Who and what’s to blame?

Poor summer recruitment and player complacency.

Always recruit after a title, freshen things up and keep players on their toes.

Poor defence of the title, hopefully after the CAS case is won, we will hit the market hard, CB, LB, CM, LW all required.
We can’t rely on just Jesus and kun . If they are not performing it don’t matter because there’s no one coming in to replace them .
 
Losing 8 games in a season with that team is a disgrace. We cannot be in a position again where we are so massively reliable on one player, ie Laporte. Liverpool knew exactly what their weakness was (CB and GK) and fixed it by spending huge amounts to get the very best replacements. We will probably be chasing Isco again in September and making do with Otamendi and Stones. So very frustrating....
If we do then we ain’t winning no titles
 
The loss of Kompany and the failure to replace him combined overall poor recruitment in recent seasons left us reliant on ageing World class players (Fernandinho, David & Aguero).

In defence I'd say only Walker & Laporte are good enough for regular starts...Stones, Otamendi, Cancelo, Zinchenko & Mendy aren't.

This.

We didn’t just lose a world class CB, we lost a leader. When heads go down there just doesn’t seem to be anyone to pick them up.

Plus defensively we’ve been a shambles. I actually thought this could be the chance that Stones needs to live up to all the hype when he first came here. How wrong i was.

I also think we’ve massively missed Fernandinho in midfield whenever he’s had to fill in as CB.

We’ve been spoiled in recent years such that finishing second in the league and at least one cup is seen as disappointing. Having said that I would as a minimum like us to defend both domestic cups.
 
Let’s not forget aswell that we have won the title 4 times in the last 10 years where as Liverpool haven’t won it for 30,years . There hunger was immense .very difficult to match these levels every year .
 
We can’t rely on just Jesus and kun . If they are not performing it don’t matter because there’s no one coming in to replace them .
Agreed, Jesus the jury is out and Kun is not getting younger.

Would love Martinez, all has gone quite...a good sign ;)
 
This.

We didn’t just lose a world class CB, we lost a leader. When heads go down there just doesn’t seem to be anyone to pick them up.

Plus defensively we’ve been a shambles. I actually thought this could be the chance that Stones needs to live up to all the hype when he first came here. How wrong i was.

I also think we’ve massively missed Fernandinho in midfield whenever he’s had to fill in as CB.

We’ve been spoiled in recent years such that finishing second in the league and at least one cup is seen as disappointing. Having said that I would as a minimum like us to defend both domestic cups.
I know Pep likes to have several captains in his sides and the armband doesn’t just get tossed to the nearest player when a captain is substituted, but I was really hoping after Vinnie left that one player would step out of the shadows and drag this team forward when required, when we make a mistake they’d ensure it wouldn’t happen again, maybe Kev has ? He’d get my vote for club captain, as mentioned on another thread we look like we’re gonna have a very young team going forward, the question is do we have that leader already ? the one player who could do a Vinnie ? Or are we crying out for new leadership, a Koulibaly Etc
 
We haven't been anywhere near consistent enough; absolutely scintillating in some games but very pedestrian in others and, as Thursday showed, sometimes both in the same game. I think it has proved impossible to maintain the standard of '17-'18 and '18-'19 for a third successive season. Vinnie's departure was a real blow, made worse by the fact that there was no-one even remotely capable of replacing him - the touted Maguire is so far off Vinnie as a player, a leader and an influence as to be laughable. Then losing Sane 15 minutes into the community shield and then Laporte so early really meant we were struggling. These are all underlying factors which help to explain to some extent the falling away from the heights of the last two seasons and help explain why players not named above and not injured have been rather pale shadows of themselves.

There are, however, structural weaknesses in the team which help complete the picture. The defeat at Norwich highlighted a weakness at defending corners which Spurs had already exploited and corners have remained a problem. But there are others. The only team from the top seven which has failed to beat us is Leicester, and when we think back to these defeats there is an obvious vulnerability to pace on the break. In all the defeats the opposition has enjoyed very little possession but still carved out chances to win. Chelsea on Thursday, United at the Etihad, Spurs at their place, Wolves at the Etihad all ran the ball at City when they had the chance, through midfield and an exposed back line. Chelsea at the Etihad did for the first half hour but not well enough to win. This needs attention.

This is the crux of the matter for me. While laportes injury has undoubtably left us very weak in defense, for me the loss of ferny in midfield exacerbated the situation as it gave opponents a free run at a weakened defense.
I fully believe rodri is going to grow into his position but to be able to read the game like ferny takes time.
I would have been happier having ferny staying in midfield sharing or partnering rodri as required and having Garcia step up into defense, but then that would have required us to rely on otamendi and/or stones and neither is really good enough for this team.
 

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