And it’s obviously a change in direction. I’ll be fascinated by how Pelach’s influence shows as he does more work on the training ground. The hierarchy has obviously been doing plenty of homework because they knew exactly who they wanted and didn’t hang around in getting him in place.

He has learned from Pep Guardiola but it’s important to remember that Guardiola wouldn’t ask this Stoke squad to do the same things that he is asking from his players at Manchester City. But it is a squad with a decent balance and forwards who can get behind, get around teams and thread passes through, too.

So pick the best players that you’ve got available in their best roles in a system that suits them and is balanced. It’s as simple as that. That’s your starting point and we should set our ambitions high. Let’s see what happens next.

Players were evidently confused that day and so was everyone else in the stadium. Out of nowhere, and having gone through pre-season with a 4-3-3 system – and that had got him good results to end last year, Schumacher switched to wing-backs, with three centre-halves marking one striker. We were exposed out wide and there were so many in-game changes, including moving Josh Laurent to centre-back, and Ben Gibson was the only outfield player who finished in the same position as he’d started.

That match was on the back of a desperately disappointing second-half at Watford, when Stoke’s soft underbelly – that Ryan Shawcross spoke about needing fixing after the game on Tuesday – was tickled and kicked. It was a decent week going into the international break but when Stoke were then banged out against Oxford United, it was concerning.

The goal we conceded was a head scratcher. We should have stopped the ball coming over and then we didn’t deal with the cross at all. It’s something to fix near the top of Narcis Pelach’s to-do list. But we didn’t really seem like we had a plan of how to score either and, regardless of the changes in personnel that have happened since June, you’d expect to see more of a structure in how we were playing by this point.