The irony will not be lost on Pep Guardiola, whose pressing need for two new full backs matches the imperative for Manchester City to beat Tottenham Hotspur today, that the perfect signings for the club in that position will be on the opposite side at the Etihad Stadium.
Kyle Walker and Danny Rose are Guardiola players in almost every respect, from their pace and intelligence to their obvious desire for self-improvement, with the only problem being that there is no chance of City recruiting either of them.
Walker and Rose both signed new contracts at Tottenham this season, committing them to the club until 2021, and sources close to the chairman, Daniel Levy, claim that they are on a list of players he will not sell at any price for at least two seasons, when the redeveloped 61,000-seat White Hart Lane will be up and running.
In many respects, the 26-year-old Yorkshiremen epitomise Levy’s model for Tottenham as they were signed young and cheap, from Sheffield United and Leeds United respectively, with untapped reserves of potential and a huge sell-on value.
Walker and Rose were born within 34 days of each other in the summer of 1990 and their careers have been closely intertwined since they first played against each other as teenagers in the youth set-ups of their respective Uniteds.
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The pair remain close friends to this day, regularly socialise together in north London and share the same agent in Mark Rankine, the former Preston North End midfield player who is also Rose’s uncle.
In a sense, Tottenham got lucky with Walker and Rose, as they were both plucked from clubs who were struggling financially at the time on the recommendation of an agency with close links to Levy, Base Soccer, who had taken Aaron Lennon from Elland Road to White Hart Lane in 2005.
They were recruited for their athleticism and attitude as much as their ability and were very much viewed as raw materials, evidenced by the fact that neither was a specialist full back at the time.
Having started his academy career as a skinny striker who hoped to emulate his hero, Brian Deane, Walker flitted between the right wing and right back in the handful of appearances he made for his home-town club before joining Tottenham, while Rose was signed as an attacking midfield player.
In another one of the ties that bind them together, they were both given their first-team debuts at Sheffield United and Leeds by the same manager, Kevin Blackwell, who, after also managing Luton Town and Bury, has now been reunited with Neil Warnock as his assistant at Cardiff City.
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“They were both outstanding young footballers and I had no hesitation bringing them into the first-team squad at 16 and 17,” Blackwell says. “They are where they are because of their attitude as much as their ability — they’ve both had to work really hard at their games. I love watching them play now as they represent everything that’s good about the game — all that pace and power. They’re two of the best full backs in the world, never mind the Premier League.
“Danny was an attacking midfield player, with great vision and an eye for goal, but has really improved the defensive side of his game. It was during his loan spell at Sunderland that he started playing at left back and that was an important season for him. He’s not had it easy at Tottenham and has had to really work to establish himself. He was down the pecking order for a long time, but never once sulked or quit.
“Kyle was an outstanding athlete, but had to work on his positioning and game understanding. I remember taking him out in the afternoon after training, showing him how to defend in one-v-one situations, and he had no problem with that. I had no hesitation picking him to play in the Championship play-off final [in 2009] after just four games for the first team, and he was one of the best players on the pitch at Wembley.”
Walker left Sheffield United that summer in a joint £9 million move with fellow full back Kyle Naughton, whom Harry Redknapp was more keen on. Tottenham were initially unimpressed with Walker and he returned to south Yorkshire for a loan spell soon after.
“Initially I think Tottenham thought we’d sold them a dud, and he came back to us on loan,” Blackwell says. “If we’d have had the money they’d have let us take him back, which I’d have loved to do of course, but we couldn’t afford to give them their money back.
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“Kyle was very young to move to such a big club, and Tottenham were right to give him time. They had similar issues with Gareth Bale, and would have sold him for the right price.”
They improved gradually under Redknapp and André Villas-Boas, but their progress has been most marked since the arrival of Mauricio Pochettino, who is very close to Rose in particular.
Rose was the first Tottenham player Pochettino met after joining from Southampton in 2014 and in their first conversation the manager told him he would play for England.
Pochettino was proved right, with the nature of their relationship demonstrated by the fact that when the manager called Rose into his office to tell him about the international call-up, the Argentinian opted to wind him up by saying Tottenham had decided to sell him.
Rose’s angry response is not printable, and Pochettino soon backed down. Many of his team-mates back down in training too, as despite his small physique he is regarded as one of the hardest men at the club.
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No one at Tottenham would dare to even joke that Rose or Walker could be sold now.