Bruno Fernandes has urged Manchester United to “hit back” as they try to get their season back on track.
The United captain scored a last-gasp winner against Rangers in the Europa League on Thursday, guaranteeing at least a knockout place in the play-offs and leaving them on the brink of automatic qualification for the last 16.
However, United is having a hard time in the Premier League.
They are 13th in the table, seven points clear of the top half of the table and Fulham, who they play at Craven Cottage on Sunday.
According to the Opta supercomputer, the highest United can finish in the table is seventh, although they only have a 0.3% chance of finishing there, with fourteenth the most likely finishing position (17.6%).
United have lost six of their last nine Premier League matches (W2 D1), while they have not had a run of seven defeats in ten league games in the same season since the 1988/89 season.
One of the Red Devils' biggest problems is a leaky defence, as they have trailed 1-0 in eight of their last nine top-flight games. Since Ruben Amorim's first game on November 24, no team has conceded more first goals than them (eight, equal to Southampton).
“The reality is that to play here you have to have that pressure, you have to have the balls to play for this club. That's what it is,” Fernandes said.
“You have to feel that at every moment, in every match, it is a new opportunity to get us back to the position we deserve.
“Unfortunately, there have been too many ups and downs for us this season and every time it looks like we're getting there, we get another blow and go down.
“What we have to do is every time we take a hit and go down, we have to get up and try to hit back.”
Following the Red Devils' 3-1 defeat to Brighton in the Premier League last weekend, Amorim boldly claimed they were “arguably the worst team in the history of Manchester United”, although he later admitted he should not have made those comments .
Asked how he feels about Amorim's comments, Fernandes said: “I don't want to hear my manager saying certain things about the team because I know he doesn't feel that.
But he has made himself part of that and if the manager makes himself part of what he says, no one can be angry or disappointed by that.
“When he says 'the worst team in Manchester' he's talking about the position we're in and if you look at where we are in the league we're in the worst position we've ever been in. So you have to take it. That's unfortunately the reality.
“We have been in this position for a long time and the club does not belong there. But we have to accept that and understand that we have to push ourselves to much bigger things and higher positions.”
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