Micah Richards gives thoughts on the Jack Grealish or Jérémy Doku debate

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·26 November 2023

Micah Richards gives thoughts on the Jack Grealish or Jérémy Doku debate

Highlights

Jérémy Doku has quickly adapted to Manchester City and looks comfortable on the left wing, already scoring twice and providing five assists in 10 Premier League appearances.
Pep Guardiola faces a selection dilemma between Jack Grealish and Doku, both of whom excel on the same flank.
Micah Richards would prefer to play against Doku due to his more direct style of play and lack of defensive work rate.

When some players arrive at Manchester City, it takes a little while for them to adapt. Jack Grealish, for instance, struggled in his first season before playing a key role for the club in their title-winning campaign the following term.

Jérémy Doku, however, has immediately settled into life under Pep Guardiola, looking as though he was born to race up and down the left wing at the Etihad. Indeed, in his first 10 Premier League appearances, he has already scored twice and delivered five assists.

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However, this has created a bit of a selection headache for Guardiola as both Grealish and Doku play their best football on the same flank. Coming into this weekend's clash against Liverpool at home, the Englishman had started three league games, while the Belgian had started seven. Against the Reds, Doku got the nod as Grealish was forced to miss out with an illness.

This made the decision much easier for the Man City manager but in the future, he may have more difficulty in deciding who to pick week in, week out on the left side of his attack. There certainly does seem to be a big debate over who suits the team best right now.

You could argue that Grealish's calmness in possession and ability to retain the ball was missed against Liverpool, as City were held to a 1-1 draw. Even so, Doku was one of the more lively players on the pitch, completing 12/15 attempted dribbles, four key passes, one big chance and finishing the game with an Expected Assists of 0.74 (as per SofaScore).

Before all that, though, the Sky Sports pundits were debating ahead of kick-off who right-back Trent Alexander-Arnold would prefer to play against. The consensus was Grealish, but Micah Richards gave a fascinating insight into why, as a former fullback, he'd rather be up against Doku. He explained:

"The thing is with Grealish, we talk about dribbles, Grealish takes you places where you don't want to go. In terms of, when he comes inside the left-hand channel, he's always free. "As a dribbler, you know what Doku is going to do. You know he wants to get his head down and run at you left and right. If you get to him as soon as possible you can potentially stop that. "But with players like [Phil] Foden and Grealish, when they go into pockets... As a defender, when you're coming up against wingers, you know what they want to do, if they're going to go inside or outside, you get there tight. With Grealish, you don't know what in terms of the position he's going to pick up the pitch. So I would prefer to play against Doku."

It certainly is interesting to see that Richards would rather play against Doku. After all, he does seem like he would be more of a handful – and proved as much by completing 11 take-ons against Liverpool, the most by any player in a Premier League game this season.

Former striker Daniel Sturridge said that he would rather have to defend against Grealish, but this just caused Richards to further add to his own explanation, saying that he would have more attacking joy against Doku: