Bruno Fernandes has urged Manchester United to "punch back" as they look 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 play-off spot and leaving them on the brink of automatic qualification for the last 16.

However, in the Premier League, United are struggling.

They sit 13th in the table, seven points off 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, though they only have a 0.3% chance of finishing there, with 14th their 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 losses across 10 league games within the same season since doing so in the 1988-89 campaign.

One of the Red Devils' biggest problems is a leaky defence, as they have gone 1-0 down in eight of their last nine top-flight matches. Since Ruben Amorim’s first game on November 24, no team has conceded first more times than them (eight, level with Southampton).

"The reality is to play here you have to have that pressure, you have to have the balls to play for this club — that is what it is," Fernandes said.

"You have to feel that in every moment, in every game, it is a new chance to bring us back to the position we deserve.

"Unfortunately for us this season there have been too many ups and downs and every time we look like getting there, we get punched again and go down.

"What we have to do is every time we take a punch and go down, we must get up and try to punch back."

Following the Red Devils' 3-1 defeat to Brighton in the Premier League last weekend, Amorim boldly claimed they were "the worst team maybe in the history of Manchester United", though he later acknowledged he should not have made those comments.

Asked how he felt about the comments made by Amorim, Fernandes said: "I don't want to hear my manager saying certain things about the team because I know he doesn't feel it.

"But he made himself part of that and when the manager makes himself part of what he's saying, no one can get angry or disappointed by it.

"When he says: 'the worst team in Manchester', he speaks about the position we are in and when you look at where we are in the league, we are in the worst position we've ever been. So, you have to take it. That's the reality, unfortunately.

"We are in this position for a long time and the club doesn't belong there. But we have to accept that and understand we need to push ourselves to much bigger things and higher positions."