There is no getting away from it, this all feels a bit ‘last season’ for Manchester City.

The parallels are obvious: three draws in a row have suddenly caused a negative feeling and, particularly, the injury situation tends to suggest that things might not get immediately better.

Last season, of course, was a disaster for large parts, with City winning just 11 of 31 matches as players dropped like flies. So it is tempting to feel that things might be on the slide in a similar way after three draws in a row and another crop of injuries.

Surely, though, things are nowhere near that bad. Bear with us…

The title picture looks bleak. Last week, City were two points behind Arsenal. As it stands, they are five points behind, while Arsenal have a game in hand, against Liverpool tonight.

Champions have never been crowned in January, especially when City are chasing down leaders, but the fear is that there might not be much chasing going on over the next few weeks.

Performances have gone downhill over the past week. City drew 0-0 at Sunderland, but in a way that suggested they had plenty to take from it: they created good chances, fought for their lives (something that was not really the case in the depths of last season), and Rodri’s return saw them establish the kind of dominance they have struggled for this season.

The Chelsea game on Sunday was frustrating and they only have themselves to blame for not finishing off the Londoners. Enzo Fernandez’s late equaliser not only robbed City of more points, but it sapped momentum, especially because Ruben Dias and Josko Gvardiol had been forced off injured.

Those injuries are probably a bigger issue than the dropped points and the frustrating inability to fashion clear-cut chances out of numerous promising raids forward. Dias will miss four to six weeks, while Gvardiol will be out for four to five months.

With John Stones out seemingly indefinitely (and set to leave in the summer), it leaves them light at the back; against Brighton on Wednesday, the centre-back pairing was Abdukodir Khusanov, 21, and Max Alleyne, 20, who was making his City debut. Nathan Ake is the other option and played at left-back.

And against Brighton, City’s attacking talents could not click in the same way that they had done in November and December. What was worse was that when they were presented with chances by their opponents — Yasin Ayari gave them two gifts inside the area at 1-0 and 1-1 — City missed. Ayari was taken off and sat on the bench with his head in his hands, but Brighton were not punished as they should have been.

That left Pep Guardiola ruing City’s sudden inability to put the ball in the net.

“I like a lot the way we play,” he said after the draw. “We have many new players and many good things I love a lot, but we don’t score goals. It’s not just one player, two players, it’s all the players up front. Scoring goals is part of doing your job.”