Captain Kyle thriving on added responsibility... After nearly leaving Man City

It did look for a while that Kyle Walker was off. Another senior member of Manchester City’s Treble winners who had completed the job and fancied trying something new.

Bayern Munich had been pushing for a while, in conjunction with their pursuit of Harry Kane and the two England stars had spoken about the prospect of joining forces in Bavaria. Kane went, Walker didn’t, but City were perilously close to losing a man who now leads them as captain in the absence of Kevin De Bruyne.

An unlikely captain, in many ways; the armband never felt like his calling. Walker has always been a joker inside the City dressing room but the intervention of his team-mates when Bayern circled shows the regard in which he is held.

The players pleaded with the club’s hierarchy to give him the contract he wanted, in what might be an unprecedented move given footballers don’t always think that broadly about how others can affect their own lives. A new two-year extension, until 2026, is not the done thing for someone who turned 33 a week before the Champions League final he sat on the bench for but Pep Guardiola’s squad contributed to that coming to fruition.

City sources say Walker was merely looking out for himself over the summer in wanting the longest contract possible — and have no problem with that. He has always maintained that it wasn’t about money. City matched Bayern’s proposal and, after talks with Guardiola about gametime over sushi, he committed his future and could end up being the latest star to do almost a decade at the Etihad Stadium.

A good job, really. Guardiola admitted losing the right back would have proven a disaster after the experience of Ilkay Gundogan and Riyad Mahrez left the building. What the City boss probably didn’t