of his childhood friends from the Midlands, but admits he has had to turn his back on some people as his fame has risen in recent years.

“Certain people maybe, but no-one I was close to,” he said. “There’s obviously people now you have to look out for and keep your distance from.

“That’s been proven with people selling stories for a couple of hundred pounds, when you think they’re your friends. It’s the world we live in.

“But I haven’t turned my back on anyone close to me and I don’t think I ever will.

“Where people make a mistake is turning their back on people who have been with them a long time. That just shows you are turning ignorant, and not listening to the people you should be listening to.

“If anything’s going wrong I know I can turn to people I knew before I had anything and get an honest answer.”

On the pitch Gray said he had never doubted himself during his 10-game drought for Burnley this season, which ended spectacularly over Christmas with the winner against Middlesbrough and a hat-trick against Sunderland.

That was the fifth hat-trick of Gray’s career and on Thursday he had a case for those match balls delivered, with room for a few more just yet as his incredible journey continues to gather momentum.

“I’ve got five match balls now – three from non-league, one in the Championship, and now one in the Premier League,” said Gray.

“It’s got a plaque with the date and score, and a holdall thing for the ball. It’s really nice. It could hold a few more…”