Man City news: Mills issues ‘phenomenal’ Kyle Walker claim after surprise new development
Kyle Walker is still in “phenomenal” form for Man City despite being axed from the England squad.
That is the view of ex-City and England full-back Danny Mills, speaking exclusively to Football Insider after the 31-year-old’s omission from Gareth Southgate’s squad for the upcoming friendlies.
As quoted by BBC Sport on Thursday (17 March), Southgate insisted Walker will be back with the squad in June but wanted to look at some younger options.
The three-time Premier League winner reacted by putting in a solid display in Man City’s 4-1 win over Southampton to progress to the FA Cup semi-finals today (20 March).
As quoted by Sports Illustrated yesterday (19 March), Pep Guardiola admitted he was surprised by Walker’s omission from the England squad.
“We had this a while back, Kyle Walker is still an outstanding player with immense experience and fantastic pace at 31,” Mills told Football Insider‘s Connor Whitley.
“He’s still phenomenal. Gareth will have said to him ‘You’ve had a lot of games with a lot of travel and there are some big Champions League games coming up, you are in my plans and as long as you keep your form up you will be on the plane to Doha. $ather than drag you away for a couple of weeks, have some time off and chill out’.
“That’s exactly the right thing to do. As a player, you are going to be disappointed but Gareth will have ensured him this is nothing to do with form.
“It will be more of a case of players are injured, if it was a World Cup qualifier he would be playing but if they are not fit, Gareth needs to see who Walker’s back up would be.
“He doesn’t need him to come along and train for 10 days because he knows how good he is, he knows his character. That could be really good management from Gareth.”
In other news, Kieran Maguire has revealed Man City ‘won’t be happy’ after an ‘extremely high-risk’ new sponsor flouts UK law.