Style
Walker rarely missed matches but was often criticised for his inconsistent distribution. Defensively he was probably one of the best markers and timers of the tackle of all time, and incurred a remarkably low number of bookings during the first 10 years of his career despite his often dispossessing opponents with sliding challenges from all directions. Despite not being the tallest centre-half he could leap to beat the tallest forwards in the air and his pace meant even the quickest and most skillful forwards very rarely got any change from him.
At the height of his career, Forest and Owls fans frequently chanted "You'll never beat Des Walker." This was turned into "You'll never meet Des Walker" as a private joke among journalists, commenting on Walker's refusal to talk to the press at this point.
In 2007, he came out top alongside Peter Swan in a poll to find Sheffield Wednesday's two greatest ever centre backs on the website Vital Football.
Read more about this topic: Des Walker
Famous quotes containing the word style:
“Oh, never mind the fashion. When one has a style of one’s own, it is always twenty times better.”
—Margaret Oliphant (1828–1897)
“Switzerland is a small, steep country, much more up and down than sideways, and is all stuck over with large brown hotels built on the cuckoo clock style of architecture.”
—Ernest Hemingway (1899–1961)
“As we approached the log house,... the projecting ends of the logs lapping over each other irregularly several feet at the corners gave it a very rich and picturesque look, far removed from the meanness of weather-boards. It was a very spacious, low building, about eighty feet long, with many large apartments ... a style of architecture not described by Vitruvius, I suspect, though possibly hinted at in the biography of Orpheus.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)