Life comes at you fast when you are manager of England and Lee Carsley heads to Helsinki on Saturday lunchtime beginning to gasp for air.
Bad results do that to you when you have the England job. They change the way you are viewed almost overnight. It is like no other football job in the country. If Carsley has been in denial about the magnitude of the role – interim or otherwise – then he is no longer.
If he is lucky then England 1 Greece 2 may one day sit as the biggest stain on Carsley’s coaching CV.
Others have been there before him. Steve McClaren, Roy Hodgson, Kevin Keegan, Graham Taylor. They all suffered their personal footballing horrors trying to advance their country’s cause.
They lost much more important matches than the one Carsley did in the Nations League at Wembley on Thursday but in the fecklessness, confusion and chaos of the performances, a red, white and blue ribbon ties them all together through the ages.
Lee Carsley oversaw his first defeat as interim England boss that could prove to be a damning one
England tried a new system with little preparation that didn’t pay off in the Wembley encounter
Greece scored a stunning late winner in stoppage time to condemn England to a Nations League defeat
Asked after England had won their first game under him against the Republic of Ireland back in September whether he was ready for all that the job entails, Carsley spoke of how he would always be a simple coach at heart.
It was tempting to wonder back then – after he had got himself into a bit of a PR mess over the singing of the national anthem – whether this was really the job for him. Carsley may dress in a tracksuit, put the warm-up cones out and carry an iPad under his arm like a child carries a comforter, but the fact is the job of England coach transcends what happens purely on the field and now that has taken a dramatic turn in the wrong direction too.
Carsley made a bold statement in terms of his team selection against Greece and fell on his face. If his strange attempt to explain why he doesn’t sing the anthem back in Dublin is viewed as strike one then defeat against Greece was strike two. One more setback against Finland in the Helsinki Olympic Stadium on Sunday evening and he may well be out.
‘I have got to lead by example and I will,’ Carsley said.
‘My belief in this team hasn’t changed. We need to be better and I include myself in that definitely.
‘We tried something against Greece and it didn’t come off. But if any fingers get pointed, they’re at me. I wanted to try something. It didn’t come off and we go again.’
The Football Association like Carsley. He is one of their own. If this doesn’t work out, they will gladly reabsorb him back into the system. In terms of the big job, they will judge him on more than results. The players like him and his stated commitment to attacking football stands in his favour.
But the Greece performance was not so much a setback as a personal embarrassment. It wasn’t just the defeat that will have reverberated across the football landscape but the nature of it. England were feckless and feeble and, most damning of all, seemingly unsure as to what it was they were supposed to be doing. For that there really was no excuse.
Carsley is well-liked by players in his England squad, as well as the FA because he is one of their own
Carsley is marketed – both by himself and by others – as a feet on the grass coach. It is his strength, the way he sees himself. Yet Thursday night was a coaching catastrophe. Carsley – without captain Harry Kane because of injury – eschewed the use of a traditional centre forward to play Jude Bellingham as a withdrawn striker with – in theory – Cole Palmer and Phil Foden behind him in support.
To say it didn’t work is an understatement. To then hear Carsley say afterwards that he had only been able to drill his players in the system for 20 minutes in training was quite startling.
Why take such a gamble on the back of such little work? Even the best coaches in the world cannot function without time and it appears with hindsight that England’s current incumbent had simply not allowed himself enough of it.
Carsley was asked on Thursday whether he had been reckless and guilty of putting square pegs in round holes. ‘I thought I picked the best team, definitely. That is always the plan I try to do. But I probably won’t try this again on Sunday.’
Carsley should absolutely not be written off after one very bad night. Some will doubtless try but as a footballing nation and media, we really do need to learn to be a little less reactive. There are usually bigger pictures to look at. Equally, maybe now we will realise that it’s okay to leave good players out of a football team. Other nations do it. Clubs do it, too.
The excitement over the rapid development and emergence of players such as Palmer is understandable, but balance and control are also important and only eleven can play. In the modern game substitutes are more crucial than ever.
Carsley should absolutely not be written off after one very bad night against Greece
We really should not criticise Carsley for giving his bold system a go against a team that England really should have been able to beat regardless. It felt fresh and a little adventure felt overdue. It is what many people have been asking for.
‘The way I want my teams to play, I want us to attack,’ Carsley explained.
But we can criticise him for the fact that he didn’t make it work, that he had given himself insufficient time to drill it and that he took too long to change it. The big substitutions didn’t arrive until the hour mark against Greece and that was too late.
So now Carsley and his team head to Finland – ranked 64 in the world – for a game that will either breathe fresh life into the manager’s candidacy or leave him with nowhere left to go.
If we look at this from one angle we can spin it as two good results and one poor one in the Nations League, with some fresh faces and new ideas tried along the way. The other less generous narrative would be of a coach who got one good half out of his team against the Republic – England were 2-0 up after 26 minutes – and has subsequently run desperately short of magic dust.
Casley is still in the auditioning phase to get the England job on a permanent basis
Carsley may wonder deep down if he cannot win in this job. Stick to what Gareth Southgate did and win three games 1-0. Would that be enough? Maybe not. Take a chance and make a few big decisions and you get taken out at the knees anyway.
But that is the job. You cannot win but at the same time you must win. And Carsley must do exactly that on Sunday in Helsinki.
