New-look Man City face Liverpool in Community Shield after summer of transformation

The last time Manchester City lined up at the King Power stadium, venue for Saturday’s Community Shield against Liverpool, they had Ferran Torres at the sharp point of their forward line.

Gabriel Jesus was playing off him, on the right. Once City had taken the lead, Raheem Sterling and Fernandinho came on to lend their experience to securing a 1-0 win over Leicester City.

That September day, Oleksandr Zinchenko stayed on the bench, his crucial contributions – notably setting up a goal on the last-day comeback that sealed the league title – saved up for the latter stages of the 2021-22 campaign.

Fast forward 10 months and the City who take their regular place as Premier League champions in the traditional curtain-raiser to the new season look very different.

Fernandinho, club captain until June, has returned to his native Brazil. Sterling has taken his stellar portfolio of talents – a goal almost every 180 minutes in his City career; close to 100 assists for the club – to Chelsea.

Jesus, impatient for a role as chief striker, has joined Arsenal, as has the industrious, versatile Zinchenko. Torres, meanwhile, is busy wondering if the churn of comings-and-goings at Barcelona, the club he moved to in January, is quite the opportunity he anticipated when City sold him, listening to the young Spaniard’s desire for guarantees of more regular starts.

Stacked together, those five departures represent a transformation that can make this close-season look as radical as any since Pep Guardiola came to City as manager in 2016 with a clear vision of how he wanted to develop the squad.

Much-loved club icons have departed most summers – Yaya Toure, Vincent Kompany, David Silva, Sergio Aguero – but, like Fernandinho, there was an