I said, at the start of the season, that if City played consistently anywhere near our best, we would win the title again. At no stage so far have City reached that level. Even in our unbeaten run we were letting sides run through us, not regularly, but often enough to be worrying. Recently it has cost us matches and yesterday we were nothing like the City of last season. The result is an 8 point deficit and our games before Christmas look potentially much more worrying than they did a month ago.
Injuries have much to do with our problems. Dias, Rodri, and KdB have been the spine of the team for several seasons now and none of them are available now. There are other injuries, other players are in poor form and maybe some have gone on a season too long. But it doesn't matter - there are no second chances in the PL. City have to solve the problems, begin winning matches again and eat away at Liverpool's lead.
Our advantage is that we have the man most capable of doing all this, as Pep has already shown, but things have to change quickly.