Pep Guardiola has turned Kyle Walker into the ultimate all-round defender

KYLE WALKER has been superb for City this season.

Pep Guardiola’s team do not tend to play with an enormous amount of width from their winger on the right because Raheem Sterling likes to drift inside, unlike on the left where Leroy Sane sticks more to the touchline.

So there is a huge onus on the right-back to provide the width for the team. Walker does that brilliantly and is a real threat. He has provided plenty of assists this season thanks to his seemingly boundless energy up and down the flank.

He also gives the opposition full-back a problem. Does he follow Sterling? Or does he deal with Walker? But he has also been superb defensively this season. In the early part of the campaign when Benjamin Mendy was pushing on, Walker was hanging back a bit — against his natural instincts — to help make sure City were not hit on the counter-attack.

This is in part down to him reading the game so much more, which I suspect comes from working with Guardiola.

The Spanish manager has improved Walker no end and part of that comes from the way he has asked him to fulfil the different roles depending on the needs of the team.

REWRITING THE RULES

SPEAKING of full-backs, I went to Swansea’s game against Manchester City on Wednesday night and I can honestly say that there was a tactic Pep Guardiola used that I’ve never seen before. It was incredible.

Knowing that Swansea would sit deep and try and frustrate City, Guardiola used his full-backs as central midfielders.

Fabien Delph, who was nominally left-back, and Danilo, named at right-back, moved alongside Fernandinho in the centre of midfield.

The idea – and it worked a treat – was to confuse the Swansea midfield.

Swansea wanted to sit deep but be all over the City midfield, not allow them time on the ball.

So when Delph, Danilo and Fernandinho started getting the ball and pulling the strings, Tom Carroll, Ki Sung-Yueng and Roque Mesa started pushing up the park to get at them.

Nothing frustrates a midfielder more than not getting to grips with the opposition midfield. So they moved up. This just left a gap between Swansea’s midfield and defence for Sergio Aguero, dropping deep, Kevin De Bruyne and David Silva to get on the ball, link up and cause havoc.

It was genius and a brilliant way to draw a team out.

I’ve seen Delph move into central midfield as an inverted full-back – but that has been to provide cover and to stop the counter-attack.

But against Swansea it was all about the attack. And it was brilliant.

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