Kyle Walker provides emphatic statement on his Burnley future despite relegation
Kyle Walker insists he will still be with Burnley next season despite their relegation from the Premier League.
Many had assumed the 35-year-old would look to move on in the summer ahead of the club’s return to the Championship.
But, speaking ahead of Wednesday night’s 1-0 defeat to his former club Manchester City, a result that sealed Burnley’s fate, Walker suggested he would honour his two-year contract.
“I still feel good and I’ve got a contract here,” he told Sky Sports.
"I need to warrant the contract. I signed here knowing it would be difficult and knowing there was a possibility of going down.
"I think I’ve made it very clear of my dream of [returning to former club] Sheffield United, but I’m a Burnley player and I have to respect the badge and I have to respect the fans and I have to respect my teammates that I’m here and I will be here for the foreseeable future. I will be here from next season and we will see what we can do from there.
"Do I know what will happen in football? No I don’t. But as a man, I have a contract and I’m going to warrant it.”
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Reflecting on Burnley’s struggles this season, Walker concedes the Clarets only have themselves to blame.
"We had a tough start to the season,” he added. "Within the first six games, we probably faced the top four that are in the running now.
"It was always going to be tough, but I thought from those first six games we showed great promise, we showed a desire to show people: ‘we’re Burnley, this is a small town, okay we’re a small club compared to other teams in the Premier League’ but we gave a really good fighting chance.
"Did we get the points we wanted? Probably not. But if you look at the season as a whole, we started the season well performance-wise, before we went through a period where we couldn’t find a draw, we couldn’t find a win and it was just defeat after defeat.
"That was the point where we didn’t get the points we should have got and we only have ourselves to blame.”
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