Manchester United will no doubt be dipping into the transfer market in January, with midfield reinforcements the first point of order for interim manager Ralf Rangnick.
However, in order to accommodate some new faces - with Marseille man Boubacar Kamara among those linked with a January switch - the club may need to offload some of their fringe players.
It's not necessarily a case of needing to sell in order to buy, but rather a situation where a bloated squad needs some trimming just to keep United in good health for the short and longer term.
Before that, though, Rangnick may need to call upon his fringe players for a busy run of games in the lead-up to the new year, but he needs to avoid a mistake his predecessors have made after doing the same.
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The packed festive schedule means the Premier League resembles an international tournament for a few days, with the next game permanently just around the corner.
While postponements have seen United's schedule trimmed slightly, a run of three games in a week beginning on Boxing Day, and will need to make full use of their squad.
However, as in the case of a major tournament, it would be a mistake to only look at performances over that spell: top players can continue to deliver during a busy run, but it can also be an opportunity for lesser lights to shine brighter against opponents who aren't quite as equipped for the relentlessness.
In much the same way that you wouldn't sign a player off the back of a World Cup without having been impressed by them consistently beforehand, United shouldn't overvalue performances over the Christmas and New Year cycle, but they've fallen into this trap before.
Back in December 2018, United were in a similar position to where they are now, sitting outside the top four and with a new interim manager preparing for his first window in charge.
Ole Gunnar Solskjaer began by making some changes to the starting line-up, and one of those saw Phil Jones brought back in for wins on December 22 and on Boxing Day.
There's no doubting Jones was a breath of fresh air, and he remained a regular during the 2018-19 season when healthy, but the new contract he signed that season has long looked like a mistake with injury and signings ensuring the defender hasn't featured since January 2020.
A year before Jones' brief resurgence, Jesse Lingard enjoyed a rich vein of goalscoring form under Jose Mourinho.
Between December 2, 2017 and January 5, 2018, the England international scored seven goals in nine games. In the three years since, he has netted just 11 times in a United shirt.
Lingard wasn't handed a new deal off the back of that run of form, having already agreed an extension earlier in 2017, but it remains a warning sign when it comes to reading into purple patches around the turn of the year.
United let attacking midfielder Henrikh Mkhitaryan leave that January in a swap deal for forward Alexis Sanchez, and decided against adding more competition for Lingard in the summer, and floundered as the goal supply ran dry.
Rangnick will doubtless have his own ideas about the areas in which United are lacking, and those in which the squad is overstocked.
However, one would hope he is sensible enough to treat the coming games as a continued assessment rather than an standalone audition as he decides who stays and who goes.
As United have discovered before, you often don't immediately feel the benefit of good decisions or the pain of bad ones.
Rangnick might only be an interim manager, but fans will hope they can trust him to build something which lasts, rather than simply acting on instinct.
