All this while having no real good LB, no real striker, having Sterling, one of their main performers of the last 2-3 years, out of form and out of the eleven, having a sicknote of a player in Gundogan coming out of nowhere to perform on unknown level. Just after having their ass handed by Liverpool the year before and the year before were seriously challenged. All this by adding Dias, a player with a slightly better reputation than Lindelof when we bought and Ferran Torres who just happened to be able to deliver great performances without too much time to get used to the new environment.3 squads on par on paper?
City in the wide forward positions alone Sterling, Mahrez, De Bruyne (can also there), Torres, Silva (can play there)
We have Rashford, Greenwood, James, Mata, Amad, Martial and Pogba plays there.
Their depth pisses on ours the squads on paper are not even close, central midfield, full backs and center backs at city, we might have some superior players but it might only be one or 2 but they have superior players as back ups than any of ours, Rodri would walk into our team, he might not even start the CL final for God's sake
I am sure, your text reads more harshly than it is meant and I also wouldn't agree that the three squads are roughly on par but the differences surely aren't as big as your post seems to depict it. On a scale where the perfect squad gets 10 points, I'd have ManCity at 8.5 , Pool on 6.5 - 7 just like us. Keeping in mind, that there is quite a chance, that the Liverpool team mainly has peaked already while the majority of players in our squad aren't there yet.
For me, the biggest blows this season were the games against Sheffield, Westbrom, Basaksehir, Newcastle plus the cup game against Leicester and the last match against Liverpool. I'll give you Liverpool but the rest of these performances certainly weren't that bad because the player material just ain't good enough.