Watford captain Troy Deeney has revealed the shocking racial abuse and death threats his children have received on social media.

The 32-year-old talismanic striker says he uses social media less now following messages of abuse from racists and trolls, hurling racial epithets at and threatening to kill his six-year-old daughters under his posts and in direct messages.

Deeney, who helped the Hornets secure a return to the Premier League last weekend, told BBC Breakfast abuse on social media is getting worse.

He said: “You get racial abuse, not only at myself, at my partner, at my children. I’ve had death threats put at my six-year-old girls who have nothing to do with anything. It’s constant.

“To put it this way, you’re talking daily now. Not every time you have a bad game, or there is an emotional uproar, it’s daily. And sometimes its just because people are genuinely bored."

In April of 2019, Deeney published harrowing messages showing the full extend of the racist abuse he had suffered on social media.

Since then, he says he has scaled back how much he uses online platforms.

“I’m not a heavy poster, I don’t use Instagram as everybody else does, you know, to post how their training is, where they are gong and what they are doing. I kind of keep it a little more separate because of that,” he explained.

“Because when you are reading stuff about my daughters that say ‘I hope that N dies’ that’s very difficult for me to read and not to react. Because also, from the other side of the coin, we have to not react. We’re in a privileged position, but if we react on a human level, we are now the ones that are held accountable.”