These are the pressure games everyone wants to play in - WALKER
AS City took to the pitch for a season-defining match against Tottenham, Kyle Walker picked out a patch to settle himself.
With the nerves jangling and a lack of sleep not helping, the defender did what he has done in so many matches throughout his career – 299 and counting for City – and went through his pre-match routine to compose himself and focus his mind on what lay ahead.
City rode their luck and nearly saw their hopes crushed in the final minutes of the game, but all the experience and work paid off to leave them one game away from making history.
Almost a year on from suffering the heartbreak of being left out of the Champions League final and then almost securing a move to Bayern Munich, Walker can expect to be front and centre of City’s efforts on the final day. If it was a surprise when he opted to stay at the Etihad, it was an even bigger one when he was handed a three-year deal and an even bigger one when he was made captain.
He was not necessarily the popular choice with fans, and also drew criticism in the winter for the level of his performances, but he has undeniably left his stamp on the team and the captaincy this season. And while he has generated frontpage headlines for his extramarital affair, the defender has been completely devoted towards making sure that he and his team-mates have been in the best possible condition to help the team.
“All I want is the best for the club and all I want is the best for the bunch of lads in there,” he said after Tuesday’s win. “A lot of the time we get the result we want and they work their socks off.
“People see the Instagram and whatever but nobody sees the hard graft that these lads dedicate themselves to live every day when we’re competing in all the competitions, travelling here, there and everywhere to play in the competitions that we’ve been fortunate to win. It’s hard work.
“I’m not saying Arsenal don’t do that. They do, because I know Mikel [Arteta] and the lads there and they put the hard work and dedication in. Whoever wins the Premier League come Sunday deserves to win it so may the best team win.”
As City celebrated their first league win at the Tottenham Hotspur Stadium in five attempts, Walker will have taken particular satisfaction. He maintains a decent relationship with Spurs fans but was hurt at the way his 2017 departure was handled when Mauricio Pochettino was confident that they had seen the best of him.
Walker immediately set about to work hard enough that he could prove him wrong, and that motivation to never be satisfied has been a theme of his captaincy. The captaincy group changed the parking spaces at the training ground so that those who have been at the club the shortest time have the furthest to walk in, and the whole squad were challenged early on by the defender to match the pace of their Centurions campaign and blow the competition away.
That didn’t happen, and could have left Walker open to ridicule, yet he was prepared to say it privately and publicly in a bid to gain an edge that could help the team.
The same went for turning Liverpool round at Anfield when he won the toss, happy to try anything to disrupt their opponents and be more aggressive and in their face than recent City captains have been.
The last time Walker played this many games in a campaign was the 2018/19 season, and there have been plenty of times when fans have thought he has been used too often. Choosing to publicly address criticism of him in December by calling it fickle, while also claiming that the Blues were still far from matching the achievements of the modern United, did little to improve his popularity.
Yet it has all been part of the heart-on-sleeve approach that has summed Walker up as a player and a captain. The criticism only spurred him to try harder and when City needed him at a critical point in their season he came back from injury and played 130 minutes against Real Madrid and then 100 against Chelsea in the same week to keep their season on track.
He has also been welcoming to the new faces in the dressing room, as well as sensitive enough not to announce that he had been picked as captain over Kevin De Bruyne while the Belgian was cruelly sidelined with another hamstring injury. There have been times when he has felt the need to remind some players in the squad of what is expected of them, but he has also been humble enough to accept others giving him some plain truths.
A joker in the dressing room, Walker leads by example with his focus around a match and not only is he committed to putting in the best performances possible but this veteran of the game with a string of Premier League titles already is still enthused by it.
“I think that maybe sometimes
Nobody sees the hard graft these lads dedicate themselves to live every day Kyle Walker
people forget we are humans and the emotion, the nerves, the adrenaline, it’s all running through your body,” he said after the Spurs game.
“If you don’t like playing in these games you shouldn’t play football. These are the pressure games that you want to play in and this is what separates the really good players form the average players that you can go with the tense atmosphere and the pressure of the club on you and you need to go and provide.”
Human is a good word to describe Walker’s season. It hasn’t been easy for him to follow Ilkay Gundogan as captain and keep a Treble-winning team motivated, and the choices he has made in his personal life have also invited scrutiny and criticism.
But he has given everything as a defender and skipper – occupying the right wing has been essential for City in some games with Riyad Mahrez gone – and every decision has been for the good of the team. For a man who can’t resist making himself part of the conversation or the prank, he has always been about the collective.
Walker has done things his way, and while it hasn’t always been a smooth ride he has helped steer City to the brink of an unprecedented fourth league title in a row and the prospect of consecutive Doubles. Few would begrudge him the celebrations if he is able to lead the team to more success and history.