The absence of some players has undoubtedly had a negative impact on Manchester City's performance. Rodri has been out of action for a long time due to injury and another legendary attacking midfielder of Manchester City, KDB, left the club last season. In addition, in the season in which Manchester City won the Champions League title, Manchester City sold another of their best midfielders, İlkay Gündoğan, to Barcelona, meaning that overall Manchester City's performance has been poor.
Manchester City is a club that spent a lot of money for player transfers season by season and they have been doing this transfer strategy in more than one decade. It's unreasonable to blame anything as they are a rich club and don't have problems with buying new players so they can not blame any issue in the squad with absence of Rodri, De Bruyne or any single star player. With massive money spent over years, they must have a deep player resource to go through injury crisis better than other clubs with worse finance and transfer budgets.
Yes, I think Manchester City's forward position is still strong enough but if the positions from which the ball is created for the strikers are in bad condition, how will the strikers play at their best?
Manchester City should have planned differently in the transfer window but they have relied on the previous team so I think they will end this season with failure.
Problems in Manchester City are not in players but in their coach management and tactics which seem to be known and even forensically analyzed by their opponents in Premier League. Now Manchester City are no longer be able to convert their high ball possession to dangerous attacks and goals while their operations give opponents chances of doing dangerous counter attacks.
What they need most now is tactical changes considerably from Pep Guardiola but this man seems to hit his limits with Manchester City. If Manchester City finish this season badly, Pep will cleverly decide to leave this club as he is experienced and smart enough to know when to stop.