England coach Duncan Fletcher has admitted his team have no realistic chance of winning the final Test against Pakistan and levelling the three-match series.
Pakistan reached 446 for five on Thursday, a lead of 158 runs with two days remaining, leaving England staring at their first Test series defeat for two years.
"It has been difficult day for us and realistically we can't really win it," Fletcher told reporters. "We now just have to make sure we go out and get stuck in and bat out the remaining time properly."
England toiled as Pakistan added 261 runs for the loss of just one wicket on day three, that of nightwatchman Shoaib Akhtar.
"It has been a tough tour the mental part of it," Fletcher said. "
"We have been locked up most of time. Most of the time we have been stuck in hotels and mentally it has got to the players a little bit."
"But before we came here we knew it would be like this and we came out here knowing that to make progress in rankings we had to win this series," Fletcher added.
Fletcher guided England to a historic Ashes series win over Australia this year and made it clear that winning in Pakistan and India was important to help his side top the world rankings.
Fletcher was asked if his players had struggled to get over the disappointment of losing the first Test in Multan by 22 runs.
"Losing the toss in the next Test took a bit out of us and we have not been firing on all four cylinders, we haven't got our game together since the second Test," he said.
"We must give credit to our bowlers for sticking it out there on an unresponsive wicket which got better and better after the first two hours," he said.
"We should have taken advantage of our good start and scored around 450 to 500 runs."
Pakistan captain Inzamam-ul-Haq was quietly confident about his side's position.
"It has been a difficult first three days for us in this Test as we are very keen to win this series," he said.
"But today I think we have come very close to ensuring we don't lose this match."
Pakistan last won a Test series in New Zealand in December 2003, two months after their last home win over South Africa.
"We would ideally like to have a lead of between 230 and 250 and enough time to give our bowlers a realistic chance of bowling them out for the second time in the match," Inzamam said.
