After back-to-back defeats against Swansea and Southampton, the five remaining are now nothing short of seismic.

What on earth is going on?

How can it be that virtually the very same squad that Philippe Clement worked wonders with last season now look totally incapable of winning a Championship match?

Having been in south Wales, but not Carrow Road in midweek, the two displays sounded almost identical as City banged their head against a pair of brick walls but ultimately came away with nothing.

After shipping four goals against Middlesbrough and Bolton before the international break, Clement’s side have admittedly looked marginally more solid against two promotion-chasing opponents since their return.

But with no Mohamed Toure, plus those familiar defensive frailties still lingering, it’s now four league defeats on the spin.

The mood among the fanbase is understandably turning and, with another loss against Portsmouth back at Carrow Road on Saturday, things could begin to get very toxic indeed.

This season was supposed to be different.

After Clement’s heroics since arriving in Norfolk last November, this was meant to be the year when we embarked on a genuine surge back towards the top flight.

But now 10 games in, and for whatever reason, any aspirations of promotion look a million miles away after a start that is now beginning to have increasingly concerning parallels with what happened under Liam Manning 12 months ago.

Is Clement the one to blame?

Or is it back to Ben Knapper, who opted for continuity over the summer and whose raft of expensively-recruited signings have now been thrust back into the spotlight?

Matej Jurasek, Amankwah Forson and Jakov Medic were all total disasters.

And let’s be honest, the jury still remains very much out on the likes of Ante Crnac and Mathias Kvistgaarden, while the number of injuries picked up elsewhere suggests our sporting director is fundamentally failing to recruit players capable of dealing with the rigours of Championship football.

But equally, this is largely the same squad Clement catapulted up the table last season – and we’d be lying to ourselves if we claimed we didn’t go into this campaign confident of more of the same.

What we saw from January onwards was surely so much more than a mere new manager bounce, which makes the way this season has started both so puzzling and frustrating in equal measure.

The spine of the team that took the second half of the season by storm has remained virtually identical, built on the foundations of Ruairi McConville and Jose Cordoba’s partnership with the likes of Pelle Mattsson, Anis Ben Slimane and either Toure or Jovon Makama – all good signings to be fair to Knapper – ahead of them.

Yes, there have been a few tweaks here and there, but I don’t think any of us envisaged the same group of players under Clement enduring such a dramatic nosedive in form.

For all the credit he has in the bank, Clement’s post-match excuses and insistence we deserved more in games are beginning to become tiresome – while his comments regarding substitutes on Wednesday night was bizarre to say the least.

But equally, this is clearly a good manager who demands high standards – and may finally be starting to come to terms with the lack of depth in his squad.

So yes, Knapper obviously deserves criticism and many – probably the majority – of his signings have proved to be short of the mark.

But while saying that, there seems no logical reason for why Clement is failing to get a similar tune from those very same players we were all waxing lyrical about six months ago.

Confidence is now clearly an issue and in front of an increasingly impatient Carrow Road crowd on Saturday, it will be fascinating to see how these players fare.

The prospect of another defeat is unthinkable and the repercussions if this rut continues into the Watford game at the end of this month.

Forget the next five games – it’s a fortnight that looks set to define City’s season and, more broadly, the futures of either Clement or Knapper, or perhaps even both.