Jonathan Woodgate didn’t recognise the naked man greeting him in the showers. The England international centre-back had walked off the pitch at Tottenham’s training ground and wasn’t expecting to find an unfamiliar face making himself comfortable in the players’ facilities.
The lathered-up bather was no imposter. He was Tottenham’s latest signing, Jimmy Walker, who’d just arrived as the club’s new number three goalkeeper. However, hardly any of his team-mates had the first idea who he was. “He looked at me and said, ‘Who is that?’” remembers Walker. “I’m going up to him, with nothing on, saying, ‘Hi Woody! I’m Jimmy Walker, how are you doing?’”
The life of a third-choice goalkeeper tends to be anonymous – working in the background, rarely enjoying the limelight – but Walker’s low-key entrance took being an unknown to a different level. He had made more than 400 Football League appearances for Walsall and spent five years as the understudy to Rob Green and Roy Carroll at West Ham before moving to White Hart Lane in 2009. The Tottenham squad featured the likes of Luka Modric, Gareth Bale and Rafael van der Vaart, so when manager Harry Redknapp offered Walker, then 36, a chance to join the cause, battling it out for a first-team spot in the Championship didn’t hold the same appeal.
“Harry said, ‘You won’t play every week, but I know you can do a job if you’re called upon and you’ll be great around training’,” Walker reminisces to . “I was going to sign for Derby, but within a few days
