The reason 'lesser' clubs think they have a chance against City now is because they see exactly what we see .... an erratic team who are nowhere near as good as they used to be, mainly down to the quality players that have left, and the players that have arrived, many of whom have been sub standard ... and also our annoying knack of picking up constant injuries, which is absolutely no basis for building team spirit, togetherness or consistency, and a winning mentality .... half our players aren't even delivering the level of performance that WE know, and THEY know, they're capable of delivering!
We may never see glory days like we've recently enjoyed again, and right now we're at the stage of taking on opponents, ANY opponent, and just HOPING that we'll take points of them ..... whereas it was more or less guaranteed a few years ago!
Check out our results against the top six over the past few seasons, and see how often during that period of time that we've actually won those fixtures, and you'll see why teams such as Brighton are increasingly fancying their chances against us now.