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.
Category
🥇
SportsTranscript
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.