Age and time seem to be hurtling fast towards Kyle Walker, but not as quick as Antoine Semenyo did on Saturday. If Walker has had a ropier game in a Manchester City shirt than what befell him at Bournemouth, then putting a finger on it is no easy task.
There was mitigation and his was the same as the collective. They weren’t fit and nor was he during an assignment borne from necessity after just six minutes of training in the past 16 days.
And yet this was a jarring, painful afternoon, where Semenyo demolished one of the greatest right backs of the Premier League era. It was an act of sustained savagery that ensured the suffering went far deeper for Walker than knowing the two goals City conceded came from his flank.
Semenyo beat him for pace, for agility, for reaction speed to loose balls. He beat him on the inside, beat him up the line, and twice he left him face down in the turf. When Walker was booked in the second half, it was for pulling Semenyo down and when Walker was shifted to centre half, it was to spare him another encounter with the wheels of a lorry.
Few have earned more a right to a bad day, but if we were to be harsh about it, and hopefully premature in doing so, we might dredge up what Gary Neville once said about knowing when his end had arrived.
Kyle Walker had a day to forget as Manchester City were beaten 2-1 by Bournemouth
That was the day in 2011 when, by his famed recollection, he made Jerome Thomas of West Bromwich Albion look like Cristiano Ronaldo.
Neville was 36, Walker is 34, and they have played a similar sum of games — Neville’s 687 to Walker’s 711.
Whether the legs are tired or shot, you don’t want to meet a player such as Semenyo. Aged 24, he is heading upwards and fast. He has played National League South, League Two, League One, Championship, and the Cherries will do well to keep him if his form this season is replicated into a concerted pattern. For now, we are looking at a winger who, in the past fortnight alone, has shredded Arsenal’s Ben White and Walker.
But what of the latter? City manager Pep Guardiola’s defence of Walker on Saturday evening centred on his limited training since the Euros, which he estimated at about five sessions this season, including the briefest of workouts prior to the trip to Bournemouth after injuring his knee with England during the last international break.
That is no way to prepare for a physical game against confident opposition who suffocate the spaces, but it is noticeable that Walker hasn’t sprung back quickly from the summer exertions. Older players are usually slower in their recovery and there is no surprise in that.
But if it was startling to see Walker comprehensively overtaken on the charge by Fulham’s Adama Traore recently, having been the division’s foremost sprinter for so long, then other statistics support the impression it created.
Antoine Semenyo beat him for pace, for agility, for reaction speed to loose balls
His success rate in duels won per 90 minutes, which had hovered steadily at around 54 per cent for the previous four seasons, is down by 10 per cent, according to Opta data, and his penetrative dribbles are down by almost half, as are his interceptions.
What was once his calling card, that willingness to let the attacker go by him in the knowledge he would always win the sprint, has become a troubled gamble. His recoveries are also trending downwards.
Guardiola isn’t unduly worried, saying: ‘Kyle can play without training because his human condition, his physicality, is incredible. Of course he needs to go back to a routine, to playing games. We need him as our captain and he has to be the best. Step by step, hopefully he can reach it.’
Hopefully he can, but age and time don’t always listen to such requests.
