Senior players detected some nervousness as the interim England manager addressed them for the first time on the evening they reported to St George’s Park last week.
For more than eight years, players such as Harry Kane, Harry Maguire, John Stones and Jordan Pickford had been used to the sight of Gareth Southgate standing in the meeting room. Now it was Lee Carsley. Things were different and they felt different.
‘Lee certainly doesn’t have Gareth’s natural air when it comes to public speaking,’ revealed a source close to one England star. ‘He did seem a bit nervous, but why wouldn’t he? There is a lot of serious talent in that room. The players were fine with it. It was just a change, that’s all. It takes all sorts.’
By his own admission, Carsley — filling the void left by Southgate’s resignation after Euro 2024 — is a doer rather than a talker. He is a coach rather than a man whose presence and personality will fill a room. Carsley, 50, is comfortable with that. As a camp that would last a little over a week began, the question was whether the players would respond to a different voice, a different tone.
‘It was a little strange,’ said Stones after England beat Finland at Wembleyon Tuesday night. ‘But yeah, it’s been really good. We have always crossed paths with him at St George’s Park (when he was Under 21s boss), so in terms of getting to work with him, we’ve been trying to make the most of it.’
Lee Carsley is already putting his stamp on England and has been unwaveringly himself
He still sees himself purely as a coach and insists on being called 'Cars' or 'Lee', not 'boss'
Bringing in Trent Alexander-Arnold at right back has been one of his most striking decisions
Jack Grealish has also recovered his place in a sign he is approaching his temporary role with his own convictions
The biggest tick next to Carsley’s name as the players headed back to their clubs was for two England victories and two clean sheets. Results speak more loudly for a manager than anything else.
Carsley has been careful not to step too eagerly into Southgate’s shoes. He hasn’t got the big job yet. Nevertheless, there have been subtle differences.
He put his stamp on his first squad by choosing new players — ones he knew from his Under 21 days — and by recalling others who had fallen off his predecessor’s list of favourites. Jack Grealish was back. Trent Alexander-Arnold was asked to play at right back for the first time with England in several years.
Carsley also asked his players not to call him ‘gaffer’ or ‘boss’ but ‘Lee’ or ‘Cars’. That is highly unusual at club level and even more so for an international manager. On top of that, he made no attempt to meddle with the leadership team assembled by Southgate. So Kane and Declan Rice continued in their roles, with Kyle Walker and Jude Bellingham absent due to injury and fitness issues.
Bellingham, interestingly, was kept in the loop by Carsley via WhatsApp messages. The Real Madrid star may not have been available for this meet-up but Carsley is aware of his standing in the group and his importance going forward. As such, he wanted him to feel involved.
‘I don’t think it’s for me to change the leadership group,’ Carsley said. ‘That was in place before I got here.’
Carsley was bullish about the way he wanted his England team to play from the start. The former Everton midfielder is an understated man but he does not lack confidence when it comes to the football. ‘I’ve got my coaching badges, you know,’ he said with a wink when asked about his style during one conversation with the media.
Though Jude Bellingham was unavailable, Carsley kept in touch with him over WhatsApp
He is desperately keen to work with Cole Palmer, who withdrew from the squad this time
England's training at St George's Park stressed that the players must push higher up the pitch
Declan Rice was given licence to go further up the field, as he does so well for Mikel Arteta
In that first meeting at St George’s Park, he may have been a little nervous, but he was quick to tell his players what he wanted from them in terms of their application and their football.
He said he wanted them to play on the front foot and that the only obstacle between them and future success was having the confidence to go and impose themselves on the best teams in the world.
This turned out to be the central tenet of Carsley’s England coaching sessions.
There was no particular uptick in the number or the intensity of spells spent on the grass. More than ever, international coaches are guided by physiological data, with particular care being given not to overload players who, wherever possible, have to be returned to their clubs in as good condition as possible.
‘We have only had three sessions,’ acknowledged Carsley ahead of Saturday’s comfortable 2-0 win in Dublin.
In terms of the content and detail of the work, however, there was a key difference. Carsley stressed from the outset that he wanted England higher up the pitch. His back four were to be the instigators of that — Carsley drilled them into a higher defensive line — while Arsenal midfielder Rice was released further up the field and into the positions he so often occupies when he plays in the Premier League.
One of the criticisms often aimed at Rice is that he doesn’t affect games enough for England — and previously for West Ham — in the final third.
Carsley wants to change that and, despite the modest nature of the two opponents beaten easily in the Nations League, there was encouraging evidence of this in the way England played.
Senior players detected some nervousness when he initially addressed them, but that didn't stop Carsley getting a tune out of Harry Kane against Finland
Pep Guardiola is an influence. Carsley worked in the academy system at City after he arrived
Having succeeded in winning the Under 21 European Championship in his last posting, Carsley is a manager utterly certain of the way he thinks the game should be played.
At least some of his learnings come from his time in the academy coaching system at Manchester City during Pep Guardiola’s first year at the Etihad. The City philosophy of all age-group teams playing the same style and adhering to the same mantras as the first XI filtered down to Carsley, who became an advocate of the passing triangles so apparent in Guardiola’s champions.
