Marcus Rashford believes his side have to forget about their top four hopes - and instead start playing like Manchester United again.
The Red Devils are currently enduring their worst run of form for 30 years, and suffered their seventh defeat in their last nine games on Wednesday night against arch-rivals Manchester City.
Despite a bright start from Ole Gunnar Solskjaer's side, they were undone by two second-half goals from Bernardo Silva and Leroy Sane.
And while the victory moved City back to the top of the Premier League table, the defeat for United leaves them sixth, three points behind Chelsea, who currently occupy the final Champions League place.
“We haven’t been playing like Man United and that’s not right,” the England international told Sky Sports afterwards.
“The bare minimum it should be is to work hard and give your all for the badge, for the supporters, for the fans. And just for the club, but it's important as well to give it for yourself, because it’s been a tough road to get where we were.
”We never expected to be in this position, but we got there and to be not putting in those performances we were at the beginning of January, it’s disappointing for the players. The last couple of weeks, we know what’s been going wrong and it’s just a matter of putting it back to how it was and mentality and willingness to run for your team.“
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“We lost the game,” the forward added. “What’s important is this game, I’ve always said it’s more than just a game. Forget the league, forget the top four, this game you don’t lose and, today they’ve come here and they’ve beaten us and it’s disappointing as a Man United fan.
”It’s more just getting used to doing it on the pitch because we’ve shown that we can do it. We’ve shown ourselves, we’ve shown the manager and the fans, they know that we can do it and that’s what is the most disappointing thing because we’re not doing it and we have to get to the bottom of it and start performing like Man United .
“Forget the top four, forget Champions League next season. We have to play like Man United for ourselves.”
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