- 7 hours ago
Manchester City remain in the hunt for the Premier League title after a 3-0 demolition of Liverpool. Pep Guardiola and Erling Haaland have taken most of the plaudits, but Adam Clery shows why the whole game was set up to get the best out of Jeremy Doku. It might finally be time for him make the step up to being one of the best players in the world.
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00:00Right, hello there my dear, dear chums, welcome to the Adam Carey Football Channel.
00:04Now, as you know, normally when there is a big Sunday fixture in His Majesty's rough and tumble Barkley Card
00:11Premier League,
00:12we break down the whole match for you, don't we?
00:15But, to be honest, I'll just move back up and say, this entire game was pretty much just about Jeremy
00:21Docku.
00:22So yes, we will be talking about how Man City set up to best utilise him,
00:25why Liverpool specifically really struggled with that, but primarily just about him.
00:31Because this might well be the season he goes from, like, here to whoosh.
00:39And I'm just going to get this out of the way right at the start.
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01:08Alright, so Manchester City have done a lot of different things tactically this season
01:12as part of a quote-unquote rebuild year.
01:15We saw John Stones pushing back into midfield the other night,
01:18exactly like he was doing the year they won the Champions League,
01:21but they have also had, if we can remember back that far,
01:24their first ever prison yard shithouse low block.
01:28So Pep Guardiola has been far more malleable this year.
01:33Is that the right word? What does malleable mean?
01:35To be pressed into shape without breaking or easily influenced.
01:38That is not the word I meant.
01:39The word I meant was, like, adaptable, flexible.
01:42And against Liverpool, that adaptability and flexibility
01:44was specifically designed to get Jeremy Doku off the wing
01:48into these more central or half-space areas with the ball.
01:52And the main way they achieved this was by using the full-backs.
01:55If you look at this still here, you will notice both Doku and Shirky,
01:59who were supposed to be the wide players, incredibly central.
02:02And, as I'm sure you know, historically with Manchester City,
02:05they tend to be a team who want their wide players to be the ones to give them the width.
02:10That way they then stretch the opposition back line all the way across the field.
02:15And the idea being that by doing that,
02:17it gives space for your number eights to attack these sort of wider areas.
02:21It dares the opposition to leave Haaland 1v1 with a defender,
02:25who he will likely bully.
02:26It then lets you invert one or both of your full-backs into the middle of the pitch.
02:31Regardless of what it's for,
02:32it has been a core idea of Pep Guardiola's for a number of years.
02:36Your wide players give you the width.
02:38Your central players attack the central areas.
02:40So, just to go back to this still, what are the deuce?
02:44Well, City were actually pretty clever with the way they used their full-backs in this game.
02:48Because with Doku and Shirky sort of coming more into these central areas,
02:51it was they who provided the width pretty safe in the knowledge
02:55that neither Salah nor Vert were going to run all the way back into their own third with them.
03:00But what was really clever is that I would describe the way they did this
03:04as sort of situational.
03:07Sometimes they kept them low to make space down the flank
03:10so that Doku and Shirky could get on the ball wide
03:12and isolate Bradley and Robertson.
03:14But sometimes they pushed them right the way up the pitch
03:17to pin the full-backs and let the wide players come into the middle.
03:20And I think that's a really good way to get at Liverpool's 4-2-4 press that they do.
03:26Because it means neither the wide players, either the full-backs or the attackers,
03:29know whether they should be dropping off, when they should be jumping,
03:33who they should necessarily be going with.
03:34And you could see in those opening minutes, they didn't have a clue what to do.
03:38But you can see here, O'Reilly is wide, but he's deep and Doku is central.
03:42And maybe I'm slightly overanalyzing this, right?
03:46Shock.
03:47But I think you can see in Connor Bradley's body language that he is deeply concerned.
03:52He obviously wants to stick with Doku and put a bit of pressure on him if he receives the ball,
03:56but he won't have been expecting that to do that, he was going to have to go into the midfield
04:00line
04:00and quite literally into Ryan Gravenberch's space.
04:03But he also knows if he follows him anywhere, he's leaving this wide area wide open
04:08if O'Reilly decides to go, which, of course, he then does.
04:13Now, City, fire it into Doku.
04:15And you shouldn't, in that sort of situation,
04:17really be able to get turned in that area of a pitch against a team who are pressing you like
04:22this.
04:22Like, your marker should be tight enough that he can force you backwards.
04:25But because of O'Reilly, Bradley cannot go any further with him.
04:30And it just takes a few moments of indecision for them to pass him off to Gravenberch,
04:35who, let's be fair here, when he was having his ready breakfast morning,
04:38dreaming of the game he was going to have,
04:40he was not thinking he was going to be spending it chasing wingers around the inside of the pitch.
04:46Which, I mean, you can tell because a few minutes later,
04:49when O'Reilly gets down the line past Bradley and his cross gets cut out,
04:52he is just not alive at all to the danger of Doku in this area of the pitch.
04:59He nips in, he gets into the box, he jumps between two players and nearly makes something out of it.