Watching England pass and move their way through the Irish midfield at the Aviva Stadium on Saturday, it was possible to see this in the football played by his team.
Before all that, of course, had arrived the first notable talking point of Carsley’s time. Speaking on a Friday lunchtime Zoom call with written journalists to preview the Ireland game, Carsley was asked whether — given his 40 caps for the Republic as a player — he would feel comfortable singing the English anthem.
Carsley, born in Birmingham but with an Irish grandmother, had anticipated the question and sought to side-step it by revealing he had never sung anthems and would not do so in the future. To do so, he said, would interrupt his focus. Maybe the FA should have anticipated what would follow, but it seemed they did not. By the time Carsley’s words landed on newspaper back pages that evening, he was caught in the middle of a media debate unlike any previous one involving an England manager before taking charge of their first game.
What was instructive to FA insiders, though, is not what happened but how Carsley dealt with it. According to those present at the team hotel 45 minutes outside Dublin at Carton House, there was absolutely no mention of it from Carsley and his staff on the morning of the Ireland game.
‘Lee had his game head on and was totally wrapped up in his own focus,’ said one FA staffer.
This equanimity was something that was also noticed by Carsley’s players. The England team had already appreciated the relaxed atmosphere fostered around the camp by Carsley’s staff, with his assistant Ashley Cole central to that by all accounts.
Ashley Cole has brought the levity which was a key part of Gareth Southgate's atmosphere
Players have appreciated the relaxed atmosphere retained since Carsley has stepped up
Stars noticed his equanimity in the face of criticism over not singing the national anthem
Southgate was big on environment, too, and was good at it. His assistant Steve Holland was rather more taciturn, however. Cole brings a little levity to the team room.
As anthem-gate played out in the newspapers, on TV and on social media, the England players were barely aware of it. Indeed, all Carsley was concerned about when the team bus arrived at the Aviva Stadium on Saturday afternoon was to get on to the pitch as soon as possible to start laying out the training cones for his squad’s pre-match drills.
Again, this is unusual for a manager. Guardiola would not dream of doing it at City, for example. Nor Mikel Arteta at Arsenal. It is not totally without precedent — former West Ham and Everton boss David Moyes used to do it — but it was something new to Kane, Stones and the rest.
Yet this is the Carsley the FA know and the players are now beginning to know. Senior figures at the governing body were so upset at the fuss about the anthem simply because they are so fond of him.
‘He is essentially helping us out at the moment,’ said one source. ‘So when he gets criticised like this, we feel that.’
Whether Carsley turns out to be an England manager for the long term remains to be seen. He continues to say that he sees himself purely as a coach and at some stage he will have to realise that being the manager of the senior men’s team inevitably involves much more than that.
Standing by the team bus after Tuesday’s game, he was asked directly by Mail Sport whether he was ‘up for it’. Carsley smiled and suggested he was beginning to feel that he was.
That was a noticeable shift from the rhetoric on the day he announced his squad two weeks ago. Back then he said he ‘hadn’t thought about it’, adding that he was merely a ‘safe pair of hands’.
Alongside his England role, he will continue to mentor and coach each Friday at the Strachan Academy in Warwick
It is hard to get the full measure of England as they are in the second Nations League tier
Facing an opponent such as Kylian Mbappe would be a sterner test of Carsley's credentials
Carsley's faith in Angel Gomes was repaid as he performed serenely on his full debut
Whether his appetite is increasing remains to be seen but Carsley has at least shown himself to be a man of his convictions. Most football managers don’t tell their players the team line-up until as late as possible for fear of it leaking through the media. Carsley did it on the Thursday night before the Ireland game.
From that point on, his focus in training was to drill his team in the finer points of his plan, such as a back four becoming a back three whenever Alexander-Arnold was released into midfield.
There will be tougher tests to come for the Liverpool right back and, indeed, the rest of the players. It’s one thing, for example, Alexander-Arnold expressing himself with the ball against teams ranked outside the world’s top 50, quite another doing it when he has, say, France’s Kylian Mbappe or Spain’s Nico Williams to look after.
That, though, may never be Carsley’s problem. His initial remit is for the six games of the Nations League. One of his priorities between now and games against Greece and Finland next month is to determine whether other members of his Under 21 group can be elevated to join the likes of Angel Gomes in the senior squad. He also hopes Cole Palmer will be available. The Chelsea player withdrew from Carsley’s first squad but the manager is desperately keen to work with him.
Before all that, Carsley will honour his weekly arrangement to work with the footballers who attend the Strachan Academy in Warwick every Friday.
Carsley is a regular mentor and coach at the centre set up by former Coventry manager Gordon Strachan in 2011 to bring together education and football for young people.
‘Yes, I will be there on Friday,’ said Carsley on Tuesday night. ‘I’ve got a few ideas which I want to try. It will be no different. I’ve got ideas from here that I want to try with them that may help us leading up to the next game.’