Benitez has had an instant impact. The team have now won five games this season after he guided them to a 3-1 victory over Henan Jianye on Sunday.

The former Liverpool and Real Madrid manager also managed to get a performance out of Yannick Carrasco, who had fallen out with Choi. The Belgian scored from the spot and was vital to one of Benjamin Moukandjo’s brace. Benitez’s former Napoli player, Marek Hamsik, also impressed.

Call it a honeymoon, new manager bounce or a breath of fresh air, hiring Benitez for a reported second highest salary in the world has paid immediate dividends.

That’s the hope with all new appointments, but fresh starts are not always positive.

Choi has replaced Quique Sanchez Flores at Shanghai Shenhua, a team that only won three of their first 15 games, and his first game was a Shanghai derby against champions Shanghai SIPG away at Shanghai Stadium.

Shenhua fans would be entitled to feel sick of fresh starts by now. Choi is their eighth manager in six seasons and the problems may go deeper than the dugout. The South Korean’s personal record is even worse, with stints at Tianjin Tianhai, Dalian and now Shenhua in the last six months.

The boardroom has been freshened up at Hongkou Stadium but it’s the return of Zhou Jun, most recently at Dalian where he combined so underwhelmingly with Choi, who is the fresh face. Shenhua fans have bemoaned this return, but he has already been busy in the transfer market.

Zhou’s first order of business has been to bring in striker Kim Shin-wook from Choi’s former team in South Korea, Jeonbuk Hyundai Motors. The pair won the K-League and AFC Champions League together.

He will be followed by Roma’s Stephen El Shaarawy, who has arrived in Shanghai ahead of sealing a permanent move to Shenhua.

It’s expected that West Ham United’s Austrian international striker Marko Arnautovic will be the Brazilian’s replacement at SIPG, where it will be one in, one out for their foreign quota.

That’s not a problem for Guangzhou Evergrande either, who are naturalising foreign footballers rather than dealing with the headache of who they will register. It’s not that easy for all of the CSL teams, though, and Shenhua will have to decide how to fit six players into four foreigner spots.

Shaarawy and Kim will expect to be included, so who misses out from Odion Ighalo, Fredy Guarin, Gio Moreno and Oscar Romero?

Picking the right foreigners is one thing; keeping them onside is quite another, and that was something Choi failed to do at Dalian. Changing that in Shanghai will be key to keeping the side in the top flight this season.

A fresh face in Shenzhen did his best to keep the newcomers’ hopes of remaining a top flight team at the end of the season. John Mary, signed from Meizhou Hakka in the week, started his Shenzhen account with a goal. It took 95 minutes but it a salvaged a draw away at Hebei China Fortune.

New signings can bring fresh impetus on the pitch and they can do so in the stands. Yaya Toure, newly at Qingdao Huanghai, had an immediate effect. A crowd of 21, 286 turned up for the former Barcelona and Manchester City man’s first game, which is more than double what they have been getting of late.

If he can keep up those attendances and the team can keep up the form that has taken them to the top of the China League One table, it will be Qingdao looking to bring in fresh faces ahead of their first Chinese Super League season in 2020.

There’s a long way to go before that, though.