Kyle Walker

[decmancity]

£15m max imo

Nowhere near. Be surprised if it was any fee in all honesty.

 

[Project]

Wonder if it helps to grease the wheels for Kimmich? Those rumours came from somewhere. And that’ll be 3 players we’ve let Bayern take… bout time they return the favour.

 

[RayCTID]

We won't get much now considering his age and only having a year left on his contract. Still a highly useful asset to have in the team

 

[Chi-town blues]

We cannoh replace him.

I was a boat to day that .

 

[SebastianBlue]

I am not sure what you mean by Walker was never the best defender.
Maldini Company and a few others may have been better but I think he has turned himself into an outstanding defender. When he is playing there are very few threatening attacks coming down the right, he is excellent 1v1 He clears a lot of balls from the other side. Defensively I think he is now outstanding what he is less good at is quick use of the ball and productive use of the ball when he uses is speed on overlaps.
Coman was giving us real problems when Walker wasn't playing ditto Vinicius last year in the semis.

My point is that he is an overall great defender because of his immense athleticism and pace. He has never possessed inherent exceptional defensive ability (like Ake, Dias, Kompany, or Maldini, as you mention).

He, more then anyone, understands that once his athleticism and pace begins to decline he is going to drop levels very quickly (as opposed to the aforementioned players, who never relied on their athleticism or pace to defend properly).

He has been able to pocket some of the best wingers in the world almost entirely because his pace and power allows him to match them step for step or, if they outwit him momentarily (which has happened a lot), he can recover and reengage.

And, even then, that was only really after years of being coached by Pep and co, learning how to position himself and shape his body to allow him to recover and keep up. He’s still not especially great 1v1 or positionally.

Once more, he was going to get less playing time next season because his ball control, passing, press resistance are not good enough for Pep. Hence why Rico was preferred for awhile even after Kyle was back from injury. And why Stones is often preferred when we aren’t up against pace, but rather technical ability. Pep literally said this several times himself.

Will he be missed? Definitely.

Will we miss him more then we missed Silva, Dinho, or Sergio? I don’t think so.

Are we going to be worse off? No.

I’d be happy to make a similar bet with @domalino that I did about Stones eventually becoming as good (if not better) than Kompany (at a time he was calling me an idiot and a clown for making that claim).

Again, the only irreplaceable member of our team is Pep.

 

[tolmie's hairdoo]

He's not unhappy, he had just been handed an unexpected opportunity at this late stage in his career and City are happy to help him out.

Been fantastic and would wish him all the best. He loves Pep.

I do wonder if Sane or another player might be involved.

 

[Pep Talk561]

Damn maybe he thinks he plays every week there

 

[Iassel]

End of an era, but ultimately not that surprising.

As said a few weeks back after Madrid, it was clear that his role in this team was only going to be as a ‘pitch hitter’ being used for special assignments, like following Vinicius around and occasional squad rotation.

It was sadly pretty clear this season that for whatever reason he could no longer get up and down the field like he used to and was clearly not comfortable dropping into the middle and linking play.

If he feels that he would prefer to take a new challenge in a league where he can still play his old game rather than a rotational role he has earned the right to do so……of course it may also be that his wife fancies a change of scenery with his off the field antics.

 

[Impeccable One]

Lots of ‘ladies’ in Munich very happy about this

 

[Semper aggressus]

After the stratospheric highs of the Treble, the summer of transfers is shaping up to be utterly shite.

Firstly missing out on Bellingham, now a whole host of first team players seem to be on the way out; Gundo, Bernie, Laporte and now Walker.

Unless we spend pretty much all of that £294m prize money on their replacements I can’t see how we’ll be troubling a treble next season.

Hopefully at least one of Gundo or Bernie will stay. I’ll be gutted to lose Walker though, he’s fucking brilliant with that pace. As we’ve won everything this season it would have been a great opportunity to tempt the world’s best to help improve us even more, strengthen from a position of strength.