Joe Root assured the English public there was no need to press the panic button after going 2-0 down in the Ashes but his message has fallen on deaf ears.
Former stars haven't been shy in giving their hot takes following a demoralising loss in Adelaide, leading to infighting within the Poms' cricket fraternity.
Australia's pace battery of Mitchell Starc, Josh Hazelwood and Pat Cummins was expected to cause the English batsmen plenty of problems but Nathan Lyon has been the surprise packet of the summer.
High on confidence and bowling with more venom than ever, the off-spinner has taken 11 wickets in two tests on pitches not renowned for offering much help to the tweakers.
England's inability to handle Lyon has baffled former England test and one-day player Owais Shah, who riled up ex-teammates with his views from the armchair.
Ravi Bopara, Alex Tudor and Chris Tremlett all chimed in after Shah's Twitter attack, and none of them were on his side.
Root was the only English batsman to pass 50 in Adelaide, scoring 67 in the second dig.
His classy innings came to an end early on the fifth morning when he edged Josh Hazlewood to Tim Paine behind the stumps and he was devastated not to carry on the fight he showed in tough conditions on Tuesday night to give his side a sniff of victory.
The innings was another example of Root's failure to convert a half century into a triple figure score. A poor conversion rate is the biggest question mark over the English skipper, who has now scored 34 Test fifties but only 13 hundreds.
Compare that to contemporaries like Steve Smith (21 fifties, 21 centuries), Virat Kohli (15 fifties, 20 centuries) and Kane Williamson (25 fifties, 17 centuries) and Root falls behind in the conversation of who the best batsman in the world is.