Marco Silva has conceded his future as Everton manager is “not in my hands”, while the club’s director of football, Marcel Brands, insisted unity and stability were needed at Goodison Park.

The Everton manager finally received a degree of boardroom backing on Friday when Brands gave an in-house interview claiming the hierarchy supported Silva’s efforts to improve a sorry campaign. Silva later maintained he had not been given an ultimatum by the majority shareholder, Farhad Moshiri but, with a visit to second-placed Leicester on Sunday followed by a midweek trip to Liverpool, his position is precarious in the extreme.

Everton fans joined in with Norwich chants of, “You’re getting sacked in the morning” following last Saturday’s dismal home defeat and Silva said of the crowd’s reaction: “I will not lie to you, it was tough.” But he was unable to say whether he expected to be in charge for Everton’s next home game against Chelsea.

“I don’t lose time thinking about that,” he said. “What I can tell you about the situation: I will do my job every single day. One member of our board and our sporting director answered more or less this question. If you ask many managers where they will be in two weeks then sometimes in football it is not easy to speak out. I cannot answer directly about a situation that is not in my hands. It is not the type of question you can ask me. I am not the right person to answer to you.”

Brands cited injuries and VAR errors as evidence of Silva’s misfortune and the manager is likely to be without four central midfielders at Leicester through injury.

Brands admitted results had to improve. “If you look at the ranking now and the results, I think we all expect better,” he said. “I think we have been a little bit unlucky with the VAR decisions and some injuries but still we have a very good squad and we have to improve our results. That is also what Marco is working very hard on to get that done together with the players and I think as a board we have to support that.

“We know in sport, as always, you have to perform – that’s for me, the manager, the players, for everyone. It’s also important, especially in this club, after a couple of years of instability, to stick together in this situation. I think the most important thing is that the squad feels they can improve and that the staff feel they can improve the situation. We all have to support them. As a director of football, as a board member, we as a board are united in that.”

Brands claimed the Brazil forward Richarlison, who was brought to the club by Silva, was close to signing a five-year contract extension. “It’s a difficult period but I still think we have to look positive ahead and I try to do that also. One of the positive things during this week was that we are now busy with the last details of extending the contract of one of our key players, Richarlison, until 2024. That’s something positive, especially for the long term.”