kyle walker manchester-city
Kyle Walker felt he needed to force himself back into the Manchester City team for their match at Bournemouth to fulfil his duties as captain. The 33-year-old had missed the previous four games for the Blues, and his only training during that time was a brief session on the Friday before traveling with the squad to the south coast. Despite an injury crisis at the club and manager Pep Guardiola’s request for his players to play through the pain, Walker volunteered to join several teammates who were also dealing with injuries but gave their all. Unfortunately, Manchester City experienced their first league defeat in 11 months, unable to capitalize on Arsenal’s earlier loss to Newcastle. However, with key players like Kevin De Bruyne and Jeremy Doku returning, the team now heads to Lisbon with a renewed determination not to let injuries serve as an excuse. Walker felt it important to set that example against Bournemouth.
Kyle Walker said, “I felt as good as possible. Sometimes the captain needs to step up when I could have maybe had a little bit longer but that’s no excuse. 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. We have to keep going because there’s a schedule. It’s a busy schedule, every three days for god knows how long. That’s just the way football is at the minute. We stick together even more, me first and foremost as a captain have to make sure that I rally the troops up and we all stick together. The lads that came on today did fantastically well and that just shows the togetherness. We’ve got a squad in there that is still a very, very good squad so there are no excuses. Things happen in football, we’ve probably had a lot of injuries at the same time to key players. We need to take our medicine today and it’s something we can learn from. We’re very happy when we win and we win a lot of time but we have to take our medicine when we lose.”