05:03And that, my friends, is what we call a warning sign.
05:06And Liverpool simply did not heed it.
05:09And the thing is, I know Doku doesn't necessarily have a major impact in the first two goals,
05:14but this idea of overloading Liverpool in the centre with players whose assigned markers were very unlikely to follow them
05:22in there,
05:22is something Pep's been playing around with this season.
05:25They drift into these areas on top of McAllister and Gravenberch,
05:28and given they're such good dribblers and so good in tight areas,
05:32they would try to work a way out of there.
05:34And if they couldn't do that, they're then backed up by the two players they should have originally been marking.
05:39And it meant that Liverpool spent most of the game with a 3v2 disadvantage,
05:44like you can see here in central areas.
05:46Sometimes even a 4v2 disadvantage.
05:49And Slott himself said in the press conference,
05:51yeah, we didn't know what to do with that.
05:54That's where they beat us.
05:55But anyway, yes, Jeremy Doku, you can see from his heat map in this game,
06:00that yes, of course, he is on the touchline, he is getting at Bradley down the outside,
06:03but he's also spending way more time than we are used to seeing in this half space here.
06:09And I would like to say, officially, on the record, right now, for you and any other witnesses,
06:14this should not be a one-off.
06:16He's always had that threat of going around the outside of the full-back,
06:20and that, combined with how City usually like their wide players to hold the width,
06:24mean that he is very hard to deal with, but quite easy to prepare for.
06:28But this, however, and some of the stuff we're going to show you he did with this,
06:32is unpredictable, and that is what can take him into that next bracket of footballer,
06:38that elite category, as people like to say.
06:41Like, these are his take-ons from this match.
06:43There were seven successful ones across the 90 minutes, and that's great.
06:47Conor Bradley, as we see quite regularly, is an excellent 1v1 defender,
06:50so to be winning that many when you're playing in the same area of the pitch as he is,
06:55is really good.
06:55But it wasn't just that he had the beating of his marker in the first half,
06:59it was that in the second, when Slott realised what was going on,
07:03and instructed Ryan Gravenberge to just go out into that area a little bit more,
07:07to double up on him when he could,
07:09he was still winning those take-ons,
07:12except now, they were 2v1s instead of 1v1s.
07:15Like, just honestly, watch here, when stuff like this is happening,
07:19then as a manager, there is almost nothing you can do about it.
07:24Like, you have assigned the right player to mark them,
07:26you have given them additional help when that isn't working.
07:29Like, your only real option now is to just sit there and go,
07:33oh, I hope that doesn't happen again.
07:36And don't get me wrong, we've seen him do this to loads of teams while he's been at City,
07:39but what we hadn't really seen until this game,
07:42and this was a graph very helpfully posted by Opta on their Twitter account, right?
07:47These are all his carries, his runs, with the ball.
07:50Now, obviously, he's got a big cluster in the area you would expect,
07:53that's when he's getting a Connor Bradley,
07:55but just look at how many of these either start or finish in this half space,
08:00or even more central than that.
08:03That's what we never normally see him doing.
08:05Like, this is the sort of work you get from an Eze, for example,
08:09or Cole Palmer when he starts out wide,
08:11and it impacts the game so much more.
08:15Like here, if you are defending Jeremy Docku,
08:17you are convinced he is going down the outside of you,
08:20because that is where the space is.
08:22He'll get down the byline, he'll cross it in for Haarlem,
08:25but instead, he feints back inside,
08:27and is so close to slipping Foden in on goal.
08:32Interesting.
08:33Likewise, here, if you are Connor Bradley,
08:35you know he's going to attack you out this way, out wide,
08:38but, if you look, Nico O'Reilly here is steaming up beside Docku,
08:43and he's actually going to draw all these players towards him.
08:47Like, genuinely, there are four men here,
08:50all thinking he's the only danger,
08:52and then, just when they think they've got him,
08:54he slips in his pal down to the outside,
08:57who he has created all this space for.
09:00And if his boots were, I would guess,
09:03three, maybe four sizes bigger,
09:05this is a fantastic one too,
09:07and he gets a goal.
09:08And just to make sure,
09:09I'm really getting this point across, by the way,
09:10I'm not saying Jeremy Docku was so good in this game,
09:13purely because he was attacking these central areas.
09:16He was still doing his usual job,
09:18he was spending time on the touchline,
09:20getting at Bradley in wide areas,
09:22and as the game went on,
09:24he increasingly had the beating of him there as well.
09:27And that is what made it such a good performance,
09:30because you didn't know exactly in what way he was going to attack Liverpool.
09:34He just kept ripping them apart.
09:37But of course, thankfully,
09:38he does round off this whole performance
09:40with an absolutely brilliant goal.
09:43Like, this is really direct from City,
09:44it's a brilliant ball into the space,
09:46but it's Nico O'Reilly again,
09:48who is holding the width.
09:50He's the outball down this side,
09:52and that means Docku can, again,
09:54stay central where he can better impact the game,
09:58and boy, does he.
