Ralf Rangnick does not believe the Manchester United squad requires an overhaul amid the palpable threat of a fifth successive season without silverware.
United were evicted from the FA Cup by Championship side Middlesbrough on Friday night, having already gone out of the League Cup in September, and trail Premier League leaders Manchester City by 19 points.
Spanish champions Atletico Madrid await in the Champions League round-of-16 later this month but United have not reached the semi-finals of the competition since 2011, when they beat Schalke, who were coached by Rangnick.
Paul Pogba, Edinson Cavani and Jesse Lingard are among the players out of contract in June and a number of other players are open to leaving in the summer. Despite the disconcerting state of the squad, Rangnick believes United have made progress during his 10 weeks as interim manager.
"I don't know. I don't think so," Rangnick said when asked if an overhaul would be required. "Because, overall, the development of the team and our performances in the last couple of weeks have improved. Including, by the way, the cup game.
"There are two points of criticism that the team has to face and we all have to face. Number one: we wasted too many clear-cut chances, 22 shots from inside the box, 10 of them were massive opportunities and we should easily have been 3-0 up at half-time. It should have been 6-1 or 6-2. This was one point of criticism that we have to face.
"And the other one was the 10 seconds before we conceded the handball goal. It was a perfect counter-pressing situation on the sideline in the middle of their half, we took away time, the only thing we forgot was taking the ball away from them and this led to a situation where eight seconds later we were outnumbered in our own box and allowed them to score that handball goal.
"Although it was a handball goal and I'm still convinced this goal should have been disallowed, we shouldn't have allowed this situation to happen in our box.
"Those are the two things I have to fault with the team. We invested a whole week into the gameplan and possession of the ball and very many of those things have been confirmed by the team and were shown on the pitch against Middlesbrough."
