Manchester City's defeat to Brentford on Saturday may have been a shock on paper but their drop-off in form in recent weeks has made such a loss inevitable.
At the start of the campaign, City were blowing sides away. In their first nine Premier League matches of the season, they grabbed 33 goals but in the five since that has shrunk to just seven. If you cast your mind back to the last time Pep Guardiola's side really played well, you'd probably land on the 4-0 win over Southampton or the 6-3 destruction of neighbours Manchester United a week earlier. Those were back in early October and since then that early spark has been snuffed out.
A tight loss to Liverpool was the instigator and though City responded well with three wins afterwards none of the performances were really convincing. They were rattled by Brighton but had Erling Haaland to grab crucial goals. Without him, they needed an excellent Kevin De Bruyne free-kick to get past Leicester and then when the Norwegian returned it took a last-gasp penalty to get past Fulham.
