Six-time Premier League champion Kyle Walker is leaving Manchester City for Milan. There’s a good argument to be made that he is the best right-back in the competition’s history.
It has ended with a fall even sharper than his rise. Six-time Premier League champion Kyle Walker is leaving Manchester City, heading to Milan initially on loan but with an option for a permanent move and so surely never to return.
He departs as a true legend, arguably unrivalled for his overall footballing ability among right-backs in the Premier League era.
Gary Neville might have won more titles (eight). Pablo Zabaleta might be more roundly liked. Trent Alexander-Arnold might be more technically gifted. Lauren might have played an ‘invincible’ season. Branislav Ivanovic might have been a bigger set-piece threat.
But for overall quality, defensive ability, one-on-one nous, recovery pace, durability, and adaptability, Walker tops the pile. Some might find that hard to swallow given Walker hasn’t exactly won loads of fans for his off-field antics, but there is no denying there is at least a very good argument he is the best right-back the competition has ever seen.
He wasn’t always destined for the top, though.
His journey in England’s top flight began with Tottenham in 2009, when he arrived from Sheffield United as part of the same £9 million deal that brought Kyle Naughton to north London.
Initially, Spurs considered Naughton the better prospect, sending Walker straight back to Sheffield United on loan for the season. But then, after another season, spent half in the Championship with QPR and half with Aston Villa in the Premier League, Walker became Tottenham’s first-choice right-back. His rise from that point onwards was remarkable.
Immediately, Walker’s consistency was obvious. Not only was he an incredibly reliable defender, but he was also available pretty much all the time. That is something that extended right through his Premier League career: according to transfermarkt, in 14 years in England’s top flight, Walker missed just 82 games through injury.
He only became more durable as his career went on, too, with 60 of those missed games coming before the end of the 2014-15 season. In the last 10 years, he has been absent due to illness or injury for only 22 games. For five consecutive seasons between 2016 and 2021, he was available to play and in either Spurs’ or City’s squad at least 85% of the time.
In those early days at Spurs, he was a thrilling overlapping full-back, with pace that opponents couldn’t handle and a long-range strike on him that gave fans hope every time he got the ball. His first Spurs goal, a fizzing 25-yard strike at White Hart Lane, won a north London derby, and he even scored a direct free-kick against Manchester United in his time at Spurs. He became a key outlet on the right flank in Mauricio Pochettino’s best Tottenham teams.
There was, back then, the odd error in his game. He wasn’t the most technical and could get caught in possession.
But he wrote those out of his game in the more secure surroundings of Pep Guardiola’s City. In his 198 Premier League appearances for Tottenham and Aston Villa, Walker committed six errors leading to an opposition goal – or one every 33 games. In 212 league games for City, though, not a single goal was conceded as the direct result of an on-ball error from Walker. He played almost 264 hours of Premier League football for City without committing a single error leading to an opposition goal.
By comparison, in significantly less game time, Ederson (eight), John Stones (five) and Rodri (four) have all committed a fair few such errors under Guardiola at City. Manuel Akanji and Josko Gvardiol are responsible for four errors leading to an opposition goal between them, despite having played a combined total just 175 hours of Premier League football – around 90 hours fewer than Walker.
Walker understandably became a player who Guardiola came to rely on. A leader on the pitch and a character in the dressing room who was almost always available, Walker was a rock for City for the best part of a decade. Although he made few telling contributions at the sharp end of the pitch, scoring just three Premier League goals in his time at City, he would put out fires at the other end on a weekly basis.
Former England manager Gareth Southgate also leaned heavily on Walker, benefitting from the defender’s ability to adapt to playing as the right-sided centre-back in a back three. Walker was a reassuring presence in a defence that also included error-prone players like Stones and Harry Maguire, in front of the sometimes-erratic Jordan Pickford.
Walker’s ability to recover with almost unrivalled pace was at least part of the reason he was never punished after getting caught on the ball. Over the past three seasons, which we now know were the twilight of Walker’s Premier League career, only Tottenham’s Micky van de Ven has recorded a higher top speed (37.4 km/h) at any stage than the 37.3 km/h that Walker hit. A reminder that Walker was 32 at the start of the 2022-23 campaign.
Walker doesn’t just excel when recovering in-game – he has also bounced back from appearing to be on the decline on a few occasions. In that 2022-23 season, for example, Walker found his game time more limited than he would have liked, failing to properly win back his spot after missing a run of games due to injury in the autumn. City won the treble that year, and Walker was named on the bench for the Champions League final win over Inter. Walker only started three of City’s 13 games en route to European glory.
But the following season he was integral once again as City overturned a significant deficit to Arsenal at the top of the table to win an unprecedented fourth consecutive top-flight title. Only three City players played more minutes than Walker (2,767), who was on the pitch for more time than any other defender.
Over the course of the Guardiola era, City’s style has remained fairly consistent, but the role of the full-back has constantly evolved, and it is a credit to Walker that he has survived every change and thrived.
Having arrived as something close to a traditional right-back, he developed seamlessly into an inverted full-back, comfortable tucking into midfield to create overloads in areas he wouldn’t have been accustomed to occupying.
And then in more recent years, he witnessed Guardiola cull his ball-playing full-backs as the likes of João Cancelo and Oleksandr Zinchenko departed to allow the manager to switch to playing four big, physical defenders across his backline. Walker fit the bill perfectly and has shone at right-back in recent years.
This season, however, there has been a shocking decline, most noticeable in the moments when he has been unable to rely on his recovery pace like he usually does. He has been dribbled past 1.1 times per 90 minutes this season, the highest rate in any season in his City career, and significantly higher than his career-low of 0.36 times per 90 in 2020-21.
It is an understandable drop-off given his age. He could only be barely beatable for so long.
More importantly, it is also understandable that Walker has decided to cut his losses and experience playing in another country while he still can.
His time at City hasn’t ended as he would have liked, but none of this should take away from how his Premier League career is viewed. Both his club and country will do well to replace him.
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