Brendan Rodgers is the bookies’ favourite to be the next Premier League manager SACKED after FA Cup holders Leicester were thumped 4-1 at Nottingham Forest in the fourth round

Pressure is mounting on Brendan Rodgers with the Leicester City manager leading the sack race among bookmakers.

The Foxes are enduring a below-par season, by their standards, and things got worse on Sunday when they bowed out of the FA Cup to lower league opposition.

Rodgers’ saw his FA Cup holders thumped 4-1 at Championship outfit Nottingham Forest after a poor display that saw them 3-0 down after just 32 minutes.

And as a result, according to Oddschecker the 49-year-old is the leading Premier League manager to get the chop next.

You can get odds on him, via multiple outlets, as a 9/2 favourite to be the next top-flight dismissal. No manager to leave before the end of the season comes in second, with Sean Dyche (Burnley), Eddie Howe (Newcastle) and Roy Hodgson (Watford) rounding out the top five.

Leicester find themselves 10th in the Premier League – 12 points off the Champions League places, although they do have two games in hand on fourth-placed Manchester United. Their tepid season has seen them relegated to the Europa Conference League, after finishing third in their Europa League group, and bow out of the League Cup quarter-finals on penalties to an understrength Liverpool side – after leading 2-0 and then 3-1 in the first half.

And following Sunday’s defeat at the City Ground, Rodgers didn’t hold back on his damning criticism of his side.

‘It was an awful performance and I have to apologise to the supporters,’ Rodgers said.

Asked if he could put his finger on the problem, he answered: ‘Yeah, hunger. It’s a lack of hunger. I said to the players (at half-time) that for the first time since I’ve been here I’ve been embarrassed. It was an embarrassing performance. I feel for the supporters.

‘We brought the FA Cup (trophy) into our team meeting so the players could see what we went through last year to win this competition, to remind them of the day at Wembley and the journey, to provide that motivation and extra desire to come out here.’

Asked if there are players resting on last season’s achievements, Rodgers said: ‘That’s why a lot of these players are not top players – because they can’t sustain it.

‘That’s why I have admiration for the really top players who can keep that hunger and desire, no matter how much they achieve. I always judge it on the physicality of the team; the pressing, the aggression.

‘There are a lot of these players, between now and the end of the season, who need to prove they are still worthy of being here, because we’ve seen it now for a little while.

‘There are players here who may have achieved everything they can.

‘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.

‘I watch training every day and have been in the game long enough to know when, for some, it’s maybe everything they could have ever dreamt of. They bolstered their legend as a player. They won the FA Cup, and that might be it.

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‘But it’s not for me and not what I want to achieve here. Too many think they’re top players but they’re a long way off it.’