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Pep Guardiola will welcome Kyle Walker back to the Etihad but his reputation at Manchester City slipped last season
It says a lot about how Kyle Walker left Manchester City that it is unclear what reception he will get on his return. Walker will be back with Burnley on Saturday looking to keep his former teammates out after eight incredible years at the Etihad.
They were all incredible, even if the last of the eight was for reasons that has caused damage to all involved. Ahead of the game, Pep Guardiola has implored everyone to remember the unrivalled heights they scaled together.
"I’m pretty sure everybody is happy to see him back in a place where he has been an unbelievable figure for us," the City boss said on Friday. "He has been the right-back that defined our time here for the last nine years.
"I’m pretty sure he will get the gratitude for our fans because he deserves it."
Arriving for £50m in 2017, Walker did what Spurs boss Mauricio Pochettino did not think possible and took his game up a level. In doing so, he raised the standard of a team that had disappointed in Guardiola’s first year in English football and helped turn them not just into Premier League winners but Centurions.
Then they retained the title with 98 points, becoming the first team in more than a decade to win back-to-back Premier Leagues. Then, after a year where they came second, they became the first team in English history to win four consecutive Premier League trophies after becoming the second to win the Treble.
Walker captained City to his sixth Premier League triumph, which should have added to his legacy at the club. It did in a way, but the more he spoke as skipper the more he began to bristle with supporters.
One particular interview stood out, as City stood on the cusp of being crowned world champions for the first time at the Club World Cup. One game away from winning their fifth trophy of 2023, Walker said that they had a long way to go to be considered alongside the great Liverpool and United sides.
"They did it year in, year out for a number of years," he argued. "So to be considered the best club in the world is a great achievement but the lads know that we’re just starting the building blocks for this club."
Even neutrals in the debate raised an eyebrow at that, and there was also evidence by then of a thin skin to criticism. Walker had come under some flak for his performances in a City side that had struggled in the first half of that season, with his parents sending on criticism.
"I just feel in football it’s fickle, [people have] short memories, short memories," he said. "Keep hammering me and I will just keep coming back."
He did, and the team did, to write their names into history again with the fourth straight title. But things would unravel dramatically.
The online noise was that Guardiola was too close to Walker, having intervened so strongly to ward off Bayern's interest in 2023 with the club offering him a three-year deal shortly after they had lost Ilkay Gundogan on a free transfer to Barcelona by refusing to offer him more than one year. But cracks began to appear early in the defender's second year as skipper.
Walker missed four games with injury in the autumn, but did not take it well when Guardiola appeared to suggest some players could be playing through pain. The right-back returned for the very next game, only for their performance at Bournemouth to ring some of the biggest alarm bells the manager has had at the Etihad.
It wasn't all down to Walker, but he continued a trend of being culpable for soft goals. It looked like he had lost the superpower that had made him such a formidable opponent for Vinicius Jr and the rest.
He agreed to speak to journalists after the game, and his comments felt pointed: "Sometimes the captain needs to step up when I could have maybe had a little bit longer but that's no excuse," he said.
"I was there for the lads and full credit to everyone out there - people were playing with knocks, kicks, bruises, pulls and that just shows the determination and what they want to do for the badge or the club."
Walker would play in 11 of 14 games in that spell, but the rot had fully set into the team. His last eight starts for the club yielded one win, one draw, and six defeats.
Then came the bombshell from Guardiola. In a press conference after their FA Cup game with Salford City, he went public with the news that Walker had asked sporting director Txiki Begiristain to be able to leave.
A loan move to AC Milan followed, but when they did not take up an option to sign him he was not allowed back in for the Club World Cup - his City career was over the morning the captain walked out on his team. However difficult he must have felt it to leave, his decision hurt Guardiola and it upset City fans.
An interview with the Telegraph this season where he took no accountability for that, or his performances, and also made the serious allegation that people at the club no longer wanted him to be captain, tanked more of the remaining goodwill towards him.
"I don’t want to say scapegoat because I don’t want to bring out the violins. But I was the captain and the team wasn’t doing well," he said.
"There were big players missing in big periods in that season and I felt just like I was getting…not blamed. I won’t say blamed but I felt I was the excuse because I was the captain.”
It is sad that Walker feels that way and yet he must have felt some fire in his direction too. Guardiola changed the habit of a career and directly intervened this summer to pick the City captains because he was 'unhappy at what he had seen' last season.
Bernardo Silva was even more forward. He gave an interview shortly after taking the captaincy where he spoke about wanting basic standards from his teammates such as turning up on time; after the FA Cup final in May, he said he had discovered which of the team he could go to war with.
All of these men are fiercely proud, and it hurts them when they do not play well individually and when their team suffers. Their competitiveness has parachuted them to unbelievable heights together, yet the passion can lead to an ugly break-up.
Walker's is probably the ugliest break-up at the club since Joao Cancelo, and he has achieved far more. As Guardiola said on Friday, he will go down as one of the best full-backs in modern football never mind City and at his best he was exceptional; it has also proven extremely difficult for the Blues to replace him.
Time may be a healer. Walker reunited with his former teammates for Manu Akanji's belated leaving do in Manchester on Monday and over the years there will be more videos of some of his incredible clearances or recoveries than there will his howlers with either foot or mouth.
As Walker prepares to step back onto the grass at the Etihad though, it gives a snapshot of a long and complicated history that he cannot be sure what reception he will get.
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