Pep Guardiola's admission last night that Kyle Walker has asked to leave Manchester City to 'explore opportunities abroad' shows just how far the right-back's stock has fallen at the Etihad.
Throughout City's dominance in the Premier League, Guardiola has shown that he is a man who will fiercely defend his players. Support them through staggeringly bad form, support them in the face of public scandal.
He has given in to the approach at times this season. He spoke openly about individual mistakes on the eve of the 2-0 defeat at Juventus, and lit the fire under Jack Grealish by admitting Savinho was in 'better form' six days ago. But he is a man, like the rest of us, who had run out of other logical reasons for City's malaise.
Over the course of this miserable, tortured series, Guardiola refrained from blaming any individual person, believing the mistakes were the result of more general shortcomings. Fear seeped in, an uncertainty – clearly visible during the capitulation against Manchester United last month.
Looking at the footage of matches between their defeat to Bournemouth on November 2 and the loss to Man United over a month later, it is reasonable to calculate that 16 errors contributed to the opponent's score.
However, the official statistics will not paint such a bleak picture. Those figures will be in the single digits, which brings us to Walker, who was not in the squad for Manchester City's 8-0 defeat to Salford on Saturday. The leader of the men within this group voted twice for the captaincy.
According to Opta's absolute definition of a defensive error, he had not committed a single sin during City's dismal run. None. Looking back at the goals and playing with your eye, he played a leading role in five of them.
Daniel Munoz plays onside for Crystal Palace. Caught under a corner for Maxence Lacroix who headed in unopposed in the same match. A mix with Ruben Dias at Liverpool. This allowed Timo Werner to race past him against Tottenham as he played chicken with the winger.
And probably the most striking example of his wider issues came 24 hours after Guardiola spoke in Turin. Weston McKennie's beautiful volley put the Champions League match past City and the visitors looked collectively exposed at first glance.
As McKennie rams past Ederson, Walker can be seen walking back from the right-back position – finishing at least five yards away from the moment of impact. McKennie had the entire penalty area to himself. The cross still went into a danger area, but it is a danger area that you should expect your right-back to enter.
“We have (always) run as a desperate team,” Guardiola said in December, describing their hunger and desire. When McKennie drove away, that didn't seem to be the case.
Walker is certainly not City's only problem at the moment, but is symptomatic of their ills. A captain who, sources say, has been playing with an injury for over a month – although Guardiola has not spoken about this during his media duties. A captain who, sources say, has become quiet and reserved on the training pitch – and who was flattered to mislead during a recent training game with the academy kids. A captain whose wife and mother of their four children, Annie Kilner, filed for divorce in October and has since reportedly scrapped her bid for his £27 million fortune.
City have won 14 games in all competitions this season and only two of those have come when Walker – like other internationals, who was given a period of controlled rest at the start of the season – has started. One of them was Watford at home in the Carabao Cup.
They are grim numbers for one of the best full-backs to ever play in the Premier League, a mainstay of Guardiola's various super-teams. Many scoffed at the initial £45m fee City paid Tottenham in 2017, but the money has been returned and then some.
But now he wears that look that is increasingly common among City's stars: a confused, contorted face of pain. He still has 18 months left on the three-year contract City handed him after the Treble, in a bid not to lose any more experience following the departures of Ilkay Gundogan and Riyad Mahrez. However, his best days are behind him and he has now confirmed that he is looking for a new challenge.
City rejected interest from the Saudi Pro League last summer and instead jettisoned Joao Cancelo for good. Of the two, Cancelo's departure was considerably more urgent and Walker had recovered from patchy form last season as they won a fourth straight title.
A few months later there is a confused mind. He suffered disgusting racist abuse online in the aftermath of Juventus, which was sent to Instagram shortly after he left the stadium. He has become the epitome of mediocrity among some supporters, both during the match and those watching from a distance, but that turned from criticism to prejudice. Walker branded it 'unacceptable' and he is absolutely right to highlight it.
No one can quite put their finger on what happened to his game so quickly. As of December, his top speed of 35.9 km/h this season is the same as 2021, albeit almost 2 km/h lower than his record in the Treble year. His 18.9 sprints per race are lower than previous years, but not by a significant margin. He is dribbled past his opponents 0.9 times per match, the same as in 2023, but two-tenths more than last season.
The only metric way down is interceptions per 90 minutes. That stands at 0.3, while his average is around 0.8. Maybe sharpness of the mind is actually more important than the legs.
Would a sober Walker normally throw himself to the ground when brushed by Rasmus Hojlund in Sunday's Manchester derby? Roy Keane suggested as much on Sky Sports, but there is no back catalog of these downright embarrassing and pathetic moments during a gilded career.
“He's better than that,” Micah Richards told Sky Sports. Keane replied: 'Is that him? I'm not so sure.'
On Dutch television, Frank de Boer went one step further, with his employers tweeting that he 'exploded' after seeing the melodrama. 'When he watches that fragment again, he can no longer take himself seriously, can he?' said De Boer. 'It makes me angry. I find this ridiculous. And he even stays on the ground. This is ruining our game of football.”
Walker was one of the first City players into the tunnel after United's unlikely late showing – again due to a string of mistakes – and has simply not looked good all season. Samir Nasri, the ex-City winger, suggested on Canal+ that 'things off the pitch' influenced 'the worst defensive season of his career'.
Spicy of Nasri, while he also said the bleeding was obvious. The filing of Kilner, who has reportedly scrapped her divorce plans, is the latest development of a sordid family life, for which Walker has expressed regret after fathering two children with Lauryn Goodman.
Their son was conceived while Walker – who had committed a series of crimes during the pandemic, including organizing a sex party – was separated from Kilner.
Their baby daughter was not and the recent child support court case ended with Judge Edward Hess ordering the England international to pay Goodman £1.8 million to purchase a property in Sussex, plus more than £100,000 in additional costs. Walker pays £12,500 a month in child support. Goodman was blasted for “insatiable greed” by a spokesman for Walker, accusing him of using him as an “open-ended checkbook.”
In the wake of Walker's social media posts about being the victim of racism in December, Goodman responded supportively, while also claiming he had “abandoned” his two children with her.
This is the backdrop to Walker's season and despite all that, it's no wonder his eye isn't on the ball. But the most important mental trait the 34-year-old has always had is that no matter what happens behind the scenes – a complicated marriage, the Covid scandal, the public urination, the complaint of indecent exposure in a bar – he always showed up showing up for Guardiola and City.
He is currently not showing up. A captain's failure to turn up can have bigger consequences for those under him than just a right-back losing his man every now and then.
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