Don't forget the Guardiola's magic. Guardiola usually starts the season with normal or bad results and he lets the other teams to take more points while time after time he starts having a much better performance and he will take back his place in the first place of the Premier League. That's still too soon to say Guardiola is not a good coach for Manchester City anymore because we have already seen much better results from this coach in the past seasons.
However, I was not expecting to see Guardiola and his players lose the game to Brighton with a 2-1 result, and maybe Manchester City's defenses were worse than normal.
I think this season might be different, because the same pep has never lost 4 games in a row. He is definitely a good coach with no better replacement for the club, but the absence of a key player(Rodri) is an obvious cause to the recent losses. We saw how well he was able to manage the team without KDB last season, but without Rodri is far different. Rodri might return very late next year, before we can expect their usual late season miracle, except he chooses to get a replacement in January.
As for the game against Brighton, I actually expected the Brighton win, seeing the players that where available for them. We all know how good mitoma is, and with the sub in of Pedro, it was a different game entirely. The moment Brighton got an equalizer, I knew a goal will definitely come in. It's just football. We have both rainy and sunny days. If City's loss to Brighton was a shock to you, then what weill you call the loss to Bournemouth?.