Weird game.
Everything that Dome is trying to do is more or less coming off - we have numerical superiority where it matters based on the phase of play, so we have a lot of the ball in the right areas. Where everything seems to break down is in those plays where we need our players to recognize what we are trying to do just a split-second faster than the other team does. Ironically, Montreal's goal was a good example of this.
From a tactical perspective, the main problem that I'm seeing is that the 4-4-2 diamond set up means that we take a long time to transition to a wide attacking formation. I lost count of the number of times that we held the ball in the center circle while Sweat or Tinny got up the field. Of course this also makes us really vulnerable to the counter attack.
The inverted wingers incarnation of the 4-3-3 suffered from the same issues against counter attacks, but the extra width up front meant that teams were able to create offensive space earlier in the attacking phase. The adjustment that Dome was supposedly responsible for at City was to adjust which players were responsible for supplying attacking width - instead of having fullbacks overlap for their inverted wingers, you would see the two 8s underlapping for true wingers, and fullbacks slotting into the center to make up numbers. The two 8s are generally higher upfield than the full backs, so this meant that attacking width came sooner than it did in the inverted wingers 4-3-3. Also the full backs ended up less drastically out of position on turnovers.
So I'm surprised that we aren't doing the same with our two 8s now. Mata definitely has the tendencies for that kind of role, less so Amagat / Ofori / whoever else would play on the other side of the diamond. Perhaps Ring. Or Castellanos if we trust him in the middle. Or Maxi if we drop Villa in as the 10.
Interestingly, we never changed shape AFAICT. And the adjustment that I suggested would require a ton of reprogramming for the number of games we have left. So I think we are left hoping that the right players come in (Medina, Ofori looked like he was able to move the ball more effectively than Amagat) or that we start to gain the familiarity which will give us an edge in those gridlocked situations we have been creating around the box.