Pat Fitzgerlad breaks down the state of his team heading into Illinois

Michigan State football has lost there third consecutive game, and after a stellar 2-0 start to the Pat Fitzgerald era, the Spartans now sit at 2-3 and 0-2 in Big Ten action. The Spartans will aim to get the train back on the tracks when they face off with Illinois inside of Spartan Stadium this Sat

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Michigan State football has lost there third consecutive game, and after a stellar 2-0 start to the Pat Fitzgerald era, the Spartans now sit at 2-3 and 0-2 in Big Ten action. The Spartans will aim to get the train back on the tracks when they face off with Illinois inside of Spartan Stadium this Saturday.

Ahead of the game, Fitzgerald spoke to the media for his weekly press conference, where he shared the frustrations he is having with the current state of the team. The head man also shared his vision to fixing the problems, and having the fans stick with this team as the season unfolds.

See what the Spartans head man had to say ahead of the week six clash with the Fighting Illini:

"We know we have a lot of work to do."
"Offensively we had 4, 5 drives of 8 plays or more. We have to score points. We didn't have the catastrophic negatives. We got to get across the 50 and score."
"Defensively, we had a critical MA (missed assignment) on one of the plays (pass to Malachi Coleman). We want to win, we have to play better. We have to play better, all three phases."
"I don't fault Nick (Sheridan) schematically, at all. We have to execute."
"The plays that we ran (on fourth down), we had a few drops, we did not get it done."
"When things don't go your way, frustration has to be your motivation. You want to get it fixed? Win. It cures a lot of ills. Find a way to get a fourth down conversion."
"First of all, our fans have been awesome. I understand social-media verse, Twitter-verse. When you win, you're better than you are. When you lose, you can't play."
"If I'm a fan, I'd not be happy too. That line (for not being happy) starts behind me."
"I think Worm (Ben Roberts) is playing at an All-Big Ten level."
"I don't see a pity party or guys pouting. If they do, frankly, we'll just play another guy. It's a privilege to play for Michigan State. It's a privilege to play against Illinois. I would give my left arm right now to be able to play."
"The locker room in Madison was much cleaner than the one in South Bend. That was a positive."
"Any times you get alum back. For a lot of folks, they circle homecoming if they can only make it once. We have to play cleaner to give something to be loud about, so they can stick around and sing the fight song together."
"We have to put ourselves in the position where we can continue to run the ball."
"Katin (Houser) can make a lot of throws, another athletic quarterback. He's played pretty dang clean in all those games. Defensively, they'll put a lot of pressure on us."