Andre Gray would dearly love to put the past behind him though fears with good reason that it might not be possible. “It’s going to be out there for the rest of my life and I’ve got to live with it,” he says, talking of the homophobic tweets that led to an FA suspension this season, not the four-inch facial scar that acts as a permanent reminder of getting in with the wrong crowd in his native Wolverhampton.
In both cases the damage was done several years ago, when Gray was young, impressionable and, by his own admission, not very wise. The scar was gained in a scuffle between gangs on a Christmas night out in 2011, when the Burnley striker was an unknown playing non-league football for Hinckley Town. The offensive tweets, in which Gray complained about the number of gays in the world and added hashtags such as #Burn and #Die, dated from a few months later but only came to light at the start of this season, just after Gray had scored his first Premier League goal against Liverpool.
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