Leicester City boss Brendan Rodgers has issued a strong statement to his squad ahead of their trip to Liverpool on Thursday.
The current FA Cup holders crashed out of the competition in a 4-1 defeat to Nottingham Forest on Sunday.
The Foxes currently sit tenth in the Premier League table through a mixture of inconsistent form as well as several postponed matches, with a midweek trip to Anfield up next.
But after his side’s latest defeat, former Liverpool manager Rodgers has suggested that some members of his squad are “not top players” and are now playing for their futures at the club.
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“We’ve had a really good two-and-a-half-year spell,” Rodgers said after the heavy defeat to Forest..
“But that’s why a lot of these players are not top players. Because they can’t sustain it. That’s where I have admiration for the really top players who can keep that hunger and desire to win, no matter how much they achieve.
“I always judge it on the physicality of the team, the pressing, the aggression. When you stop getting it, you can’t quite get there, your time could be up.
“There are a lot of these players, between now and the end of the season, who need to prove that they are still worthy of being here. Because we’ve seen it now for a little while.”
Liverpool will be wary of the threat that Leicester still pose though, given that the Reds have lost their last two league games against the Foxes and required penalties to advance in the Carabao Cup in December.
However, despite lifting the FA Cup for the first time in the club’s history last summer, Rodgers’ side has consistently fallen short in the league.
In the last two seasons, a run of late defeats in the final weeks of the campaign have seen Leicester fall out of the Champions League places and the 49-year-old believes his players should be holding themselves to a higher standard.
“Forget about the players who are missing. There are players here that may have achieved everything that they can here. It’s not what I want to do,” he continued.
“It’s something we’ll have to look at between now and the end of the season. Until then, they’ve got to have a look at themselves in the mirror and fight like hell to prove they’re good enough to be here.”
