In celebration of Jeremy Doku, Trent Alexander-Arnold’s tormentor-in-chief

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Trent Alexander-Arnold’s announcement that he would leave Liverpool this summer sparked all manner of different thoughts, emotions and reactions, with some of the tremors even reaching Manchester City.

Alexander-Arnold is destined for Real Madrid but the move abroad means he will no longer go up against Jeremy Doku quite as regularly, disappointing a section of City supporters after Doku’s ‘success’ against the England right-back.

Jeremy Doku will no longer face Trent Alexander-Arnold in the Premier League… 💔

3 Meetings
201 Touches
89 Accurate Passes
85.6% Pass Accuracy
43 Ground Duels Won
38 Touches In Opposition Box
33 Successful Dribbles
11 Recoveries
7 Chances Created
5 Was Fouled pic.twitter.com/p7bgGvYLK5

— City Xtra (@City_Xtra) May 5, 2025

City have played Madrid twice a season for the past four campaigns but memories of Doku’s battles against Alexander-Arnold spawned a separate debate: Doku’s effectiveness.

Having arrived at City in the summer of 2023 from Rennes for around £55million ($74m), the Belgium winger soon showcased his dribbling ability as well as his end product: he scored a fine goal away to West Ham United before electrifying the Etihad Stadium crowd in home games against Brighton & Hove Albion and Bournemouth. In that 6-1 win against Bournemouth, he scored once and registered four assists.

For various reasons — including a host of muscle injuries, the team’s struggles this season and Pep Guardiola’s ever-changing requirements — Doku, 22, has only started to show that kind of promise again in the past couple of weeks, with two impressive cameos helping City beat Everton and Aston Villa before a more consistently threatening performance from the start, plus another assist, against Wolverhampton Wanderers on Friday.

The re-emergence of the Alexander-Arnold debate this week does get to the nub of the frustrations with Doku over the past 18 months.

The most eye-catching element of his performances against Liverpool, and his game as a whole, has been his dribbling: when City faced Arne Slot’s side at the Etihad Stadium at the end of February, Doku attempted a league-high 19 dribbles, completing 13 (illustrated below in his player dashboard). In the same fixture last season, he attempted 16 and completed 12, with Alexander-Arnold the most regular victim both times.

The thing is, City lost 2-0 in February and drew 1-1 at the Etihad last season (with Alexander-Arnold scoring the equaliser). This season, particularly, City were second-best in all departments but Doku can be a polarising figure, partly because he is a ridiculously proficient dribbler.

Nobody in Europe, most likely the world, gets near him for the sheer number of dribbles attempted, nor for how successful they are. With that area of his game being so polished, six league goals and even a solid 14 league assists can look a little more ordinary.

“I passed him a lot of times but it was then the final pass or I don’t know,” Doku told reporters of his battle with Alexander-Arnold after the game in February. “The most important thing after passing is to create something from it, and I played some good balls in front of the goal but we have to score. We have to analyse the game and see what I can do better and what we can do better as a team.”

Doku highlighted two areas: Liverpool’s compact approach and that he felt he put good balls in front of goal that went begging. Seven of his 10 crosses into the box (the last seven consecutively) were blocked or deflected before any team-mates’ runs could come into the equation, but in the first half, he did put in a good cross to the near post that nobody attacked.

Guardiola made an interesting observation along these lines after Doku’s stoppage-time assist in the 2-1 win against Villa last month.

“To score a goal, you have to be there and Gundo (Ilkay Gundogan) was there, Omar Marmoush was there, Nico O’Reilly was there and Matheus Nunes was there.”

It was the right combination of a dangerous cross and several players attacking the box, and if sometimes Doku’s crosses are not the right ones, perhaps the runs have not always been right either.

Speaking afterwards, Nunes said that it was not the usual run he would make because it would expose space behind him, but he gambled because it was late in the game.

The other option available for that Villa goal was Kevin De Bruyne on the edge of the box, which is the route that Doku chose against Wolves. That was from a counter-attack and the options were not as plentiful, showing that the decision-making was spot on.

Guardiola has highlighted that as an area he thinks Doku needs to work on. “I love when he dribbles,” he said in January. “But after that, the decision-making is not soft or precise enough.” Following the game-changing contribution against Villa, the City manager added some meat to the bones.

“Always, I said that he makes the actions at one speed. In the moment for decision-making, you have to reduce the speed, you cannot make one-against-one and make the pass (at the same time), you have to relax, you have to see. Otherwise, you cross to cross (cross for crossing’s sake) and we are not going to score a goal, but he’s so young and he has something unique in terms of speed.”

That was the night when Guardiola hailed Doku as “the best player in the world in the first metres”, in the sense that his explosiveness, unpredictability and ball control make him a difficult opponent.

“I was telling him on the pitch as well, ‘You need to chill, man, yet get me?’. You know what I mean?!” Nottingham Forest right-back Ola Aina told broadcasters recently, giving an insight into what it can be like to face Doku.

Muscle injuries have hampered Doku’s City career. “Always with Jeremy, there’s a little bit of doubt about his consistency playing every three days in terms of injuries, simple as that,” Guardiola said earlier this season.

For most of this season, City’s performances and the general mood has hardly been conducive to personal development, and even their recent resurgence has been largely due to a tactical shift that has generally not involved wingers — or at least required them to play more centrally, where Doku is not ready to perform yet, according to Guardiola.

“The moment he learns to play inside, he will do it, because he has the quality to do it,” Guardiola said after the Villa game. “For nine years, I’ve always played with wingers high and wide, one against one, but lately for different reasons, for stability, maybe we need more control or whatever, we play with the full-backs wide. That’s why he’s playing less, but not because he’s playing badly.”

Guardiola tweaked that approach against Wolves on Friday to put Doku on the left wing, presumably as a reward for his contributions off the bench and he repaid that decision.

Perhaps because Doku’s dribbling generates such a feeling of danger inside a stadium, but the end product does not always match, it can be easy to feel let down — but as soon as one or two of those forays into the box result in a goal, he can suddenly be seen in a much more favourable light.

The excitement that greeted his early weeks at City has started to return. It will be interesting to see how much further he has progressed by the time he next faces Alexander-Arnold.

(Top photo: Doku has had joy against Alexander-Arnold. Molly Darlington/Copa/Getty Images)

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