The escape windows for Nasreddine Nabi to give life to his first season at Kaizer Chiefs remain open despite the damage already done in the league.
Nabi's biggest issue at Chiefs has been the stop-start tendency on the results board, with the side yet to win three in a row this season.
Worse is that Nabi's Amakhosi have looked vulnerable to any opponent as proven by nine defeats already in the league.
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At this rate, it will likely turn into another campaign of double numbers on the L column.
Alarming about nine defeats is how often it has happened in the recent times of darkness at Naturena.
For the first 20 years of the PSL era, Chiefs lost that many games only thrice, but in all those three seasons they made up for it by delivering at least a trophy in each of those campaigns.
Yet, since the 2018/19 season, they have lost at least nine on five occasions with the only saving grace campaign being when they let the league title slip through their fingers on the last day during COVID times.
Nabi will do no better to reduce that defeats dosage having surrendered three points more than he has won them at nine defeats and eight wins.
Richards Bay FC, Mamelodi Sundowns (twice), SuperSport United (twice), Orlando Pirates, Golden Arrows, Cape Town City, and Polokwane City have all beaten Chiefs in the league.
That is, one short of half the teams in the Betway Premiership.
However, to wipe off all the misery building up in the league and earn the respect of doing what Muhsin Ertugral and Ernst Middendorp did while at Chiefs, Nabi must now win the Nedbank Cup.
That will be his escape route.
Ertugral lost nine in the league on the way to a ninth-place finish in the 2001/02 season in what was the last 34-game league campaign, but all that didn't matter with the BP Top 8, Coca-Cola Cup and CAF Cup Winners' Cup all delivered to Naturena.
Then, in the 2006/07 campaign, it was 10 defeats in the league coupled with a ninth-place finish, but Middendorp lifted the SAA Supa 8 before he was replaced by Kosta Papic towards the end of that season.
The 2008/09 season was a fair third-place finish despite 10 defeats and came with success in the MTN8 during Ertugral's second stint at the club.
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Chiefs are in the semi-finals of the Nedbank Cup and should Nabi guide them to success, it will end 10 years of waiting for silverware.
Whatever that will have happened in the league at the end of the season will be forgiven for the Amakhosi fans, who have endured a painful decade of drought.