Six new faces have arrived at Melwood this summer, which is what happens after a season spent looking over your shoulder.
Gareth Taylor has spent the window rebuilding rather than tinkering, and Saturday afternoon offered the first real look at whether the recruitment has landed.
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On the evidence of ninety minutes in the sunshine, it has.
Liverpool FC Women opened their summer schedule with a 5-0 win over Sheffield United at the AXA Melwood Training Centre, with Taylor fielding two entirely different teams either side of the interval to give minutes across the squad.
The standout was Mao Itamura.
The 19 year old, signed permanently from Feyenoord last month, marked her first appearance for the club with two goals inside twelve minutes of the restart.
The first was the pick of them, a strike from 25 yards after good work by Cornelia Kapocs that the goalkeeper barely moved for.
The second arrived on 57 minutes, Itamura exchanging passes with Beata Olsson before lashing home for 4-0.
It is exactly the kind of introduction her record suggested.
Itamura arrived on Merseyside as the reigning Women’s Eredivisie Player of the Year, having scored eight and assisted six last season while helping Feyenoord qualify for European football for the first time in the club’s history.
She wears the number 26 shirt and becomes the fifth of Taylor’s summer additions.
She was not the only new arrival to score.
Vivien Endemann, signed from Wolfsburg, volleyed home an Alejandra Bernabe cross on 16 minutes in a 45 minute outing that also featured a couple of driving runs down the right.
Alice Bergstrom had opened the scoring on eight minutes, and academy midfielder Izzie Breen rounded off the afternoon with a finish from more than 20 yards.
Natalia Ramos, the Spanish midfielder who completed her move from CD Tenerife this week to become the sixth signing of the window, played the opening 45 and went close with a low effort.
Sara Agrez, another summer addition, came on before the break and started the second half.
The Itamura and Fuka Nagano partnership is the one worth watching over the coming weeks.
Nagano is already established in the Liverpool midfield, and adding Itamura’s directness ahead of her gives Taylor a technically sharp Japanese core to build around after a campaign in which survival was the ceiling rather than the target.
There is plenty still to come before any of it counts.
Liverpool host Leicester City next weekend, with a public friendly against Durham at St Helens on 30 August, before the Women’s Super League season opens away at Charlton Athletic on 6 September.
Five goals against WSL2 opposition proves little on its own, but the new arrivals could hardly have asked for a better first hour.