Hindsight is an exact science and the postmortem of South Africa's 3-1 loss to Algeria in their opening Group C clash at the African Nations Cup finals on Monday has brought forth plenty of armchair coaches with advice for national coach Shakes Mashaba.
The South Africans are battling for their lives in the tournament already after one match and will likely now have to beat both Senegal on Friday and Ghana next Tuesday to reach the quarterfinals.
For 67 minutes Mashaba's plan against Algeria worked to perfection, but as the pressure mounted, so did the panic in what is ultimately an inexperienced line-up and the game was lost in their execution.
There was not much to quibble over with Mashaba's team selection based on the players he had available, and the plan to soak up Algerian pressure and hit them on the counter-attack worked well.
The decision to risk teenage defender Rivaldo Coetzee's gammy knee backfired and he could now be missing for the remainder of the tournament.
The turning point was a missed penalty from Tokelo Rantie when Bafana Bafana were 1-0 up.
At 2-0, it would have forced the Algerians to attack more and leave space in their own half for South Africa's pacey forwards to exploit.
The miss from Rantie also had the effect of lifting the north African side and deflating the South Africans, who suddenly looked like rabbits caught in the headlights as Algeria grew in confidence.
Rantie was a strange choice of penalty-taker, he is not known as one and with more trusted individuals from 12 yards in the side such as Andile Jali and Oupa Manyisa, perhaps captain Dean Furman should have stepped forward to take the ball from him.
But also kudos to Rantie for taking on the responsibility and putting himself out there.
The goals Bafana conceded were all poor for one reasons or another - the first a lack of communication between goalkeeper Darren Keet and defender Thulani Hlatshwayo that saw the latter head into his own net.
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Faouzi Ghoulam was given too much space on the tight-hand side of Bafana's defence to blast the second goal past Keet, who probably could have done more to stop it, before the goalkeeper let the ball slip under his body for the third.
Those are errors from the keeper, but from the defence too who allowed the Algerians to get free shots on goal.
There was much to admire in this Bafana performance, but their problem, as almost always, is putting together a performance for 90 minutes.
Playing well in patches will win you games against minnow opposition, but not the best in Africa who stand ready to exploit any mistakes made.
South Africa showed enough to suggest they can beat Senegal and Ghana, but will need to execute better and have a little more luck on their side.
Nobody really expects them to get through this pool, so Mashaba does have a license to tell his players to be positive and "go for it".
