Ten years of Pep Guardiola ended with hugs and tears and a trophy case that needs a bigger room. Now Enzo Maresca walks into the Etihad dugout with none of that history and all of the expectation, and his first exam arrives fast: a home date with Bournemouth that used to be the kind of fixture City treated as a formality.
The club already showed its hand this summer, breaking the transfer record for Elliot Anderson, a signal that the ambition does not pause just because the manager changed. But new faces on a City team still figuring out its identity under a new voice is exactly the kind of mix that turns routine wins into nervy ones.
Bournemouth do not care about any of that narrative. They show up to play a City side mid transformation, and the number on the board says the champions are still favored to win by more than a goal. The question is whether that number reflects the City everyone still expects, or the City that is currently being built in real time.