When one of the most important players in the team gets injured or leaves the team, there is a void and the bench player does not fill the void. Manchester City understand their problems but they don't have enough options to turn those weaknesses into strengths. Manchester City may have accepted that this is how they have to perform this season as there is no chance of signing any new players until the transfer window opens. Manchester City players need to boost their confidence and try to do better with their current team. If Manchester City play like they are the best team in the English Premier League and if they perform a little better they can go back to the top of the points table but their performance will be much better.
I get that, but when we are discussing Manchester City, they should never depend on one or two injuries in a way that destroys the whole season if that happens. Yes it can happen and if Messi was to get injured back when he played for Barcelona, it literally meant that the game is going to be completely different. But they should still be able to compensate for these incidents on a level that the season is still not that much at risk. It does change the trajectory of a season, but it shouldn't to the extent that it is game over as soon as an important player misses a lot of games.
I think the issues surrounding Manchester city are beyond injury worries, for me, I believe their problems are multi dimensional, ranging from injury worries, psychological, the intensifying nature of the competition and the loses they experience which could as a result of the other factors I earlier mentioned, now it important to know that all of these factors are capable of affecting the performance of the team and probably causing them the title but it all depends on the coach and how fast he can put his house in order before things really get messy or worse than they are. I think they have been through such a situation before and they came out better, so let's see who they will navigate through this too.
I will say that Injury is the major problem that the club is having and that's what has led to other minor problems, because if the team is in a good form and they are consistent with their matches, those minor problems will not arise. If you flash back to last season when De Bruyne and Haaland had injury, the performance of the team dropped and they had difficulties winning their matches, until De Bruyne came back from injury. It's the same situation repeating itself currently, De Bruyne is not yet fit and some other players are out from the team due to injury. Rodri will not be part of the team till next season, which will definitely affect the performance of the team even if all other players are back from injury.