I think the reign of Manchester city seems to be over in both the champion League and the Premier League respectfully since Manchester City have been a twice title holder in both leagues so for now it become a pay back time for them and for such Manchester city have to leave the title for other clubs who are already making good use of the current state of things in the premier leagues to accumulate alot of points that will help them to remain at top competitive position before the final stage of the competition.
It's very true what you say. Indeed, there is nothing wrong with thinking that City still has a big chance, but it seems like the poor results obtained due to Haaland's absence in the last few matches shows that they have problems in attack. There is no finisher as good as Haaland in their team. That will be a problem, especially if a club relies heavily on the performance of a striker. Initially, without the presence of Kevin De Bruyne, City's performance did decline a little but they were still quite competitive. Currently, after several matches they don't have Haaland, I can say that The Citizens' performance is really bad at the moment.
I thought Alvarez's performance would be good, but Haaland's absence is very obvious. Unfortunately, the absence of one player is tiring for City. If Haaland suffers an injury for 5-6 months, City can only finish the season in the mid-table. KDB was the brains of the team and City was already badly affected by his injury. Moreover, when Haaland's absence is added to this, Manchester City continues to deteriorate.
Even if those guys were not injured and the performance from manchester city was still bad. The absence of those players will make the performance of manchester city become even worst. I have no faith on manchester city this season.
It seems like that the club was not making some improvements. It was only relying upon some players. As you can see that how manchester city was playing so badly. We can imagine that if manchester city will be missing some players like KDB, haaland and alvarez at the same time.
It's going to be a serious problem caused by manchester city has main mission to defend some of its trophies achieved last season. Pep needs to find a solution for this problem.
I can't really sure about what kind of plan will be prepared by pep but it seems like that needs time to go so well. Even missing KDB has been giving huge impact to the city. The worst thing is going to happen if city will be missing a lot of players.