As strongly electron-withdrawing aryl substituents were found to be incompatible with deprotonative metalation reactions using alkali metal bases, we investigated 1,3-diarylated dihydropentalenes featuring one unsubstituted five-membered ring for polarisation effects. An isomeric mixture of Ph2PnH2 (9H2) was readily prepared from CpH and chalcone following Griesbeck's protocol. Their deprotonation with LiNEt2 in THF proceeded smoothly to give Li2[Ph2Pn] (Li2 [9]) as SSIP in spectroscopically quantitative yield after 1.5 hours at room temperature (Scheme 5). We hypothesised that if exocyclic double bond formation was indeed due to allylic deprotonation competition, then installing a methyl substituent in the 1-position and blocking exocyclic deprotonation with an aryl substituent in the 3-position should avoid the issue. We