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Manchester City have rid themselves of some of their most-used players from last season, so how do they stop playing like that side?
Hugo Viana was brought in to oversee change at Manchester City when he arrived as Txiki Begiristain's replacement. The new sporting director was told to give an honest assessment of the squad's shortcomings last season - and then sort them out for the new campaign.
Talent was quickly identified, with four players arriving before the Club World Cup. To balance all of the new arrivals, there has been a drain of the experienced heads that have given City so much success under Pep Guardiola.
Not just that though, the start of this campaign has marked a real departure from even the last 12 months. Ederson, Ilkay Gundogan and Manu Akanji, who have all left the club in the last 48 hours, were used the fourth most, sixth most, and eighth most respectively last season by Guardiola.
More often that not, they were in the team scrapping to reach Champions League qualification last season but all have since been told to move elsewhere.
From the most-used 11 players last year, Josko Gvardiol (first) hasn't kicked a ball due to injury this season. Neither have Savinho (11th) and Mateo Kovacic (10th) while Phil Foden (ninth) has missed two games and started none.
Just one of that 11 have started all three games this season - Erling Haaland. Some of that can't be helped, and you would expect Gvardiol, Foden and Savinho to start getting games when they recover from their respective problems.
Nevertheless, the changes are stark. The players who took the blame for last season cannot cop it now because they aren't playing.
That puts the pressure onto the new players, the ones that have been primed for the rebuild that Viana is leading with Guardiola with £350m spent in the last two transfer windows.
On the pitch, the lineups are pretty unrecognisable from relatively recently with Kevin De Bruyne having also departed at the beginning of the summer. Guardiola is working out his best XI for this year from a largely different crop of players.
The problem from the opening three gameweeks is that the team is suffering the same poor results and setbacks in matches. Even if the way they are conceding goals isn't identical, they still find themselves unable to respond when things go against them and they are weaker than they need to be in both boxes.
Guardiola insists this is a waiting game and that he has seen many good things, and that may well be true. Viana could do with that being the case, because if the departing players have been seen as the issue then there is no excuse for the new recruits not being the solution.
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