Kyle Walker admits Pep Guardiola copied Jose Mourinho’s key trait to win Premier League

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Kyle Walker won six Premier League titles at Manchester City under Pep Guardiola, becoming one of the most dominant English teams of all-time in the process – but the England hero says his Spanish boss used influence from Jose Mourinho to bring them home.

Pep Guardiola joined Manchester City in 2016, having won every trophy available to him at both Barcelona and Bayern Munich.

It’s been a good ride for City since then. Six Premier League titles, two FA Cup trophies, four consecutive Carabao Cup medals and a Champions League win in 2023, propelling him to legend status at the Etihad Stadium.

But despite being a pioneer for possession-heavy football in England, former Manchester City star Kyle Walker has admitted that Guardiola’s side took inspiration from Jose Mourinho to bring home unprecedented success.

Kyle Walker says Man City used Jose Mourinho’s defensive tactics as Premier League-winning inspiration

Walker left City over the summer to join Premier League relegation battlers Burnley, ending an eight-year affiliation at the club.

And the England right-back stated that his former boss took inspiration from Jose Mourinho’s study Chelsea teams from 2004 and 2005, providing defensive and attacking excellence in a four-year strong haul.

Walker said, talking to the Premier League’s official YouTube channel: “As a foundation to ever win any Premier League [title], I think Chelsea probably set the record with the most clean sheets, back when [Jose] Mourinho was doing it.

“As players, we always kind of looked at that.

“We thought ‘okay, to build a solid foundation to go and win the Premier League, you need a good defence’.

“And we pride ourselves off that. It didn’t matter who played or started as the manager liked to rotate his team around a lot.

“We always prided ourselves on the defensive unit, that we’re going to keep clean sheets, and that we know we had attacking people in the team that will go and score you goals.”

It was without doubt a successful time and Walker will go down as arguably the best right-back in Premier League history, at least in an attacking sense. However, his defensive work largely goes unspoken about under Guardiola.

Jose Mourinho defensive record may never be beaten despite Pep Guardiola’s attacking prowess

Everyone in world football knows just how good Pep Guardiola’s football is to watch, and his managerial trophy cabinet is testament to that.

But Jose Mourinho’s footballing setup at Chelsea goes beyond anything that Guardiola has achieved in a goalscoring sense.

Chelsea only conceded 15 goals in the 2004-05 season, losing just once all season in a 1-0 defeat to Manchester City, incidentally.

25 clean sheets, including a run of 10 games from mid-December to early March without Petr Cech conceding, made them formidable as Chelsea failed to lose at Stamford Bridge.

This record is what Walker alluded to. Teams can score plenty of goals, as seen by Liverpool’s 101 in the 2013-14 season under Brendan Rodgers, but they conceded 50 and that led City to their second-ever league title.

15 goals was the best since Arsenal’s 17 conceded in 1998-99, and no team has come close since.