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EPL The cluster of names are so tightly packed that the letters threaten to overlap. Among them are the gliders, Michael Olise, Rafael Leao and Eberechi Eze, efficient going past players but selective in when they do so. There are the flying machines, Nico Williams, Jamie Gittens, Desire Doue and Vinicius Junior, who take on opponents often but with mixed success. Orbiting the pack are Sevilla’s Chidera Ejuke, Bayern Munich’s Jamal Musiala and Barcelona’s Ballon d’Or runner-up Lamine Yamal, three attackers who combine directness with progression. Advertisement The only player on a planet of his own is Manchester City’s Jeremy Doku. As the graphic below shows, the Belgian winger is unlike any other dribbler in the Premier League, La Liga, Serie A, the Bundesliga or Ligue 1. His profile is such an outlier that this sort of graph used to only be seen as a comedic way of proving how freakish Lionel Messi was in multiple departments. Doku has one super-strength and it is skipping past the opposing full-back, in either direction he chooses, often as if the player is not there. But for a 23-year-old who exceeds so many stellar names at beating defenders and reaching the penalty area, Doku has not converted his underlying numbers into the stacks of goals and assists needed to establish himself as an elite winger. Six goals and 11 assists in his first season, plus another eight and nine in his second, are a tier or two below that threshold. In the last few weeks, however, that perception of Doku as a fun but futile dribbler has started to change. Two assists in the Manchester derby, a goal against Napoli and another assist against Burnley have suggested that this could be the season he adds an end product. After a frustrating season, the focus this summer was on unlocking the final few things preventing him from becoming one of the best attackers around. Doku spent this summer working on that transition, hiring a personal analyst/coach to review his footage and work weekly with him to improve his decision-making in the final third. City manager Pep Guardiola is also trying to liberate Doku, siphoning left-backs Nico O’Reilly and Rayan Ait-Nouri into narrower positions and pushing Tijjani Reijnders forward as a second striker to isolate Doku on the left wing. Doku’s ability to beat players is unrivalled but it is the next act that has required finessing. More runners into the penalty box have helped, as has his off-pitch relationship with Erling Haaland. They have been working together in training to create an understanding of which movement and delivery marry best in different situations. It came to the fore against Burnley as Doku inched towards the box, waiting on a signal. Haaland made a sharp movement across his marker to open up the path for a cutback and Doku duly delivered. Doku also created the opening goal when he bundled his way through three players before his shot was rebounded into the Burnley net by Maxime Esteve. Advertisement Against Manchester United and Napoli, Doku showed he can be a danger from central positions. In both games, he picked up the ball on the half-turn and jinked his way past three players. In the derby, his cross found Phil Foden to head home but against the Serie A champions, he finished off the move himself by driving a left-footed shot into the far corner. “Jeremy’s decision-making in the final third improved, like, ‘wow! ’, ” said Guardiola said after the 5-1 win against Burnley. “He’s an incredible threat against teams that are a low block and deep. Jeremy is really important. When the team is transitional, maybe he can struggle a bit, but he had the ball and brought the opponent to the box. “Now he is reading good. When Jeremy goes there for the second goal, two or three opponents go there. They don’t allow him to go one-vs-one because he’s unstoppable. There is no winger over five to 10 metres stronger than Jeremy, and he can go left or right. ” Since the start of last season, no player with 75-plus completed take-ons in Europe’s top five leagues has attempted more per 90 minutes than Doku (11. 3) or completed more (six). Given Manchester City regularly face teams who defend in a low block, it highlights Doku’s ability to pierce holes in the opposition in a way very few players can. “He has the burst of speed but he has the feint. If you leave the space on the outside, he will kill you but if you over-cover he has that feint to cut inside, ” says Shaun Maloney, who coached Doku for the Belgian national team in 2020 and 2021. “The talent has always been there with Jeremy. You see world-class moments, now it’s just about doing it more often. ” Maloney first watched Doku in 2019 playing in Ireland at the Under-17 European Championship when he and then-Belgium manager Roberto Martinez were keen to see what the future held. They soon realised that the future was upon them. Advertisement “He was a standout at that level. What you see now in terms of one-v-one dribbling was exactly him then, ” says Maloney. “He was taking it in his own half and dribbling 70 and 80 yards. He came on the radar of Roberto that day and he fast-tracked him to skip the under-21s. ” Doku soon broke through from Anderlecht’s academy into their first team, with Maloney and Martinez travelling to watch the first team train under Vincent Kompany and his assistant Craig Bellamy. “They did great work with Jeremy and really pushed him hard to have that end product, ” says Maloney. “It’s a tough age to balance development and push performance, but they were working with other younger players (on their output) in the final third. It’s tough as a winger as when it doesn’t work it means you lose the ball and you have to get over it quickly. Jeremy has always had that. ” Doku has started his own You Tube channel recently and in one episode, he is asked what makes him happy. “I want to kill my defender. I want them to have nightmares, ” he says,   standing inside caged, concrete pitches. His childhood in Borgerhout, Antwerp, was spent learning how to bait tackles and swerve them quicker than the defender could react. It was a culture where embarrassing your direct opponent was as meaningful, if not more so, than scoring a goal. The top level of professional football does not deal in street cred, though, and later in the episode Kompany was on hand to remind him of the only currency that counts. “Arrive at the back post to score easy goals, ” the Bayern Munich manager says. “You don’t always have to do 15 dribbles or something unbelievable. The other things will always be there. ” It is a message that has been hammered home to Doku since he was a teenager but it looks like, at 23, he may now be reaching the levels of maturity where he can package the agility, the feints and the acceleration into something tangible. (Top photo: Jan Kruger/Getty Images) Spot the pattern. Connect the terms Find the hidden link between sports terms Play today's puzzle