The Real Reason Manchester City Want Jérémy Doku

FourFourTwo

Jérémy Doku looks set to complete his £55m transfer from Rennes to Manchester City in the coming days, but while the obvious comparison is to the outgoing Riyad Mahrez, it might be that Pep Guardiola has a very different play for the winger.

Transcript

00:00 You're right everybody, Adam Cleary from 442 here and Man City look like they're going

00:08 to sign Jeremy Doku, or Kakarot as I'm going to be calling him, if you know you know.

00:13 Now of course Riyad Mahrez has departed for Saudi Arabia, this leaves a big glaring hole

00:17 in this part of Pep Guardiola's squad and Doku plays there, so everyone's just like

00:22 oh well he's coming in to be the Mahrez replacement then.

00:25 But the thing is, I don't actually think he is the Riyad Mahrez replacement, I think he

00:29 might be coming in to replace De Bruyne, sort of.

00:37 Okay so last season there was a bit of a narrative that Mahrez kind of like fell out of this

00:42 Man City side, that he fell out of favour with Guardiola, that he wasn't a particularly

00:45 good fit for the system, but as Man City fans will tell you, that's not actually true at

00:49 all.

00:50 He was actually in the starting 11 for all of their like last seven Premier League games,

00:55 contributed like five goals over that period as well, and finished the season with 15 goals

00:59 and assists.

01:00 And that's obviously a fairly major contribution to just allow to leave in the summer without

01:05 planning to replace him.

01:06 And yet here we are, ages after he's actually gone, with only a few days left in the transfer

01:10 window and it only really seems to be the big injury to Kevin De Bruyne that has spurred

01:14 Manchester City on to go and spend 60 million on Doku.

01:18 So what's that about then you may understandably be asking, and I think it's got everything

01:22 to do with the system.

01:25 Right so he's going to talk about box midfields again, and honestly if every single time I

01:28 had mentioned box midfields on this channel I'd put one shiny pound into a jar, some charity

01:35 would be set to benefit to the tune of like...

01:38 £25 maybe?

01:41 Which is not to be sniffed at.

01:42 Right my lovelies, while it is not true to say that Mahrez fell out of this team and

01:46 didn't have a place in it, when you actually look at City's big, big, big games like the

01:51 last stage of the Champions League and the FA Cup final, then there, there is hide nor

01:56 hair of Riyad Mahrez.

01:58 He didn't start in the quarter finals of the Champions League, the semi-finals of the Champions

02:01 League, the final of the Champions League and the final of the FA Cup, and in fact his

02:05 only contribution across those entire games was 11 minutes in the semi-final second leg

02:11 when City were 4-0 up.

02:14 When it came to the specific plan Pep had devised to win Man City the treble, he did

02:18 not use Mahrez in it.

02:20 That's because Mahrez is not the right kind of player for what they were doing.

02:23 Like we've got it set up as a 4-3-3 here and you know the drill by now, that's not what

02:27 it was.

02:28 Rodri was over there, Stones would play across there, they would shift to a back three and

02:32 they would use the box midfield.

02:35 And the role of these two wide players in the box midfield is to hold their width as

02:40 much as possible to stretch the defence to allow room for Haaland and room for the two

02:45 number eights.

02:46 Jack Grealish would always be over that side getting chalk on his boots, receiving it as

02:49 close to the byline as he possibly could and Pep would use Bernardo Silva on this side

02:54 to do exactly the same thing.

02:56 Bernardo Silva's main role as we saw absolutely expertly was to find pockets of space and

03:00 use those to kill Real Madrid.

03:01 This is one of my favourite goals from a tactical standpoint anybody scored last season.

03:06 He just waits and he waits, sees the gap, ends up in it, through ball is excellent and

03:09 that was pretty much the tie over.

03:11 That is simply not the kind of goal that Riyad Mahrez would ever score.

03:15 He got loads of goals for Manchester City but they all tended to be one of two types.

03:19 Either the Guardiola classic, a low cross that would allow him to make a run from out

03:23 to in and finish the ball at the back post or the Arjen Robben special where he would

03:27 cut inside on his left foot and blammo it.

03:31 Not really two goals that will exist in this Guardiola system because of course any crosses

03:34 going into the box are for Haaland's big head and if he did cut inside onto his left foot

03:39 he's just moving into traffic.

03:40 Now of course as a result of the injuries in the squad we do not yet know how Guardiola

03:44 is going to want to set City up this season.

03:46 We don't really know what their plan A is.

03:48 Stones hasn't been around for it, De Bruyne is now injured, Gundogan's gone so it will

03:51 probably be different to this but if this is now how he sees the role of wide players

03:57 you don't need Riyad Mahrez.

03:58 So thus if they are getting Jeremy Doku in it's not because of his similarities to Riyad

04:02 Mahrez but instead because of his differences.

04:06 And as best as I can see it Doku has two major differences to Riyad Mahrez.

04:11 The first one is good in that he prefers his right foot so he holds his width a lot better,

04:15 he goes up the byline, he goes round players, he doesn't try and cut inside and create that

04:18 problem Mahrez would have created in this system.

04:21 But the second one is bad in that he has absolutely nowhere near the same kind of end product.

04:26 Doku who spent last season in ARN side that was putting absolutely everything through

04:31 him where they could got six goals, yes that is one more than Mahrez but he also only got

04:36 two assists.

