Manchester City’s dominant display on Sunday brought fresh attention to several individuals on the pitch. J\u00e9r\u00e9my Doku was influential down the left and frequently caused problems for Liverpool, while Pep Guardiola singled out Liverpool right-back Conor Bradley for praise after the match.<\/p>\n
The result moved City up into second and left them four points behind leaders Arsenal. Liverpool slipped to eighth and are eight points off the summit. City\u2019s season to date has relied heavily on Erling Haaland for goals, but Doku\u2019s early impact in 2025\u201326 has been notable and his performance on Sunday was a central feature.<\/p>\n
Doku matched up repeatedly with Bradley, who had been commended for his display against Real Madrid earlier in the week. There were moments when Doku dominated the exchanges, though Bradley showed resilience at times. Guardiola was clear in his admiration, quoting a comment that highlighted Bradley\u2019s potential: \u201cConor [Bradley], the right back, I was really, really impressed with, Pep Lijnders said he could do everything.\u201d<\/p>\n
Guardiola also referenced Bradley\u2019s prior work against Vinicius Junior and praised the level of intensity shown on the day. \u201cI know the game against [Real] Madrid how good he was against Vinicius. And Jeremy handled it, aggressive with and without the ball. He played an outstanding game,\u201d the City boss added.<\/p>\n
The Liverpool full-back\u2019s development was overseen by Pep Lijnders and J\u00fcrgen Klopp during Bradley\u2019s breakthrough in the 2023\u201324 campaign. Bradley has faced fitness issues at the start of the new season, and the right-back position has not been settled since Trent Alexander-Arnold left the club. Jeremie Frimpong has also suffered a couple of injuries since joining, and Dominik Szoboszlai\u2019s use there was a temporary measure.<\/p>\n
For City, the victory reinforced the sense that they will press Arsenal for the title, while for Liverpool the focus will be on stabilising options at right-back and managing player fitness as the season progresses.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Guardiola singled out Conor Bradley after City’s dominant win as Doku tormented Liverpool. Standout.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":4407,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[175,1056],"tags":[1241,1242],"class_list":["post-4408","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-liverpool","category-man-city","tag-conor-bradley","tag-jeremy-doku"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4408","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4408"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4408\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4407"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4408"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4408"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4408"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}