It's not losing to teams like City that is the problem. It is consistently losing the "must win" games to teams around us. Far too many games where we barely showed up. In our death throes now I fear.
I haven't bothered to check but we seem to lose most games to teams around us 1-0. It's a horrible score to lose by. Most of those games we have just not turned up. Sad to say it but these players just do not have character or intelligence needed.
Don't give up. I just finished a course of radiotherapy for prostate. It was torrid but I got the all clear 2 days ago. These guys are real professionals (sadly unlike our football team)