Lay off Lee Carsley – he deserves credit not mockery for taking risks

Gareth Southgate was pilloried for not experimenting enough as England manager and now Lee Carsley is getting the same treatment for doing the opposite. It’s a funny old game.

One of the big problems with international football is scarcity, although expansion-happy governing bodies may soon see to that. The relative infrequency of matches from which to draw solid conclusions means there is too often a rush to judgement about all sorts of issues on a very small sample size.

So it was that England caretaker manager and erstwhile Under-21s head coach Lee Carsley was all but ruled out as a serious candidate to take the job on a permanent basis after his team lost in the Nations League on Friday to a Greece stirred by the untimely passing of their teammate George Baldock.

Aside from the result, Carsley’s apparent crime was picking an experimental side featuring all of England’s most exciting attacking players – Cole Palmer, Jude Bellingham, Phil Foden and Bukayo Saka – but, in the absence of an injured Harry Kane, no centre-forward.

Now, there are plenty of justifiable reasons to question Carsley’s credentials for the job, namely the 50-year-old’s shortage of experience in top-flight management – or indeed any managerial roles at all. But a willingness to experiment tactically shouldn’t be one of them.

After all, isn’t that exactly what these games are for? No one really cares whether England win the Nations League or not, but the competition does provide a much more meaningful environment than mere friendlies in which to try out new systems and talent.

Lest we forget that Gareth Southgate’s many achievements were repeatedly chipped away at because he wasn’t gung-ho enough. Those who held that view ought to give Carsley some margin for error when testing out ideas in games that aren’t as important as those at major tournaments or even the qualifiers that England need to win to get there.

Nobody seemed to mind when Carsley rolled the dice by plucking Angel Gomes from the relative obscurity of the French league and handing him an England debut last month. He shone, as did Jack Grealish, restored to the squad after his Euro 2024 omission and deployed in a central role. But not every gamble will pay off. 

As for the result itself, some perspective is needed. Last season Germany lost at home to Japan and Turkey, while in the previous Nations League campaign France lost at home to Denmark and Croatia. England lost home and away to Hungary. Just over a year before they won the Euros, Spain lost to Scotland.

Even if you subscribe to the view that Nations League results are important, losing to Greece is not the fatal blow to England’s prospects of gaining promotion back to the top tier that it has been made out to be in some quarters. If they can win the return game in Greece by two goals – and they surely can – then they will almost certainly top the group. 

Carsley has not helped his cause with some cack-handed and confusing comments about his appetite for the job, which in turn have thrown an unflattering spotlight onto the Football Association’s silence over the process for appointing Southgate’s successor.

But if there is to be a sensible and fair debate about his merits then Carsley should not be belittled for a perfectly rational experiment in what was an eminently suitable game – especially given the clamour for his predecessor to do just that. If anything, he deserves some credit.