09:59Liverpool get back in,
10:00and because he's central now,
10:01puts him 1v1 with Canate,
10:03who, despite his many qualities,
10:05is probably not the player you want to be isolated,
10:08facing up a tricky winger,
10:10who's coming in onto his good foot.
10:12That already looks bad.
10:14Which is not to say it's all cut and dry at this point,
10:17by the way,
10:17if you look at the exact moment he strikes that ball,
10:20Liverpool have thrown bodies at that situation,
10:22they do nearly stop him doing it,
10:23and what he does from here
10:25has to be absolutely perfect
10:28in order for this to happen,
10:29which it is and then does.
10:32Like, I can stand here all day
10:33and praise Pep Guardiola
10:35for the way he set Man City up,
10:37how that enabled Jeremy Docku
10:39to flourish against this Liverpool side,
10:41but he still had to go out there
10:43and do things,
10:44do incredibly difficult things,
10:47do things that very few players can do,
10:49and things that maybe start to put him
10:52in that conversation.
10:55You know the one.
10:56It's just a really, really special goal
10:58coming at the end
10:59of a really special performance.
11:02Which leads me, my very good friends,
11:04to quite possibly the most important point
11:06we can make about Jeremy Docku,
11:09because I think this performance
11:10will have surprised a number of people.
11:13We knew he was good,
11:14but not so good he was going to run big games like this.
11:17And that's because at 23 years old now,
11:20I think it would be easy for people to assume
11:22they knew exactly what his level is.
11:24They could see the trajectory.
11:26And most players at the very, very top of the game now,
11:29you've sort of known about,
11:30you've had these expectations of
11:32since they were like 17.
11:35Saka, Jamal, Bellingham, Mbappe, Pedri,
11:38even Haaland,
11:39was starting his 41 goals
11:41in 41 games Bundesliga season
11:44when he was like 19 or 20.
11:47Like the players,
11:47these players are now,
11:49we have expected them to be
11:51for years.
11:53And while Docku's obviously always been regarded
11:55as potentially a really good player,
11:57he's never quite been in that conversation,
12:00has he?
12:00But the thing is, right,
12:01if this is late blooming,
12:04that actually would make a lot of sense
12:07if you look at his career.
12:09You will quite often hear people talking about players
12:12as feeling a lot older than they really are,
12:16purely because of the amount of minutes
12:19they've already played.
12:20And what people mean by that
12:22is if you look at your Bellingham,
12:23your Sakas and your Mbappes
12:24and you compare them
12:25to like, for example,
12:27your Messis and your Rinaldos,
12:28they've played so much more football
12:31at similar ages.
12:33Like this graph here
12:34that I dug out of a three-year-old Reddit thread,
12:36so don't ever say,
12:37I'm not putting the hours in, right,
12:39shows the best players now
12:41are usually playing two or three times
12:44the number of minutes
12:45by their 20th birthday
12:47that the best players to ever do it
12:50had or did.
12:52Which is absolutely mad, isn't it?
12:55Like Jude Bellingham had played
12:56by the age of 20
12:58nearly four times
13:00as many top-level,
13:02physically demanding,
13:03intense minutes of football
13:05as Lionel Messi had,
13:07which is wild
13:08and just not even remotely sustainable,
13:10but it does explain
13:11why we think of these players
13:13as already being established
13:15at the very top level
13:16at much younger ages.
13:18But then you've got Jeremy Docky,
13:21who don't get me wrong,
13:22I am not putting in the Messi
13:23or Ronaldo category
13:25or even really the Bellingham
13:26or the Saka category just yet,
13:29but at 23 years old,
13:32he would not even be at the top
13:34of this graph now.
13:36He has, in fact,
13:37only just this season
13:38gone past the 13,000 minutes mark.
13:42Comparable to other players,
13:43he has had a very gentle,
13:45very well-managed
13:46early part of his career
13:48and he's now entering a period
13:50of his physical peak
13:52just as the team he plays for
13:54seemed to have found
13:56a really good role for him.
13:58And it is not, my friends,
14:00hyperbole to say
14:01that those are the perfect foundations
14:03for developing into
14:05one of the most exciting
14:07and important players
14:08in world football.
14:10Like, when he was younger,
14:11he got the hype,
14:12but he did not get the minutes
14:14to really develop.
14:15But now,
14:16he is getting those minutes,
14:18so maybe it's time
14:20he also got the hype.
14:22So yes, there you go.
14:23That is how Jeremy Docky
14:24sort of single-handedly
14:26managed to beat Liverpool.
14:28And great news, everyone!
14:29It's the international break,
14:30so I haven't got a clue
14:32what else we're going to talk about
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14:33Which, of course,
14:34does mean we'll be having
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14:54We just did it with Coventry,
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14:56I thought that would be
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15:53And just to remind you,
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16:05But until next time,
16:06I don't know what that's going to be about.
16:08Wednesday, probably.
16:09I'll see you then.
16:10Bye.
16:11Love you.
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