Sunday saw summer arrivals Djordje Petrovic, Adrien Truffert, Bafode Diakite, Alex Jimenez and Junior Kroupi all start for Bournemouth at the Etihad Stadium.
The former four were handed a particularly stern test in dealing with a flying Erling Haaland – who punished their defensive lapses in the first half and scored a brace.
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Haaland was able to exploit times when one of the centre back pair stepped into midfield to press, with both of his goals seeing him move through the spaces created by this.
The second goal, too, saw Haaland played onside by Truffert as he wasn’t able to step up to the back line in time, with the Norwegian timing his run perfectly to catch the Frenchman out and play himself onside.
Manchester City's Erling Haaland (left) and Bournemouth's Bafode Diakite (Image: Martin Rickett/PA Wire)
While frustrating, this experience against the league and arguably the world’s best striker will prove crucial for the development of the team and help the new signings improve to the level of the Premier League, Adams said.
“They have so many quality players on the field, and you look at the types of players that they brought off the bench at that stage [late] in the game, it's unbelievable,” Adams said.
“But again, it's also experience. There's nothing that you can exchange for experience.
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“And they have so many guys that have been in so many different situations throughout their careers, played under so many veteran players in the past and learned from them and were guided through that.
“Whereas we're a young team, an ambitious team for sure, but we need games like this to be able to be challenged and grow from.
“So, again, we're going to take moments from this game and be able to use it next week at Villa Park, and that's going to help our team.
“But for new guys that are coming into the team, like Alex Jimenez, Bafo and other players that haven't played in the Premier League before, this is what the standard is and we need to be able to prepare for that.”
(Image: Martin Rickett/PA Wire)
Adams believes the new arrivals and the squad as a whole has already progressed a lot so far this season – and that’s evidenced by their strong start.
“One of the biggest things is, I think at times last season we let games get away from us that we weren't able to quite claw ourselves back into it, where I think this season you can already see we go down a goal, we have the competitive nature and the maturity now to manage games and be able to get ourselves back in the game,” he said.
“Having a game like Crystal Palace, where we were up and we probably should have taken [more] points from that game.
“Learning from that game and knowing that what we need to do to manage that, and we did that the following week against Forest.
“So, we're slowly taking things away and taking experiences from each scenario that we've been in, but there's been a lot of growth.”