Yep. We'd never think to do things like this because we're City fans who want to win every game - but, as much as Pep loves the club, he's been in the business long enough to know that sometimes you do need to give certain underperforming players enough rope. Dias, Stones, Akanji, and Ake will all be back in the team for the Spurs game and we'll be playing a lot deeper than usual to stop counters. The goals we have scored in recent games have all been very different to our usual methods and he's clearly using these games to work something out that will pay dividends down the line. He's done this every year - like persisting with the inverted RB during the autumn/winter of 2022 even though it wasn't working, then suddenly in February/March it clicked and we were unstoppable - and he's doing it again.I have an outlandish theory, which is probably almost certainly not true, that the injuries to Dias, Stones and Ake are actually relatively minor. They could have played in the last few games if they really had to, but Pep decided not to so they could pull out of international duty. He’ll use the next two weeks to work on a new defensive system for the rest of the season in training to mitigate the loss of Rodri, and we’ll see all three appear against Spurs. Wishful thinking, I know.