Jeremy Doku wants to be world class. His stunning goals are keeping Manchester City in title race

AFC BournemouthArsenalAston VillaBrentfordBrighton & Hove AlbionBurnleyChelseaCrystal PalaceEvertonFulhamLeeds UnitedLiverpoolManchester CityManchester UnitedNewcastle UnitedNottingham ForestSunderlandTottenham HotspurWest Ham UnitedWolverhampton WanderersScores & ScheduleStandingsFantasyThe Athletic FC NewsletterPodcastsJeremy Doku wants to be world class. His stunning goals are keeping Manchester City in title raceJeremy Doku races away after his latest stunning goal opened the scoring against Brentford DARREN STAPLES/Getty Images Share articleLess than a month ago, Jeremy Doku said that scoring more goals would put him in the conversation when it comes to the best wingers in the world. Maybe. On Saturday, he popped another screamer into the top corner, his third in five days, having struck two away to Everton in the 3-3 draw on Monday night. The second of those rescued a point right in stoppage time that could yet mean everything to Manchester City in the title race. Or nothing, if Arsenal keep winning. With an hour gone against Brentford, Pep Guardiola felt the need to add energy to his City side, who had been labouring. He brought on Phil Foden and Omar Marmoush to add a spark, even if it meant leaving the midfield a little light on steel. That was the situation City were in, knowing that more dropped points would have meant the end of their title dreams. Doku scored with the next action, another goal-of-the-month contender. “Everybody knows that he’s made an incredible step in the sense of saying, ‘I am Jeremy Doku, I am going to win games!’,” as Guardiola put it afterwards. “And the big players, the greatest players, always have that mentality.” Jeremy Doku is at it AGAIN for Man City! 🤯 pic.twitter.com/p3rkazaUUi — Sky Sports Premier League (@SkySportsPL) May 9, 2026 Jérémy Doku scored a goal & caused Brentford all SORTS of problems all match long. ⚽️ pic.twitter.com/qidQw9AU4d — NBC Sports Soccer (@NBCSportsSoccer) May 9, 2026 When Doku talked about adding more goals to his game, he meant much easier ones. “Key passes and assists, I feel like that area is all right,” he told reporters before the FA Cup semi-final win over Southampton. “I have to be more in the areas where you can score easy goals, you know, tap-ins and stuff like that. “Sometimes in the game, you get, not distracted, but you don’t realise sometimes what you’re doing and you don’t realise that you’re not in that position where you should be to just score the easy goals. “When I look at all my goals even this season, every time dribbles, every time when I do it myself, and I just want to score also, I don’t know, even five tap-ins the season.” There was a point against Everton when Antoine Semenyo flashed the ball across the face of the box from the right wing, and nobody was there to meet it. Doku was miles away, on the edge of the box. Not long after that, he had fired into the top corner, with his left foot, so it did not really matter. After the 3-0 victory on Saturday, he returned to that theme, this time highlighting how many tap-ins Raheem Sterling scored for City. They were always regarded as easy goals, and yet no City winger has got anywhere near scoring them, and Sterling left four years ago. “When I look at my goals, it’s all top goals, don’t get me wrong, but I want to score those goals where I just tap-in, second post, run in and tap-in, and it just adds more goals to my account,” he told Sky Sports when asked about his latest efforts. “That’s the thing I need to work on.” Only a week ago, Doku had two Premier League goals from 25 appearances. This week’s contributions have been eye-catching but he needs to improve that area of his game. The rest of his game has come on hugely this season, although his role is eerily similar to his first weeks at the club in 2023. Back then, as City crammed several attack-minded players into their previously control-heavy system, Doku found himself carrying the team’s attacks. With Kyle Walker stationed high and wide on the right wing, but largely ignored as an option, the ball went to the left wing repeatedly, where Doku was only too happy to show off his dribbling. That was the period where he provided four assists and a goal against Bournemouth, and tore into Brighton & Hove Albion’s James Milner so much that he was taken off at half-time. But there was always a question about end product and consistency, and while City find themselves needing to go to him over and over again at this late stage of his third season, he feels much more reliable. Despite the theoretical threat of Semenyo on the right against Brentford, City kept going left. Doku received 41 passes in the final third, more than double any other team-mate — Semenyo was second with 19. City took 47.3 per cent of their attacking touches in the left-third, their second-highest proportion of the season, which was behind Chelsea away at the start of April, again with Doku on the receiving end. It had appeared that Semenyo was ready to take on Sterling’s ‘easy goal’ mantel, after notching a couple of poacher’s efforts in his first games for City, but his form has dropped off, which may explain why so much play is being directed to the other wing. And because Doku is so threatening when he gets the ball, he generally attracts at least two markers. Nico O’Reilly has dovetailed beautifully with him, making underlapping runs to the byline in enough space to do damage himself. Brentford head coach Keith Andrew spelled out the dilemma perfectly after the match. “You can over-cover him, you can put two players on him but City, with the level of talent that they have, if you do that, there’s always going to be room for someone else,” he said in his press conference. “If it’s not Doku, it’s going to be someone else stepping up. That’s Pep’s luxury: he’s got phenomenal, game-changing players in big moments to decide games. Ultimately, that’s what Doku did on the first goal.” Guardiola says that Doku’s improvement is partly down to his personal life being calm, and that he is “so religious” — indeed, Doku regularly talks of his faith in Jesus Christ — but the City manager has urged him to take on more responsibility. “I told him, if you want to become a better player, you have to win games for yourself,” he said after the game. “Now I am pretty sure that every time, to block the shot, the defender will not leave the space to do it, and he has to be clever to shoot or make an extra pass because another player will be free.” It cannot be easy to be relied upon so much by your team — or your country, given Belgium do, too. He is not yet the finished product, and while individual quality in the Premier League has dipped, Khvicha Kvaratskhelia, Lamine Yamal and Michael Olise show that the level of wingers remains extremely high around Europe. But Doku is only 23, and with even better decision-making around the box, more screamers and five or six of those tap-ins, he could be mentioned in the same breath. Spot the pattern. Connect the terms Find the hidden link between sports terms