04:37 Now his expected assists was near a five so it might just be a case if you put him in

04:41 a team with better players they'll start taking more of these chances and those numbers will

04:44 jump up but given that Mahrez was in and out of the team all season and he still got ten

04:49 that's a slight concern.

04:51 Now just before I go any further I will say having sat and watched loads of videos of

04:54 Doku this morning if you are a Man City fan whether or not this is a good transfer or

04:59 not you're gonna have a lot of fun.

05:01 The guy simply makes football an absolute joy to watch, he's got pace for days, his

05:06 close control is excellent, he loves a trick, he puts people on his arse.

05:10 Like end product or not just f*** me that's great.

05:15 That's what football's about not this f***ing nerd stuff.

05:18 Partially as a result of being a far more developed player but mostly because he plays

05:22 for Man City you have the ball more than any other team in the world.

05:25 It's very difficult to point at a per 90 stat between the two to really illustrate

05:30 the difference but oh wait here's one.

05:32 Now the actual percentiles here which is the green bar that shows how it ranks in context

05:36 might not look too different here but you've got to remember this is the difference between

05:39 the Premier League and Ligue 1.

05:41 If you look at the actual number there's a huge difference.

05:44 Mahrez successfully takes on an opponent about one and a half times every 90 minutes whereas

05:49 Doku is doing it nearly seven times a game.

05:51 Likewise Mahrez successfully carries the ball up the pitch just under four times a game

05:55 whereas Doku again is doing it nearly seven times.

05:59 And then if you just sort of like mentally factor in that Man City have about twice as

06:02 much possession per game as Rendu then you can almost double that stat for Doku.

06:07 And I will just say as someone who absolutely adored watching Alain Saint-Maximin whose take

06:11 on and carry numbers were through the roof but got accused of having a lack of end product

06:15 as well if you look at how often these take ons lead to a shot for a teammate Doku is

06:21 light years ahead of Mahrez there.

06:23 Per 90 minutes he is giving another teammate one and a half shots as a result of taking

06:29 on an opponent.

06:31 Can you imagine being Erling Haaland and reading that stat?

06:33 You'd have your pants off.

06:34 But wait a minute Adam you said something ridiculous at the start of this video about

06:37 him not being the Mahrez replacement about him being the Kevin De Bruyne replacement

06:42 and yeah I do actually in a roundabout way think he is.

06:45 De Bruyne is going to be missing for Man City for the next three possibly even four months

06:49 and in terms of how they create things in the centre of the pitch especially for Erling

06:53 Haaland that is a catastrophic blow.

06:55 What you've got to remember is they haven't just lost Kevin De Bruyne here they've also

06:59 lost Gundogan as well which means the two players who are playing closest to Erling

07:02 Haaland laying on the most chances for him are now not in this team.

07:07 And in my opinion the reason Man City haven't been breaking their necks trying to replace

07:11 Mahrez this summer is because well Bernardo Silva is clearly plan A in that position when

07:16 they've got a really big game on and as we just saw in the Newcastle game when they're

07:19 trying to do something a little bit different they quite like playing Foden out here as

07:23 well and that's fine because they've been playing this 4-2-3-1 with sort of Alvarez

07:27 in the 10 and Kovacic there and Di, but if when John Stones comes back to fitness they

07:33 want to do that box midfield that brought them so much success last season that's going

07:38 to be a pretty big problem.

07:39 Because the thing about Alvarez as good as he is he's not really an ideal sort of advanced

07:44 eight in this system to be getting in the spaces and laying on chances.

07:47 The two players City have available to them that you would most want in these roles are

07:52 Foden and Bernardo Silva and you can't have them there if one of them is having to play

07:57 wide on the right.

07:58 So the reason you go out and get Jeremy Doku isn't to replace Mahrez it's to allow Silva

08:03 and Foden to play in the middle and therefore yeah you're with me now the reason Doku is

08:09 replacing De Bruyne is because it's actually these two who are replacing De Bruyne but

08:13 he is replacing those two over here.

08:16 So I did say it was in a roundabout way but you get what I mean.

08:19 So yeah anyway bottom line we don't really know what Pep Guardiola's idealised Manchester

08:24 City team is this season but if he is going out to get Jeremy Doku it is not because he

08:29 is like Riyad Mahrez it is because he is not like Riyad Mahrez.

08:33 Well that was fun wasn't it so if you're a Manchester City fan please let me know in

08:37 the comments how you think you're going to use Jeremy Doku.

08:39 Have I got that bang on have I got that way off all comments and opinions completely welcome

08:43 and if you're not a Man City fan please let me know what your favourite kind of cheese

08:49 is.

08:50 I know it's like a really cliched question to ask on the internet but I have to go do

08:52 a big big shop later and I could do with some inspiration so down there.

08:58 In the meantime though if you have enjoyed this video please please do consider subscribing

09:01 to the channel the more subscribers we get the bigger videos we do and we have got something

09:06 absolutely enormous coming very soon that I really want to tell you about but I'm not

09:10 allowed to yet and just we get more subs we can do more things like that so please it

09:15 helps a lot genuinely thank you.

09:17 Get me on Twitter @AdamCleary C L E R Y 442 socials are in the corner of the video the

09:21 entire time why would I tell you about them now but until next time that's Jeremy Doku

09:26 I've been Adam Cleary this is 442 goodbye goodbye goodbye goodbye.

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