Belgium international says title chances “depends only on us”
Jeremy Doku says Manchester City are paying no attention to Arsenal’s early-season form after their emphatic 3-0 victory over Liverpool reignited their Premier League title push.
City cut the gap on the league leaders to four points with Sunday’s win at the Etihad, a performance Pep Guardiola described as proof his side are “ready to be there” in the title race. Doku, who led City’s charge against the champions and scored the third with a brilliant curling strike, said the focus inside the dressing room is on themselves.
“We’re just looking at ourselves,” said Doku. “We have been building and we know that we can still improve. The performance we delivered against Liverpool, we’re very happy, but we still have to improve every game.
“We’re not really looking at Arsenal. What the other teams are doing doesn’t matter because at the end of the day, it depends only on us. We know that if we are playing well, it’s difficult to stand next to us.”
The 23-year-old revealed that his goal was a result of work with Guardiola on the training ground, and he and the manager joked about it after he was substituted on Sunday.
“We were talking during the training session sometimes about when I shoot and how my body position is,” said Doku. “When I scored, we just talked about that. It was a quick joke. I have to put my body above the ball when I shoot so I can put more power, something like that.”
Doku has now scored three goals this season, just five short of his best-ever tally of eight, but he insists he is not paying attention to the numbers.
“I don’t do that,” he said. “I just work to have more of that but I’m not a player that’s going to look after a game and say, ‘You didn’t score, you didn’t assist, you had a bad game.’ For me, a bad game is if I don’t touch the ball, if I’m not effective or if I lose a lot of balls. That’s a bad game.”
