A former Tottenham man, who played 183 times for the North London club, reveals that he almost ended up joining Everton over Spurs.
One of Spurs’ Premier League greats
Kyle Walker will arguably go down as the best right-back that Tottenham have had in the Premier League era. Unless Pedro Porro can lift some trophies this season, of course.
He arrived at Spurs as a 19-year-old from Sheffield United and went on to evolve into one of the league’s best full-backs at White Hart Lane.
He was one of the very few Tottenham players who was part of both the Harry Redknapp and Mauricio Pochettino eras at Spurs, eventually moving to Manchester City in 2017 after eight years with the Lilywhites.
Kyle Walker makes transfer admission
The Manchester City star has now confessed that Everton were also keen on signing him from the Blades back in 2019 when David Moyes was in charge at Goodison Park.
The defender explained that he decided to move to Spurs as they showed they wanted him more than the Toffees.
He said on the You’ll Never Beat Kyle Walker podcast: “I was close to signing for Everton before I signed for Tottenham. Just to let you know,” Walker said.
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“Who was manager?”, Walker was asked, and he replied: “David Moyes.” The host then asked the right-back: “But didn’t Spurs sign both you and Naughton?”.
The City star responded: “Yeah, and Naughts went to his house. Naughts went to Moyes’ house and he never invited me. So I went down to Devon, to Tottenham and I was like okay they like me more, so I signed for Tottenham.”
Kyle Naughton was seen as the bigger coup
The irony of the double deal for Naughton and Walker was the fact that Naughton cost more and was seen as the much bigger coup among the two.
At the time, the feeling was that Walker had simply been thrown in as a sweetener, but he just exploded over the next couple of years.
It was clear from his loan spells at QPR and Aston Villa during the 2010-11 season that the Sheffield United academy graduate was going to be a special player for Spurs.