Doku has been accused, often justifiably, of showing frustrating inconsistency since joining Manchester City in a \u00a355.4m deal from Rennes in August 2023.<\/p>\n
The 23-year-old has put all that aside this season to become one of the major catalysts in Guardiola’s restructured side, as he proved with an outstanding performance that made life a misery for Liverpool’s defence.<\/p>\n
Doku gave Conor Bradley, outstanding when Liverpool beat Real Madrid in the Champions League, a torrid time. The Reds right-back was outpaced and turned inside out by sheer speed and power.<\/p>\n
It was Doku who set the tone for a City display that was a real statement of intent, not only overcoming the side who have been their main rivals for so long, but also firing a warning to Arsenal that they are now breathing down their necks.<\/p>\n
Haaland, as always, was the spearhead, but he was aided and abetted by the promptings of Doku, the revitalised Phil Foden and Bernardo Silva.<\/p>\n
Liverpool, champions last season, had their moments in the second half, but City never lost control.<\/p>\n
Whenever the hosts were threatened, the giant figure of goalkeeper Donnarumma demonstrated that Guardiola has invested in world-class quality. This was never more notable than when the Italian made a flying save from Dominik Szoboszlai.<\/p>\n
Guardiola and City travelled through stormy waters last season, but the creation, composure and sheer threat contained in this emphatic dismissal of Liverpool was a clear message that normal service is close to being resumed.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Doku has been accused, often justifiably, of showing frustrating inconsistency since joining Manchester City in a \u00a355.4m deal…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":283043,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[69],"tags":[403,99],"class_list":{"0":"post-283042","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-soccer","8":"tag-soccer","9":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/283042","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=283042"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/283042\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/283043"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=283042"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=283042"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=283042"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}