Glenn Murray Quotes

It took me a little bit of time in the Premier League. I came back from an ACL and got one goal in I think six months at Crystal Palace. It wasn’t great but I got to grips with the Premier League, started to understand what it’s about because it’s very different to the lower leagues.

Playing in America led to me getting a chance. Kicking around in the non-leagues I was going nowhere so I’m glad I did it.

And I’m not the kind of person to just sit around.

I know hotel life sounds good but, believe me, it grows old when you have eaten the menu ten times over and you know you’ve stayed too long when you’re on first-name terms with the staff.

When I left Carlisle United for the first time at the age of 16 in 2000, I hated football.

I’m an out-and-out striker. It’s my job to hold the ball up, to get in the box and to score goals. And, yes, I keep count.

I take heart from players around me.

Do I do yoga? Yeah.

As a teenager, I was in the Carlisle schoolboy scheme and while I was excited to join at first, I look back on it as a tough few years.

The only thing that got me to believe in myself was scoring goals.

My time in non-league definitely grounded me and taught me to take nothing for granted – there was no glamour involved, that is for sure.

If there is ever one thing you learn as a professional footballer, you have a lot of critics and you have the chance to silence your critics.

As far as I am concerned I just want to play games, score as many goals as possible, wherever that may be.

I am taking each game as it comes, enjoying it and taking that little bit of extra time to look around a full stadium, because I know it’s not going to last forever. But I will try and make it last as long as possible.

It was through the Hammerheads that I got a route into the professional game, via a trial at Sunderland from Mick McCarthy and then an invitation to come back to Carlisle in 2004.

Scoring a goal is the best thing in the world because it’s the only thing you can’t control or predict.

The space between keepers and defenders is referred to as the ‘corridor of opportunity‘ – a well-hit pass in there has the goalie questioning whether to come into traffic and defenders unsure of whether or where to clear the ball.

Rather than just sit there, I would prefer to get out and play football. Brighton have let me do that.

Managers can sometimes hold players back for their own benefit.

I am what I am. I can’t change that.

It is well-documented that Bournemouth like to play football. I think I can give them a slightly different dimension when the ball goes into the box.

I’ve added to my abilities since moving to Bournemouth. You are always having to re-learn how to be a centre-forward as the game is moving forward.

I’m never going to be one of these players who dribbles past three and bends it into the top corner from 25 yards. That’s not me.

I watched ‘Match of the Day’ growing up every week and I’m talking until I was 29-years-old.

The archetypal No. 10 is a skillful player who is more interested in being in possession than tracking to get the ball back.

I never imagined I’d make it in the Football League.

We know the English market is quite high and I think that sometimes puts clubs off. I think there is a lot of hype around the Premier League.

Players want a manager you feel in your gut you want to play for – they can have the best tactics and philosophy in the world but if you have lost a player in his heart or head, you have lost him in every other department.

I think health is the most important thing.

That’s something that drives me on – wanting to prove people wrong. Because the amount of people who have told me, ‘no, you’re not good enough.’ A lot of people fall at that hurdle. But I just kept getting up and looking for that one person who said yes.

Tactics, gameplan and players are all influential in how a team performs but the question is how to manage every individual in your charge and get them to play like a finely tuned orchestra.

All goals are amazing. But scoring away from home, if I am honest, is extra special.

The Championship is a really tough league with a huge prize at the end of it.

Everyone just plays football, don’t they? It is just part of life in England. Once I started I just totally got the bug and never lost it.

Stadium tunnels are often tight and filled with testosterone. With that combination of a confined space and emotions running high you get the ideal scenario for confrontation.

I am just a normal bloke. I take my kids to parties, put the bins out.

When I was young, I would dwell on games and beat myself up about a result. I would lock myself away in the house, almost punishing myself and those around me.

Scoring goals is the best feeling in the world. It’s a habit. It’s a drug. Everybody runs away in the playground pretending they’ve scored in front of thousands of people. I do that for real.

Obviously we’ve got a lot of science behind football these days and we’ve got a lot of people that can advise us on how best to look after our bodies.

It’s always nice to go and play the big teams at the big stadiums.