Adebayo Akinfenwa

Sometimes I think it would be nice to be in a warm office every day. Don't get me wrong, I'm not complaining because I know how lucky I am to be playing football for a living. The positives by far outweigh the negatives. ”

Don't try to kid yourself that your game is about pace if it isn't. If you're a big guy like me you need to look at how similarly built players use that physical presence to influence a game. Accept that your build may have some limitations - but plenty of plus points too. ”

As a big man you may struggle to get much height when jumping for a ball - but by training with your defender team-mates you can develop a technique for making strong challenges in the air, making defenders uncomfortable and work on taking the ball down. ”

When you hear Beast Mode, you automatically go to my size, but I always say the strongest thing I own is not my chest, my legs, not my arms. It's my mind. It's that mindset that says: Look, you're not always going to succeed but don't take it as a loss, take it as a lesson. That's the mindset of Beast Mode. ”

It used to get my back up because people would only say 'he does well for his size' and it's like, forget the size, I do well because I do well. ”

It may sound cliched, but it just shows that when you don't let people put you in a box then anything can happen. ”

My size works against me as well, as some players I would just touch and they would fall over to get a free kick. ”

I was raised on an estate in an inner city school where people had a go about my size, people saying I am too big to play football - which still happens today - and I used that to inspire me. ”

If you want to gamble, so be it, but when it gets to the stage where gambling is the only thing you are thinking of and it is affecting your life, that's when you need to put a hold on it. ”

That's one reason fans take to me. They like the battle side of it. They look at me and think this guy shouldn't be on the pitch, he's just bulldozing his way through. ”