Can you imagine if the small lightly built winger ran on his own to the corner flag without the support of someone like bernardo or foden to bounce about it with and then tried to shield it from Rudiger or Thcouameni.
I'm sorry but I just don't think Doku, Bobb, Marmoush anyone else would be taking criticism for not being confident in doing that.
Instead the massively over-hated guy took on one the world's best centre backs and absolutely out-thought him and he should have been sent off.
The thing I like about Sav is he obviously has the ideas. He doesn't always pull them off (less so though this season, and I do think he's lost confidence with some of the OTT abuse) but it always seems like he's thinking about doing something impactful. One of my problems with Doku before this season is he'd dribble for the sake of dribbling, without having a picture or what he'd do when he got there.
To me Sav is the opposite - he has good vision, good understanding of play and is a genuinely inventive player. But he can't always pull it off, and it usually looks horribly lightweight when it goes wrong. The finishing, the defensive application - things that'll come with time and coaching.
But I suspect Pep, Viana, Txiki see/saw it the same way - give him the 2 years Doku got to get 23 and you might have a creative playmaking winger: a Hazard, Kvara, Mahrez type in there. Not a lethal inside forward Mane, Salah, Sane type but he never was that.
For me has that creative City DNA our best players have had, he just doesn't put it together as often as they did. Yet.