Since Daniel Farke was sacked on November 6, 2001, we have seen false dawns under Dean Smith and Johannes Hoff Thorup fade into decline, while Liam Manning’s tenure, in fairness perhaps due to his personal issues, never got off the ground.

At the end of last season, it seemed that at last a worthy successor to Farke had been found and the hyperbole about Philippe Clement was off the scale.

However, now serious questions are increasingly being asked, and while nobody wants to be here again, it seems that we are.

Worryingly, the two defeats in the last week have broadly similar features. In both games, City performed adequately enough in the first half but conceded early and were unable to reach similar levels in the second, while a raft of substitutions did little to change the game.

It is hard to believe that this is largely the same group of players who were one of the form teams after Christmas last year, capable of beating the eventual champions, winning consistently on the road and showing no fear of any opponent.

Last season, going a goal down would produce an instant response, but against Southampton, City played the last 20 minutes as if they were 1-0 up rather than 1-0 down as Saints managed the game with ease.

We have read a great deal about the two-week training camp that the players were subjected to before leaving for the off-season and the double sessions in pre-season, but it is possible to overtrain, and the way in which City seem to run out of steam on a regular basis suggests that this could be the case here.

Certainly, there is a fragility to the team at the moment, and I would be interested to know how many 50-50 challenges were lost against Southampton as City players were brushed aside again and again.

The fact that Dan Grimshaw was (correctly in my view) chosen as City’s man of the match in a home game tells its own story, with his opposite number having much less to do.

Another repetitive feature is the way in which possession is constantly surrendered, with Wednesday’s game showing the huge contrast between a confident team and one which appears to have lost its self-belief.

Both sides had significant periods of possession in the first half, but whereas Southampton were patient and happy to keep the ball until an opening appeared, City regularly tried to force passes which weren’t on and gave the ball away as a result.

Moving the ball quickly is integral to breaking sides down, as Saints showed with the winning goal, but it has to be done at the right times and whereas the visitors consistently did so, City did not.

It also seems from the post-match press conferences that have followed the run of defeats that Clement is increasingly seeing a different game to the one watched by those in the stands, and that is a massive concern.

While he still has credit in the bank with most fans, a failure to win on Saturday will drastically reduce that as City embark on a run of games against sides in the bottom half of the table, but there is a growing sentiment within the fanbase that to replace yet another manager with no other structural changes would simply be a case of applying a sticking plaster to a wound that needs stitches.

This is fast becoming another major test for Mark Attanasio and his team, who must be alarmed that their investment is showing so little in the way of return.

Norfolk Group’s target of being established in the Premier League within five years currently looks completely unrealistic and while there is still time to turn things around it will require some tough decisions to be made.