Former Liverpool player Steve Nicol has hit out at Jurgen Klopp's team following their lacklustre performance against Leicester City.

The Merseyside outfit recorded their third Premier League loss of 2017 in the form of a 3-1 defeat on Monday evening.

The Foxes had only won five top-flight games before they welcomed Liverpool to the King Power Stadium, but they managed to find form in their first match since manager Claudio Ranieri was sacked last week.

"Liverpool haven't been able to get up to play against anybody in the bottom half of the table, pretty much all season," ESPN quotes Nicol as saying.

"What we're seeing is a Liverpool side that is either feast or famine. They're either fantastic or they're just plain rotten and [against Leicester] they were just plain rotten. Where was that energy that at the start of the season Liverpool had? Closing people down, running at defenders, good movement. You name it, Liverpool had it.

"Do Liverpool actually realise they've got a chance of finishing in the top four? This performance [against Leicester] reminded me of a side who were stuck bang in the middle of the table who couldn't go down and who couldn't go up any higher or get into Europe or anything. It's just not acceptable and this was about as vanilla a performance from Liverpool as you've seen all season."

The Reds are currently fifth in the table, one point adrift of the top four, but they face a challenge to secure Champions League football given that just five points separate second from sixth.