Nobody wrote him off, we just wrote off the popularity contest that is this award.
In fairness, City's players have basically had absolutely no credit for their performances in any individual awards over the past 10 years. Case in point, David Silva won four Premier Leagues, was arguably our best player throughout his time here, and won the Player of the Month just once in 10 years. That's twice less than Ashley Young. And if you think that's bad, Kevin De Bruyne has never won it.
While looking that up, I also found out that Yaya Toure never won a Man of the Match award for us.