The France midfielder joined City a fortnight ago from Lyon and scored a wonder goal in victory over Club World Cup opponents Al Ain on Sunday.
Reflecting on Cherki's performance, Onuoha told City's website: “The skill is there, the understanding is there, the quality is there.
“As I was watching, I was thinking back to when I was playing and there were a few times in my career when something would happen and I don’t know how it’s happened.
“With some of those attackers that’s what you’re seeing. Those people that can see a different sort of game are the hardest to play against because you’re never able to read them and they will always do something you don’t expect.
“Even for Cherki’s goal, that ‘over’ to let it go for (Erling) Haaland. No one’s seen him do an ‘over’ yet so why was that the right time to do it?
“He reads it, he knows the perfect way and goes to the perfect position, Haaland sees it, perfect set and bang. It was on his right foot, which he’d used maybe once for the previous 10 minutes.
“This level of quality in my opinion, when it gets like this, creative and in flow, it’s the type of stuff that you see training and when they bring that onto game day, it’s top.”