The Newcastle United dressing room is markedly "different" to the one Rafa Benitez inherited three years ago, who accepts it has taken time to gradually rebuild the Magpies back into a top-flight side following relegation.
Senior players including Andros Townsend , Moussa Sissoko, Georginio Wijnaldum and Daryl Janmaat left in 2016 - and, although the combined £76million their sales generated helped Benitez construct a squad which went on to win the Championship, reassembling a Premier League-quality team with limited funds has subsequently taken four transfer windows already, and remains a work in progress.
Benitez admits that replacing the "important players" who were sold following demotion has proven to be a difficult task, particularly given the constraints placed upon his budget over the past two years.
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However, in Benitez's opinion the crucial difference between the United squad who were relegated and the team who finished 10th last season - and are on course to secure survival against this term - is that every Newcastle player currently at the club genuinely cares about the Magpies, something which could not necessarily be said about every player at St James' Park back in 2015/16.
But it is not just a culture shift - with the personality a key characteristic of the players he has recruited - which Benitez views as a crucial difference between his current squad and the one he inherited.
The injury situation has also radically improved, too, considering that 13 players were in the treatment room when Benitez first arrived - the Magpies used eight different left-backs across the course of that season, for example, so acute was the crisis - while there have been significantly fewer fitness problems this term.
Soft-tissue injuries afflicted the squad during the 2015/16 campaign, but the number of cases of such fitness problems have been significantly reduced over the past three years thanks to changes implemented by Benitez and his medical team.
“It’s not the same and I will tell you why. When we just arrived, we had 13 injuries, something that you couldn’t see," Benitez replied when asked on the differences between his current team and the Newcastle squad he inherited from Steve McClaren in March 2016.
"I remember that we had to play with [Vurnon] Anita as a left full-back, and after with [Jack] Colback, because we didn’t have a left full-back or a holding-midfielder.
"We had to manage and I think we were unlucky because we played against Sunderland and Norwich very early [after I joined]. If you had more time, maybe we could have approached these games with more options.
"Now almost everybody is fit, and we have some players that now have some experience in the Premier League.
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"We lost very, very important players when we were relegated. You see they are now playing in the Premier League - Townsend, Sissoko, Janmaat, Wijnaldum. They are good players.
"We lost something but, little by little, we were building something new. What do we have now? We have a team that we know, and everybody knows, that every player cares, and everybody is focused - all these things. So it is different.
"I am not saying it is better or worse, but it is different. Those players, they were very good players in the Premier League, but in an environment that was not ideal.
"These players are in an ideal environment at the moment, and maybe you are missing some of these players that had the experience and the quality to make a difference in the Premier League."
The lack of top-flight experience in the Newcastle squad was something Benitez regularly referred to last season, and was - in the manager's view - one of the reasons why United struggled throughout the first half of the 2017/18 campaign.
But, now that the majority of his squad are into at least their second Premier League season as Newcastle players, they have learned how to manage top-flight matches more effectively.
The Magpies squad have also grown in terms of self-belief following confidence-boosting wins against Manchester United in February 2018, and defending Premier League champions Manchester City two months ago.
Such victories underline the spirit and commitment within the squad, and that was again shown by the four points Newcastle rescued from losing positions against Everton and AFC Bournemouth earlier this month.
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“When we first came we had too many injuries and it wasn’t our team yet. But you can see that against Tottenham we only had 10 players on the pitch and we beat them 5-1. We were growing," Benitez added.
“Two years ago in the Championship you could see the belief and togetherness in the team. Last season, to finish 10th was exactly the same.
"The players care; they work hard for the shirt and for the fans. [The Everton game] was another example. These players work really hard. Without that spirit, we wouldn’t have won [against Everton]."
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