Zlatan Ibrahimovic called for his LA Galaxy teammates to "wake up" after a late 3-2 loss to the Houston Dynamo on Saturday night.
Three soft goals from the Dynamo -- including a 90th-minute winner from Memo Rodriguez -- cancelled out LA goals from Giovani dos Santos and Ola Kamara and handed the Galaxy its fourth loss in six games since Ibrahimovic joined the team at the end of March.
And Ibrahimovic, who called on his teammate to "do more" after last weekend's loss to the New York Red Bulls, didn't mince words after the team's latest setback on Saturday.
"It is very irritating because after five minutes we conceded already a goal like that and we are chasing goals, which is not normal," Ibrahimovic said. "We cannot concede like that. It shouldn't be normal. It's not good, it is not good.
"We can either wake up or continue like this, but if we continue like this, we don't want the same objective -- we don't want to win.
"Either I wake up, and I take care of it, or we all wake up."
The former Manchester United and Barcelona striker also pointed to the knock-on effect that consecutive losses have on a team's psyche and offered some thoughts on how to get back on track.
He said: "When you win, you get confidence. When you lose, you get less confidence. We have to be strong in our head and move forward and forget about these games we are losing.
"We need to look forward, work hard and take it step by step, day by day."
Manager Sigi Schmid wrote off the soft goals to a "lack of concentration" and felt there were positives in the match despite the team's failure to secure a result.
He said: "No, when you give up a goal at the beginning of each half on set pieces, [it] had nothing to do with anything unexpected, it just had to do with the lack of concentration.
"We needed to get a point. It's on us that we didn't get a point; I mean, fair to Houston that they kept fighting and battling, but we can't give up a goal there.
"We've shown the ability to fight back and that's a good quality. We've got to continue to have that quality but our ability to hold out and protect the lead or protect a tight game has been very poor."