Lee Carsley has revealed he is likely to ditch England’s experimental formation for the trip to Helsinki on Sunday as the interim manager stressed the need to “do something different” following the disastrous defeat to Greece at Wembley.
While an attacking line-up that featured all of Jude Bellingham, Phil Foden, Cole Palmer, Bukayo Saka and Anthony Gordon failed to click in the absence of captain Harry Kane, Carsley defended his selection against accusations he was “reckless”.
Carsley won both of his first two games in charge last month, away to Ireland and at home to Finland, when Bellingham, Foden and Palmer were unavailable due to injury or illness. Despite insisting he would not “shoehorn” players into his team earlier this week, Carsley then played all three attacking midfielders without a recognised No 9 – leading to a confused performance as Greece claimed a late but deserved 2-1 win.
Kane was set to be assessed by England on Friday after taking part in the morning’s training session and Carsley admitted the absence of the striker altered his plans. While Carsley maintained he picked the “best team” rather than the “best players” by including Bellingham, Foden and Palmer, the interim manager vowed to continue to select attacking line-ups during his time in charge and wouldn’t rule out selecting the same team at some point in the future.
“The way I want my teams to play, I want us to attack and when we had the players we have available, I wanted to try something different,” said Carsley, who had just two days to prepare for the visit of Greece after the majority of his squad arrived to camp on Monday.
“Hindsight is perfect because it never happened. It wouldn’t stop me trying something different in the future because I have done OK being like this. I had 17, 18, 19 years as a player being defensive and just sitting in there and playing on the counterattack. That is definitely not how I want to coach. Nothing changes in that respect.
“I have had enough setbacks in football to know you are never too far away and I have got to lead by example and I will. My belief in this team hasn’t changed, we need to be better and I include myself in that definitely. We tried something tonight, it didn’t come off, it could have gone the other way and we are talking about ‘we’ve found another way of playing’.
“I’m really wary about ruling something out so quickly when we have literally done it for an hour. If any fingers get pointed, they’re at me, I wanted to try something, it didn’t come off but we go again.”
Carsley continued to dodge questions about his long-term future and said “nothing changes” despite the surprise defeat. “I know it is a boring answer,” he said. “The remit was to do the three camps and nothing has changed. I know it went so well in the last camp, we have had a disappointing night tonight but I don’t get too high or too low.”
With Kane a fitness doubt along with Saka, who limped off early in the first half, Carsley said there is “some potential” with Bellingham, Foden and Palmer in the same team after seeing promising signs in training. “I know we keep focusing on those three but we have got some really good players that didn’t play tonight in the squad that are more than capable as well,” he said. “If it did click, what we have seen in glimpses of training, there is definitely some potential there.”
However, Carsley said that he is likely to revert to a more traditional line-up ahead of the trip to Helsinki, with England now trailing Greece by three points at the midway stage of the Nations League. “Probably won’t try that again on Sunday,” he said. “I have coached enough to know we need to do something different. Had Harry been fit, I might have gone down another route.”