Manchester City manager Pep Guardiola believes he can rely on new defenders Ruben Dias and Nathan Ake because the pair "do not make mistakes".
The summer arrivals lined up along side each other in Saturday's 1-0 win over Arsenal in the absence of Aymeric Laporte, though Ake was largely deployed at left-back with Kyle Walker taking a central role in a fluid City line-up.
It is something which is likely to be repeated in Wednesday's Champions League meeting with Porto as both Laporte and Benjamin Mendy are set for spells on the sidelines with what were said to be muscular problems – Laporte for up to 10 days and Mendy potentially for a month.
City have been playing without a striker in recent weeks with Gabriel Jesus also sidelined, and Guardiola admitted he did not yet know when the Brazilian will return.
"Gabriel still has problems," he said. "The injury he has is in his quadriceps. I think we have to be calm and cautious because he's still not on the field training.
"This is why we struggled a lot from the beginning (of the season), because of the lack of preparation and the number of absences, and that is why we are not able to play at the level for 90 minutes consistently.
"But we have had good news with Bernardo (Silva) back, Phil (Foden) very good, Riyad (Mahrez) outstanding and Rodri very good. I'm satisfied with what we've done so far with the situation we have."
