Claudio Ranieri is under growing pressure after Leicester City slumped to a 3-0 home defeat by Manchester United. Kasper Schmeichel described Leicester’s performance as “unacceptable” and the club’s wider predicament as “embarrassing”, as he warned his team-mates that, if they did not improve, they would be relegated.

As United ended a run of three successive draws in the Premier League to close to within two points of fourth-placed Arsenal, Leicester lost for the fourth time in a row in the competition and the defending champions sit only one point above the relegation zone. Henrikh Mkhitaryan made the difference for United, putting them in front on 41 minutes and it was 3-0 and game over by the 49th minute.

Manchester United show ruthless streak to pile pressure on Leicester and Ranieri Read more

“For the first 40 minutes we played OK but after that it was unacceptable,” Schmeichel, Leicester’s goalkeeper, said. “It is not good enough and sums our season up at the moment.

“Let’s not talk about last season. It’s gone. There are a lot of factors that go into it but this season has not been good right from the start.

“We are a group of players low on confidence but not low on fight. It is not a comfortable situation. It has been terrible, embarrassing. It is time for each one of us – from the top to the bottom of this club – to stand up and be counted. If we don’t, we will be relegated.”

Ranieri, who faces a critical week in which Leicester face Derby County in the FA Cup and fellow strugglers Swansea City in the league – with a Champions League tie against Sevilla also to come – commented how “last season everything was right for us; this season everything is wrong”, but he maintained he had not lost the dressing room. “We are together,” he said. “If the players are unhappy, they can go and see the chairman but no one has done that.”

José Mourinho talked about how United’s ruthlessness had been decisive – they scored with their second, third and fourth clear chances – which was a change from many matches this season, and he said that he did not “want to be the manager of a team that plays very well, creates a lot of chances and doesn’t win matches”.

Mourinho also said there had been a change of perception in England about how to analyse a performance such as his team had put in here.

“My team is playing very well,” the manager said, after a 15th league game without defeat. “But for many, many years in my career – especially in this country – when my teams were ruthless and when my teams were phenomenal defensively and very good on the counterattack, I listened week after week that it was not enough, in spite of winning the title three times. It looks like this season, to be phenomenal defensively and good on the counterattack, is art. It is a big change in England.”

On Mkhitaryan, whom Mourinho switched from the left flank to the No10 role midway through the first half, he said: “Yes, we improved [after the tactical change] but then, it’s his goal that changes the story of the game.

“Sometimes, when we don’t play players [as Mourinho did not with Mkhitaryan at the start of the season], we protect them and he was one of those players. He was adapting. And I could see not just what you see – because you see the magic things he can do on the pitch – but I also see other things that I want to see. He is playing really well.”