Kyle Walker to return in Europa League

According to the Daily Mail, our endless nightmare at right back is almost over. After 8 months on the shelf for injury, Kyle Walker is set to make his return in the Europa League this coming Thursday.

Walker suffered from an abdominal injury waaaay back in the early months of 2014 (probably after Sherwood played him as a Central Midfielder against Chelsea and hello darkness my old friend) and has been unable to play ever since, costing him both minutes with Spurs and a trip to Brazil for this summer's World Cup. Attempts to rehabilitate the injury proved unsuccessful so he resorted to surgery in September. Thankfully, this is a surgery with a high success rate and after about 3 months it looks like he's ready to get back on the pitch.

This is a good match to ease Walker back into the team. It's at home, Spurs look reasonably certain to advance out of their group, and I doubt Partizan is going to test him like some Premier League clubs would. I wouldn't necessarily expect him to be starting in the league right away though. Given that he hasn't played a competitive fixture in 8 months, he might still need some time to get up to speed.

Regardless, this is good news. While Eric Dier has done an admirable job filling in at right back as an out position 19 year old Center Back, he probably shouldn't be playing there in a top European League. Meanwhile, Kyle Naughton has looked fine at times, but most of his good work has been undermined by his tendency to collect red cards like they're Pokemon.

It will be nice to see our first choice right back back out on the pitch and it will be even better to see what this means for our defense and attack. It's probably not the answer to what ails us, but it can't hurt.