Jeremy Doku of Manchester City celebrates scoring his team's third goal during the Premier League match between Manchester City FC and Fulham FC at Etihad Stadium
Jeremy Doku of Manchester City celebrates scoring his team's third goal during the Premier League match between Manchester City FC and Fulham FC at Etihad Stadium
Recalling positive Manchester City performances this season might not be the simple task it has proved in recent years.
There haven’t been too many. Even when City were unbeaten and top of the table they played a few get out jail free cards.
The opening quarter against Arsenal was a positive performance while the win at Chelsea has aged well given the way Enzo Maresca’s side have performed across the campaign. And the victory at West Ham was a strong showing.
In a campaign of change, the one constant in those showings was Jeremy Doku in the starting XI. The winger is part of City’s chaos theory, his unpredictability and directness at odds with the more controlled option of Jack Grealish or Bernardo Silva. But Pep Guardiola’s best laid plans have often been wrecked this term and it’s perhaps time to give the Belgian an extended run in the team.
He started the first three league games of the season - all wins - but hasn’t started successive top flight fixtures since. In fact, even in a campaign of six Premier League defeats, City have lost only one top flight fixture which the Belgian has begun, and that was the late derby day implosion against Manchester United by which time he’d been taken off.
The 22-year-old can delight and frustrate in equal measure with his ability to beat a man and make something happen countered by an extra touch or a poor delivery. But what he does offer is an unpredictability and an attacking threat that city desperately need.
Not only have Erling Haaland’s goals dried up - one in six - but no one else is finding the net with any regularity. It makes Doku’s three goals in all competitions seem a reasonable return and while that tally isn’t going to set pulses racing it at least shows his goalscoring tendency. Grealish hasn’t scored a club goal for more than a year while Savinho hasn’t scored since arriving in the summer.
And Doku also brings the prospect of assists (he only has two but that’s enough to put him third in City's Premier League list) and a willingness to carry the ball and spark life into a City side in desperate need of it.
He’s not the sole solution and he’s not yet of a consistent standard to be relied upon across a campaign. Yet he offers something City don’t get from anyone else and you sense a run of games might benefit him and the club.
Desperate times call for Doku measures.