Kyle Walker is a transfer target for Everton - but is he still good enough to succeed in the Premier League?
Has there ever been a football club that love an ageing full-back as much as Everton? Reporting this week suggests that the team of Tony Hibbert and Seamus Coleman are keen to address the departure of Ashley Young by adding another storied veteran to the squad – Manchester City’s Kyle Walker.
The Guardian reported on Monday that Walker was one of four options being considered to address a potential issue at right-back created by Coleman’s ever-advancing years and Nathan Patterson’s persistent injury struggles.
While the 35-year-old may still be in Thomas Tuchel’s England squad, there was plenty of evidence of diminishing returns both at the Etihad and on loan with AC Milan over the second half of the season. Pep Guardiola appears to have lost faith, Milan declined to make a permanent offer, and now Walker is set to move and is said to be “enthusiastic” about the prospect of moving to Merseyside. But can he still do a job? And is he really the best option Everton have on the table?
Is Man City’s Kyle Walker still good enough for Everton?
That would have been a straightforward to answer a few years ago, but Walker struggled in the 2024/25 season, not least because the breathtaking turn of pace which has been such a key part of his game seems to have declined as the years start to take their toll.
It would be doing Walker a serious disservice to suggest that he was only successful because of his speed, and he has plenty of technical quality, but his understanding of how to defend, how to position himself and how to handle one-on-one situations was always based on a turn of pace that few opposing players could match. Now that his burst has gone, he essentially has to rework his entire concept of how to play.
It’s a transition that very few players whose playing style hinged on pace have ever made. Ryan Giggs is perhaps the only elite player of the Premier League era who was able to adapt to the loss of extreme speed, and typically rapid players fade fast when their leg muscles simply can’t keep pumping as quickly as they once did.
Walker hasn’t necessarily been that bad, but neither has he shone over the course of the past year. He’s contributing less in attack, and on average creates 33% fewer shooting chances for his team-mates than he did two seasons ago. There’s evidence that he’s finding a little more challenging, too.
Over the course of 2024/25, Walker made an average of 2.38 tackle attempts per match. That’s not an especially high number, but is still far higher than was previously the case. In 2021/22, he attempted less than one tackle every game – not because he wasn’t trying, but because he used his outstanding positioning to reach the ball before an opponent ever got to it in the first place, and because he was able to stand attackers up and force them to find another way around when they did have possession.
Now, that positional sense is starting to fail because he can’t cover the ground he once did. Instincts for the space he can deal with which were developed over years in which he was generally the quickest player of the pitch are now letting him down. It was, perhaps, evident in England’s recent defeat to Senegal - for Ismaïla Sarr’s equaliser, Walker’s marking was loose and he was unable to cover a ball which he probably once would have, giving the Crystal Palace forward time and space to score which he wouldn’t have had a couple of years back.
To give Walker his due, his technical quality hasn’t been lacking. He still makes his passes, can still beat an opposing player regularly with the ball at his feet, and he’s succeeding with an impressive percentage of those tackles. There isn’t evidence of widespread statistical decline, but his sense of how to operate both at the back and coming forward is failing to keep up with a new physical reality.
So far, anyway. Just because Walker hasn’t adapted yet doesn’t guarantee that he can’t follow Giggs’ example with some patience. But it’s fair to question whether he can offer Everton enough of his former quality to be worth bringing in.
The Guardian’s reports suggests that David Moyes would value Walker’s experience and winning mentality, ephemeral additions which are impossible to quantify. Perhaps he would indeed prove to be a boon to the dressing room, a fine mentor for Patterson, or simply a player whose will to win helps him to blow the cobwebs off and pick his performances up next season. But the evidence of the eyes suggests that Walker’s career is in decline, and it’s the kind of slide very few players arrest for long.
Do Everton have better transfer options than Kyle Walker?
The Guardian don’t mention whether Walker would be signed permanently or on loan, nor what the contractual terms might be. If he proved to be a cheap one-year punt, the gamble becomes rather easier to justify – but do Everton have better options?
The story claims that Walker is one of four names on Moyes’ shortlist. The others are Fulham’s Kenny Tete, Southampton’s Kyle Walker-Peters and West Ham’s Vladimír Coufal, all of whom are set to become free agents at the end of June. Could any of those budget-friendly alternatives be better?
Certainly all of them have a longer shelf-life. Coufal, who worked under Moyes at West Ham, is now 31 but Tete and Walker-Peters are only edging into their late twenties and should offer more of a long-term solution to concerns at right-back.
Data is from league matches in the 2024/25 season via FBrefplaceholder image
Data is from league matches in the 2024/25 season via FBref | NationalWorld
The chart above compares the four players across a number of key statistical markers over the course of the 2024/25 season. Walker stands out as being perhaps the best technical player, both as a passer and with the ball at his feet, but in terms of defensive contributions and attacking threat, he seems to be lagging behind Walker-Peters and Tete.
Walker-Peters had perhaps the best season of the four, especially when bearing in mind that a lower number of tackles can be a sign of better defending as a player puts himself in fewer positions when he needs to lunge in, but there’s a strong case for Tete being the best defender of the four over the last year.
Walker being involved in the fewest shooting opportunities stands out because he was playing for teams competing for European slots who had possession and were proactive with it far more often that was the case for West Ham, Fulham or Southampton. All things being even between their teams, Walker’s alleged rivals for a place in the Everton squad would probably be even further ahead.
Of course, a statistical snapshot can only offer a few pieces of the puzzle. It can’t measure intangible qualities or dressing-room contributions and it can’t replace the eye test – but that also suggests that Walker is a fading force, a brilliant right-back who simply can’t do what he used to. Perhaps Everton would be better served looking elsewhere. Then again, they wouldn’t want to let the average age of their back four drop too low. Some traditions need to be maintained.
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