Ruud van Nistelrooy conceded "the pressure is on" as he urged his struggling Leicester City team to "take the initiative" in their bid to stay in the Premier League.

Leicester sit 19th, five points from safety, after turning in a disappointing display in a 2-0 defeat to West Ham on Thursday.

The Foxes never threatened their hosts at the London Stadium, where Leicester accumulated only 0.38 expected goals and had just two shots on target.

Tomas Soucek's opener and Jannik Vestergaard's own goal settled the contest, and Leicester have lost 11 of their last 12 Premier League games. According to Opta's supercomputer, the Foxes now have just a 2.4% chance of staying up.

In his 14 games in charge, Van Nistelrooy has picked up just seven points, three fewer than previous Leicester boss Steve Cooper managed this season (10 in 12 games).

"We are in a situation where we are not winning games and we are in a situation where we are in the bottom three," said Van Nistelrooy, as reported by the Premier League's official website.

"The pressure is on. The way to get out of this is to move forward literally on the pitch as well.

"It doesn't mean you have to go and press in a one v one situation, but we have to take initiative. We cannot wait and sit back. That is the situation we are in.

"The goals [we] concede are easy goals. It's a reflection of how we played in the first half. If you see the difference in the first and the second half, how we as a team moved forward to press the opponent, play with urgency after winning duels, in the first half we were waiting way too much.

"We have to put the opponent under pressure in the right way."

Leicester actually won 54.4% of their duels, but were firmly second best to West Ham, who claimed back-to-back league wins for the first time since March last year.

"Not fantastic, but we are delighted with two wins, two clean sheets and six points," said Graham Potter. "[I am] delighted for the players. They have been working really hard."

Our Hammers pic.twitter.com/EYwJ7WOWBN
— West Ham United (@WestHam) February 27, 2025

Soucek marked his 30th birthday with a goal, becoming just the second player in Premier League history to net on his birthday in two different years, having previously done so in 2022.

"It's a great birthday – it's a big one, I wanted to win and with a goal it's even better," he said.

"We can celebrate now, we got what we wanted. We knew we'd got a very good win at Arsenal and we wanted to build on that, get a win at home and I'm so happy.

"In the last two games we've showed good spirit, good football and we hope that can help show the manager we believe in what he's doing."