Marcelo Bielsa has expressed concerns that his Marseille players' faith in him is waning with the Ligue 1 club's season collapsing around them.
Bielsa saw his team torn apart 5-3 by relegation-threatened Lorient last Friday as they suffered a fourth straight league defeat, slipping out of the top four for the first time since August in the process.
After finishing the first half of the campaign top of the table, Marseille would be 16th if the season had started in January.
With only the top three qualifying for the Champions League, and only fourth place certain to provide Europa League football, OM risk missing out on Europe altogether.
And Bielsa, who was roundly criticised for playing attacking midfielder Andre Ayew at left-back against Lorient, told reporters his squad have now turned their backs on his system.
"What is true is that when a team loses, independent of the characteristics of the coach, he is alone and everyone keeps their distance," he said. "It is natural a player rejects the same system he once praised when it stops giving results. I'm not an exception.
"I have nothing to reproach the players. They react like any other human being in the face of adversity. The one who has to be able to handle the circumstances is the coach or the one who is leading the project. And out of respect for myself and the work I have done here, I'm going to continue working up till the last game in spite of what the stakes are."
After taking over at the Stade Velodrome last summer, Bielsa endured a sluggish start to the campaign before steering his side to eight successive wins which laid the foundations for a title challenge.
That has since slipped away with just 16 points coming from their 15 league games in 2015.
Bielsa, however, rejected the argument his inability to speak French was the problem, even if he conceded that he could have done more in that regard.
"But I assure you I have had no communication problems with the players, and that not speaking the language is a limit and a fault, but it doesn't condemn the guilty party at all," he said. "I have done everything in my power to show respect to the place that has welcomed me.
"I know your culture, your emotions, your feelings as well as your idols, and everything I have done to know about where I am. But all the time I have spent to know how people live does not hide the fact I am an ass who has not learned the language."