Jeremy Doku’s brilliance shows Manchester City’s edge and Chelsea’s key problem.
As Chelsea’s management began to get to know the team over the past few months, they developed a fixation on a particular concept that is pertinent to this weekend’s match.
They started researching what constitutes record-breaking teams and seasons with 100 points. That may seem a long way off, almost comically, but objectives are necessary.
Given that they are the only team to have accomplished a centurion season and continue to shatter records, Manchester City is the obvious choice for a case study.
Jeremy Doku’s brilliance shows Manchester City’s edge and Chelsea’s key problem.
Jeremy Doku has hit the ground running at Manchester City.
Over the past few months, as Chelsea’s hierarchy started to settle into the club, they became fixated on a specific idea relevant to this weekend’s game. They began to study what makes 100-point seasons and record-breaking sides.
That might seem some way off, to an almost comic degree, but you’ve got to have goals.
Manchester City are the obvious case study, since they are the only club to manage a centurion season and they still break records.
As regards what made that, the usual explanation might be “one of the most lavishly expensive football projects in history” but that caveat doesn’t really apply here since Chelsea’s ownership group has huge resources and are clearly willing to spend them.
Their outlay on transfer fees so far, if not quite wages, has recalled the dizzy days of Roman Abramovich between 2003 and 2006 and the first few years of the Abu Dhabi ownership at City.
Through that, though, they might have a more specific reason to look at the European champions.
Chelsea’s own grand project, which is an unprecedented football experiment, is based on bringing in young players of a similar talent profile to Jeremy Doku.
That raises the obvious question of whether Doku would have the same impact if he was at Chelsea? Or, would he be just another young signing showing potential but requiring shape and direction?
Jeremy Doku’s brilliance shows Manchester City’s edge and Chelsea’s key problem.
Jeremy Doku has hit the ground running at Manchester City.
Over the past few months, as Chelsea’s hierarchy started to settle into the club, they became fixated on a specific idea relevant to this weekend’s game.
They began to study what makes 100-point seasons and record-breaking sides.
That might seem some way off, to an almost comic degree, but you’ve got to have goals.
Manchester City are the obvious case study, since they are the only club to manage a centurion season and they still break records.
As regards what made that, the usual explanation might be “one of the most lavishly expensive football projects in history” but that caveat doesn’t really apply here since Chelsea’s ownership group has huge resources and are clearly willing to spend them.
Their outlay on transfer fees so far, if not quite wages, has recalled the dizzy days of Roman Abramovich between 2003 and 2006 and the first few years of the Abu Dhabi ownership at City.
Through that, though, they might have a more specific reason to look at the European champions.
Chelsea’s own grand project, which is an unprecedented football experiment, is based on bringing in young players of a similar talent profile to Jeremy Doku.
That raises the obvious question of whether Doku would have the same impact if he was at Chelsea? Or, would he be just another young signing showing potential but requiring shape and directions
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There are caveats, of course. It is early days and, as good as Doku has been, the real tests will come later.
Clubs like Manchester United and Newcastle had also looked at him before, but felt he wasn’t yet developed enough.
There was a sense he was too erratic as a player.
His impact under Pep Guardiola so far consequently speaks to how specific City are, while looking relevant to Raheem Sterling’s contrasting influence on both sides.
One significant difference between Doku and so many similar young players at Chelsea is the roles they’ve been signed for.
The London club have attempted to overhaul their entire squad, and players of talent have almost just been thrust into that.
It has been up to Mauricio Pochettino to make sense of it.
, from the benefit of over a decade’s planning, can be much more forensic. Their succession plans are so well defined and far-thinking, with most signings settled on at least 18 months in advance – barring any unseen changes like the sudden impact of Saudi Pro League money.
That was what delayed this summer’s business.
Doku was consequently someone who was supposed to be next in line in that attack but, as occasionally happens in teams that are so high-functioning, a player of his talent has been able to slot right in.
It has even gone a little bit in the other direction, in how Doku’s livewire play actually gives City’s smoothness something different.
It’s hard not to have some sympathy with Jack Grealish in that situation.
When he was signed, Guardiola worked on him for weeks, seeking to change his thinking on the game and add much more control to it.
Grealish was still talking about how he needed to evolve by the end of a season where he’d won his first title.
Doku, by contrast, has just been put in the team and let loose to also leave Grealish on the bench.
This isn’t to say the English playmaker should be overly worried about his medium-to-long-term role.
As Sterling knows better than anybody, Guardiola goes on and off players all the time.
It is partly his way of keeping them on their toes, partly tactical experimentation, partly man-management and partly what fits at any given time.
In the end, Sterling believed he didn’t have that much time and tried to establish himself as a more significant player at a different big club.
However, there is a small irony there. Although Sterling is Chelsea’s most experienced attacker and must carry a heavy load when leading the play, his best function is arguably that of someone who can create real damage off the backs of other players.
At that point, his running both on and off the ball can be extremely damaging.
The ridiculous game against Tottenham on Monday demonstrated the level of attention that can be placed on Sterling within this Chelsea squad, but it also had the unfavorable effect of giving Nicolas Jackson so many opportunities that he eventually scored a hat-trick simply through sheer volume of plays.
Even though Doku’s impact against Bournemouth and that will undoubtedly be compared, those were very different kinds of performances.
These roles are extremely dissimilar.
The workload that Chelsea attackers like Cole Palmer and Jackson already have is increased for Sterling.
Doku has access to a roster of players at City who are adept at what they do. It implies that even as defenses try to figure him out, he can figure out his own game.
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