Sevilla began the season with aspirations to challenge for the Spanish league crown and a 2-1 win over Real Madrid back in October raised expectations but Saturday's 2-1 home defeat by Racing Santander was their third consecutive loss to put the pressure on coach Manolo Jimenez.

Successive league defeats to Getafe, Atletico Madrid and Racing have seen Sevilla slump to fifth and Jimenez did not mince his words in his assessment of the Racing performance. "Rather than others losing respect for us at home, we have lost respect for ourselves," he said.

"There are no excuses, we played a disastrous first-half. We knew January would be tough, but not this tough. They caught us out with counter-attacks that we did not know how to stop."

Promising teenager Sergio Canales, a Sevilla target, scored twice in the first half as the home side were caught on the break and they could not recover despite Koffi Romaric pulling a goal back in the second half. "We have been losing games more because of our mistakes than our opponent's skill," bemoaned Jimenez. "We are confident that we will achieve our objectives and succeed by the end of the season."

The minimum objective would probably be to qualify for the UEFA Champions League again with a top four finish and as it stands Sevilla are fifth a point behind fourth-placed Deportivo La Coruna. While their league form is poor Sevilla have been going strong in the cup competitions reaching the last 16 of the Champions League as group winners and beating Barcelona 2-1 at Camp Nou on Tuesday in the first leg of the last 16 Kings Cup tie.

"After the way we played in the Barcelona game it is a real shame to let this game get away from us at home," lamented Diego Capel. "We aren't doing well against teams coming to the Sanchez Pizjuan and this is a problem because we want to make it a fortress."

Home problems
It has been far from a fortress with four wins, three draws and two losses from their nine home matches. Captain Andres Palop claimed Sevilla struggled against teams that came to pack players behind the ball rather than the likes of Barcelona who try to attack.

"We play better against teams like them (Barcelona) because they want the ball and want to create space with a lot of movement," explained Palop. "They don't just want to shut up shop and play to destroy the game.

"We find more space and are comfortable against these teams and that is why when teams come just to destroy our game and play on the counter attack they cause us a lot of problems. This is something we have to improve on. We have dropped too many points at home and we are not going to reach them if we let these points escape."

An injury list has not helped Sevilla with Brazilian international forward Luis Fabiano just one key player sidelined while the timing of the CAF Africa Cup of Nations has not been ideal with Côte d'Ivoire midfielder Didier Zokora and Mali striker Frederic Kanoute both taking part in the competition. "Of course we have lots of injuries but we can't think about that because the other day we went to Camp Nou with lots of injuries and played a terrific game," said striker Alvaro Negredo.

"We shouldn't look at this as an excuse and think of the errors we are making and know that if we do things well we will start to win games. We have to pick our heads up." Sevilla's next match is at home to Barcelona on Wednesday in the second leg of the last 16 Kings Cup tie as they try to win the cup for the first time since 2007.