Taking a hatchet to The Sun columnist’s hatchet job on ‘adulterous schmuck’ Kyle Walker

Jane Moore has devoted the bulk of her column in Wednesday’s Sun to a proper hatchet job on Kyle Walker.

For those readers unfamiliar with Moore, a) we’re very jealous and b) she’s one of those columnists they have in tabloid newspapers with an opinion on everything, a wildly inflated view of the importance and wider cultural significance of the mundane events of their own lives and who get paid a sum of money that makes Mediawatch cry salty tears of despair for writing sub-HIGNFY zingers like ‘London Mayor Sadiq Khan has unveiled proposals to lower speed limits inside the city’s congestion zone from 30mph to 20mph. Laughable. In the morning and evening rush hour, you’re lucky if you reach ten.’

If you’re still unsure about the type of columnist we’re dealing with here, suffice to say it’s one who has a running bit about referring to her husband as The Bloke. Yeah, now you’ve got it.

Moore’s remit rarely brings her into football’s orbit, but today she has no choice but to vent on the very important subject of Kyle Walker’s adulterous shenanigans.

Now, we’re not about to sit here and defend Kyle Walker for cheating on his wife and the mother of three (soon to be four) of his children and fathering two more with another woman.

But he isn’t the first and won’t be the last wealthy and famous person to commit serial adultery, we have no deep knowledge or understanding of his private life and don’t much care to develop one, and struggle to see why anyone not directly involved in Walker’s life should really give two shiny ones about it. It’s pure titillation, with superficial concern for the women involved not extending to letting them address the issue away from the tabloid glare.

There is also no indication in any of The Sun’s gleeful coverage that Walker is planning to leave anyone in the lurch.

Like we say, not defending him. Very high chance he’s made a very real and significant mess of things. Very high chance he’s a bit of a cock. Still not really sure why that’s any of The Sun or Jane Moore’s business, beyond The Sun and Jane Moore’s desire to make everyone’s business their business.

Now for the most part, Moore’s evisceration of Walker is a standard, boilerplate paint-by-numbers columnist hatchet job on a man caught cheating. We wouldn’t be surprised if Moore has a template ready for these eventualities.

Sample quotes include:

…when it comes to emotional intelligence, he’s clearly cerebrally challenged.

…seemingly as blind as a bat to the emotional perils that lay ahead because he couldn’t keep it in his trousers.

But Kyle did nothing and failed to anticipate what any adulterous schmuck knows — that Christmas is a potential flashpoint when you’re playing away.

Particularly when your lover is facing the festive season as a single parent while her “baby daddy” is off playing happy families with his wife and other children.

Kyle has publicly apologised to her for “the upset I’ve caused”, as though he’d simply caused a scene in a restaurant rather than fathered two secret children by another woman.

Kyle needs to take a long, hard look at himself and grow the hell up.

All standard stuff. All very possibly valid, who knows? We certainly don’t, and nor really does Moore but that doesn’t matter.

Where we really do have to intervene, though, is when Moore gets on to the football side of things. Because here, we do know a little bit and care quite a bit about what we’re talking about.

Kyle is 33, for God’s sake. So perhaps it’s time for this man-child to take note of the example given by his 30-year-old teammate and England captain Harry Kane, whose longevity in the game is undoubtedly bolstered by his loyalty to his wife and children and the subsequent lack of drama in his personal life.

Sorry, what? The comparison with Kane is trite at best, but that last bit makes no sense at all. Whatever Walker’s failings as a man/husband/father may or may not be, one thing they have absolutely not affected is his ‘longevity in the game’.

Walker is, as Moore notes, 33 years old. He is still a regular for both England and what is probably the best club side in the world. The fact he has lost so little of the pace that has been his greatest asset throughout his career has long since become a running joke in both the City and England camps.

Walker made his professional debut as an 18-year-old on loan at Northampton in 2008, and the 16 years since have taken in over 200 games for Tottenham, almost 300 games and more trophies than you can shake a stick at with Manchester City, and 81 (and counting) caps for England. Not really sure he needs to be taking tips from anyone about longevity in the game.

But after the Kane comparison comes an even sillier one.

Ditto his England manager Gareth Southgate, who has been happily married for 26 years.

And? Southgate wasn’t as good a footballer as Walker, so what’s your point? Or is this one not about longevity in the game but just outright moralising that happily married for 26 years = good and thus Walker = bad?

This next bit is wild, though.

In June 2018, the manager warned his ­players about cheating in a meeting before a 2-1 victory over Nigeria at Wembley.

“It’s not that we are looking to get away with anything, but if we thought we could then that option has gone.

“We have to be vigilant in all areas of the pitch.”

If you’re thinking it’s a bit weird for England’s manager to take his players to one side before a game against Nigeria and say ‘Lads, don’t cheat on your wives or girlfriends, yeah?’ then you’d be absolutely right. Because of course Southgate did nothing of the sort. He was talking about diving and VAR. Obviously.

Moore knows this.

He was talking about football, of course. But, in Kyle’s case, it’s sound life advice, too.

Oh spare us. We have no great desire to fight Walker’s corner, but this is all also another example of professional footballers, easy targets that they are, being held to higher standards of moral fortitude than, say, high-profile politicians who have cheated on their wives and fathered multiple children by multiple women.

When someone like that is bidding to become Prime Minister, what does Moore have to say about it?

It doesn’t matter if Boris Johnson is untidy as long as he doesn’t mess up Britain

Right, but doesn’t he need to ‘grow the hell up?’ He was a good bit older than 33, too. And had definitely lost his pace.

A potential PM needs to be across the small print of every situation, they argue, and Boris is just too “chaotic” to do so. But is that true? After all, Gordon Brown and Theresa May were sticklers for detail and look what happened to them.

So perhaps it’s time for a “bigger picture” personality with the strength of character to lead the country through a series of inevitably difficult decisions while leaving the crossing of Ts etc to several trusted lieutenants.

My friends would tell you that, despite the chaotic mess of my office at home (the only room in the house that my neat freak husband is banned from tidying), I possess clarity of thought when it comes to work and life’s general admin.

So let’s hope that, if he becomes PM, Boris is the same. Watch this messy space.

It’s a lukewarm take that aged like milk, but it’s a bit much for the same columnist to treat a wannabe PM as a messy rogue and a footballer as an arch villain. We await with baited breath news of the cleanliness or otherwise of Walker’s no doubt impressive ‘fleet of cars’ because we all know how much the tabloids love that sh*t. Oh, don’t worry – here it is, look.

Moore also had a view on Johnson’s third wedding, after he became PM.

Clearly they love each other. But you know, was my heart filled with gladness? I just thought, “Oh man married for third time” to be honest and turned the page. I’m very happy for them but it has no impact on my life.

‘It has no impact on my life’ is a perfectly valid – arguably the sanest and most valid – reaction to that particular piece of news.

But we’ve reached a rare old state when the cynically-timed and professionally beneficial third marriage of the actual (at the time) Prime Minister to the mother of literally some of his unknown number of children has ‘no impact’ but the love life of Manchester City’s right-back merits a 900-word character assassination.