These so called players whose careers have 'stalled' are supposedly Richards and SInclair - both of whom are at Villa (where it's deemed 'fantastic' for Delph to be). The other two are Johnson who got more England caps at City than anywhere else and won silverware, and Rodwell who was known to be injury prone at Everton and proclaimed as such by many Everton fans. He was injury prone with us, then moved to Sunderland where he's been injury prone there too.
Barry, Milner, Hart, Bellamy all did incredibly well with City. Johnson did ok, Richards became injury prone and was usurped by one of the best right backs of the last 5 years, Sinclair didn't work out, but hardly ruined his career, and Rodwell's still too wary of picking up injuries to ever give 100% physically (I don't question his commitment though).
It's just lazy journalism to perpetuate the 'graveyard for HG talent' myth