I see both points of view.
They've eased to victories, but I've seen them struggle to motivate themselves out of 2nd gear in winning games.
I think having so many non-competitive games recently has been the reason for this. They go through the motions in games, and usually teams are beaten before kick off. City only have to play in 2nd gear to win most games. However, when a team does not totally shit their pants against them once they concede the first and the "defend at all costs" gameplan seemingly goes out of the window, City seem to struggle to find the motivation/urgency to put them out of their misery if their 2nd goal doesn't come soon after their 1st. Instead, doubt starts to creep in and they start passing the ball around without much purpose to attack/score. And they are waiting for the opposition to make another mistake, instead of forcing them into one. Who knows, maybe they are trying to conserve energy, being in 4 competitions, but such strategy comes at a risk.
With such a patient approach, you can be caught out in one moment of a loss of concentration. That's been the case against Newcastle, Palace and Leicester. And when they've fallen behind late, their reaction has been one of panic, and they've conceded another, which has been the most surprising thing.
Even against Huddersfield, I see where LTW is coming from. It was a comfortable 3-0 scoreline on paper. And all the stats will say so. And even watching it, City barely broke a sweat. But if you analyse it deeper, Pep was unhappy with the display, because their passing and combination play was VERY SLOW and laboured, and he knew that against a better side (with half an iota of counter attacking ambition), they would get caught out, if their performances didn't improve. Against Huddersfield, they won that game easily because Huddersfield made too many mistakes. Newcastle, however, made very few (City had 2 clear chances in each half). Without many massive mistakes, the onus was on City to show urgency and create chances. They struggled to motivate themselves out of 2nd gear to do so, having not been in 3rd or 4th gear since beating us.
