This is my first post on this board, so hello everybody. City fan from the US here.
It seems to me that Pep is managing the run in at this point, not just the present game. We have so many matches crunched together that we can't afford a Pyrrhic victory. The lineup that he sent out didn't concede in the first half and dominated the second half outside of a weird mistake as a result of a ball the defenders thought went out. We could have just as easily flipped the scoreline with how the second half went. In which case we would have taken the first leg while resting important players.
Now, it didn't work out that way. But we only conceded one and are very much in this. I don't necessarily think his plan was a bad one. We'll see how it plays out from here. But I have a hard time seeing us conceding at home and not scoring a couple with our A squad. Especially if Kane is out for any length of time. It may be a bit narrow view of Pep's strategy to look at the single game plan without the context of the rest of our fixtures.
Sensible first post. Just googled phyrrhic.