Manchester City are feeling the pinch of having a small squad, but Pep Guardiola has suggested one player doesn’t actually need to do that much training.
Manchester City lost 2-1 to Bournemouth at the weekend and have slipped down to second in the table.
Liverpool beat Brighton and are back on top.
It was a bad day at the office for City, with some feeling that such a result had been coming.
Bournemouth were brilliant, and were fully deserving of their victory at the Vitality Stadium.
Too many players just out of sorts, and that was certainly the case with Kyle Walker, who was back in the starting XI after injury.
Walker started at right-back over Rico Lewis, and was given the runaround by the likes of Antoine Semenyo and Milos Kerkez.
Guardiola shared after the game that Walker had barely trained ahead of facing Bournemouth, and the Manchester City man also made another interesting claim about his captain.
Guardiola says Kyle Walker does need to train much due to his physical condition
Fans criticised Walker following his performance against Bournemouth, with many concerned by how out of his depth he seemed.
The 34-year-old was all over the place, but he also just didn’t look match sharp which was to be expected.
Walker has been a top player for City over the years. But in more recent times, his level has dipped and it now feels as though there is daylight between him and Lewis.
After Saturday’s defeat, Pep Guardiola was speaking about Walker, and suggested that he has genuinely only trained a handful of times this season, and that his top physical condition means he can get away with training so little.
He said: “He can play without training because his human condition, physicality is incredible. But of course he needs to come back to a routine of playing and being focused.
“I appreciate a lot the effort Kyle has done to come back. He arrived [from England duty in October], didn’t train once except yesterday [Friday] for six minutes, and played 90 minutes against [Antoine] Semenyo, all the fast players – it’s not easy!
“Of course, we need him, he’s our captain, we need him…”
Walker on the wane
These comments are not likely to go down all that well with some City fans.
Because Walker has not particularly impressed this season when he has played. His showing against Bournemouth was very poor, although you can perhaps sympathise with him slightly because he had only just come back into the team after injury.
Clearly, Guardiola feels comfortable using Walker without him having any training sessions under his belt.
But this won’t wash with some, because Walker had a torrid time on Saturday and it might have been a different story had Lewis started. But it’s difficult because Guardiola probably doesn’t want to burn out the youngster.
City could do with Walker finding his mojo again.
At present, he ranks 18th in the Man City squad for average match ratings (6.41) on WhoScored. Only James McAtee (6.00) and Nathan Ake (5.88) have lower averages so far
