The Champions League is back. Only, for the first time since 2013, Manchester City are not in it.
As the last-16 gets underway on Tuesday evening, Pep Guardiola and his players must face up to the fact that their only involvement in it can be a watching brief after their worst ever performance with the club resulted in an early elimination.
A dismal 22nd out of 36 in the league phase of a new format led to a play-off with Real Madrid, and the Blues were second best over both legs to suffer a 6-3 aggregate exit.
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The priority for the rest of the season is to make sure they are back in the Champions League next season to have another crack at it. A top-four finish in the Premier League will guarantee it, and given how the co-efficients have worked UEFA may well award five places to English clubs.
Victory over Spurs last week was important for City in keeping fourth place with 11 games to go, and also giving confidence to the team that they can get the results that they need. With five points between third and tenth though, they cannot afford too many slips.
The fixture list also gives them hope. After a trip to Nottingham Forest on Saturday where victory would see them leapfrog Nuno's men into third, City do not play any of the current top six again for the rest of the season.
In their remaining ten games, they only play four of the current top 10 and their four away games are at 9th (Fulham), 14th (United), Everton (16th) and Southampton (19th).
Should that be enough to get them into next season's Champions League, rule changes by UEFA mean that City will not face a tougher draw despite their lower league finish.
Under the old rules, only domestic champions qualified for Pot One to reward teams for winning their respective leagues. However, under the new format Pot One is decided by UEFA co-efficient and City's place in second across a five-year average means that one bad year this time out will not be enough to see them drop down next season.
That may still give them a more difficult draw than they would have had in the older format, given they will still have to play two teams from Pot One as part of their eight group games.
But, it means that their draw will not be any tougher than it was this season as a result of not winning the Premier League title. Providing they can qualify, City's league performance this season will not penalise them in Europe next year.
