In late August last year Kyle Walker-Peters must have thought he had finally made it as a first-team regular at Tottenham Hotspur.
When the team was announced for the third league game of the season, a home fixture against Newcastle United, the 23-year-old found himself picked, once again, ahead of Serge Aurier.
Three starts from three, and solid performances in the victory over Aston Villa and 2-2 draw at Manchester City: Walker-Peters’ career was going from strength-to-strength under Mauricio Pochettino.
Cut to March 2020 and the right-back was warming the bench at Southampton, shipped out on loan by Jose Mourinho in January following just three further appearances for Spurs.
Looking back, it all went wrong when Walker-Peters suffered a hamstring injury in that Newcastle match. Aurier seized his chance and the Englishman couldn’t break back into the side, playing only once more - in a League Cup defeat to Colchester - before Pochettino was sacked in November.
Walker-Peters certainly thinks the manager change has affected his career.
“I think had [Pochettino] stayed, I’d still be at Tottenham,” Walker-Peters told Southampton's official website in March. "He was never really big on loans. There were always opportunities for him to send me on loan and he never did, so I think that showed his faith in me.
“Despite not playing me all the time, it showed that he wanted me around. If he hadn’t left, I don’t think I’d be on loan, so it just shows how fast football can change.”
The speed of his descent has certainly been dizzying, and in praising Pochettino’s “faith” there is an implicit suggestion Mourinho has not given Walker-Peters enough of a chance.
A lot of Spurs players were bound to see their situation change when Daniel Levy swapped one manager for his polar opposite, but not many - if any - have been hit as hard as the young right-back.
“Mourinho comes in and I get to play one game, but I don’t really get an opportunity like I thought I would, in terms of two or three games rotating with Serge Aurier,” Walker-Peters added. “But the manager has to make decisions. That was his decision, so that’s fine.”
That doesn’t mean it’s all over for him at Tottenham. There is still time to get back into Mourinho’s good books, not least because Aurier has made several high-profile mistakes in recent months.
Walker-Peters, meanwhile, can be forgiven for an underwhelming performance in his only game under the new manager, a 3-1 defeat at Bayern Munich in December, while the upcoming transfer window looks set to be quieter than usual in light of transfer values being expected to fall.
Then again it is damning that Walker-Peters couldn’t break into the Southampton team even after they had lost Cedric Soares to Arsenal in January. The 23-year-old featured just once for Ralph Hasenhuttl, in a 2-1 defeat to Burnley, before a minor injury setback saw him drop back down the pecking order.
Remarkably, his four league starts this season for Spurs and Southampton makes 2019/20 Walker-Peters’ joint-best campaign to date. At 23, a record of 16 senior appearances in all competitions is not where he would want to be - even if they have brought five assists.
Mourinho may not be the most trusting of managers at times, and following the right-back’s difficult few months at Southampton it could be difficult for Walker-Peters to get a second chance by his new boss.
The more likely next step could be a permanent transfer to a high-ranking Championship club in the hope of rebuilding a Premier League career elsewhere.
