Lee Carsley messed up and seems to be struck by impostor syndrome as England’s interim boss, writes OLIVER HOLT – but he still deserves his shot at the top job

The trees in the park that flank one side of the Olympic Stadium, where England will play Finland on Sunday, turned bewitching shades of orange and gold some weeks ago.

But there is a bite to the wind that gusts in off the Gulf of Finland that reminds visitors just how far north they have ventured. Winter is coming.

Lee Carsley will notice it as soon as he gets off the plane, but then England’s interim manager is already feeling the chill.

If he did not realise it before England’s shambolic, historic, anaemic 2-1 defeat by Greece in the Nations League at Wembley on Thursday night, he will realise it now. This is an unforgiving job.

The warm glow that accompanied his opening two wins over the Republic of Ireland and Finland has gone and this will not be an easy weekend. He will have to wrap up well.

The England interim boss waved away pragmatism by cramming the team with attacking talent

Carsley’s plan failed abysmally at Wembley as England appeared a rabble in the shock 2-1 loss

Carsley tried something different against Greece. He tried to move things up a gear. He tried to put some daylight between him and Gareth Southgate’s regime which had, towards the end, become derided for its caution.

Carsley abandoned caution and waved pragmatism away. He picked a team of all the talents and crammed Jude Bellingham, Phil Foden, Cole Palmer, Bukayo Saka and Anthony Gordon into the same starting XI.

In some ways, his ambition was commendable. The consensus, even among Southgate admirers, was that he had taken the team as far as he could and that England needed to evolve if they were to negotiate the final hurdle and win a major tournament.

And so, in playing Bellingham as a false nine, Carsley chose the Greece game to try to take the great leap forward and then stood on the touchline in front of nearly 80,000 people and watched his plan fail. Not just fail, actually, but fail abysmally.

Chaos is never a good look in a team performance and England played like a rabble. These are players who are supposed to be some of the best in the world, but they looked confused, clueless and bedraggled.

They looked like dilettantes who had bought into too much of their own publicity and listened to one too many yes-men. It almost felt as if they thought it was an exhibition match.

And while that is on them, while it suggests they are not quite as good as we think they are, while it proved Southgate was pragmatic with his team selections for a reason, it is also on Carsley.

Some, predictably, are saying Carsley has flunked his audition and does not deserve to be considered for the full-time post any more. Don’t call us, we’ll call you.

Bellingham started in a false nine role, but England as a whole looked confused and clueless

Some claim Carsley flunked his audition and should not be in contention for the full-time role 

There is a clamour from some for a star name, such as the out of work Thomas Tuchel

Whether that is fair or not is immaterial. Football isn’t fair. But even in our age of instant gratification, to write him off now, after one misstep, would be absurd and wrong.

Some are blinded by misconceptions. They want a star name. They want Pep Guardiola, Jose Mourinho, Jurgen Klopp or Thomas Tuchel. For those people, Thursday night was all the proof they wanted that Carsley is strictly small-time.

I like Carsley. I liked him as a player, I like him as a person and he’s a fine coach.

But there is no point being dishonest — on Thursday, he came close to giving the impression that the England job was too big for him. He cannot allow that to happen again.

There is still much in his favour, not least the fact Luis de la Fuente, who led Spain to victory at Euro 2024, and Lionel Scaloni, who led Argentina to World Cup glory in 2022, had never had a top-flight coaching career. Their paths, in fact, followed a similar trajectory to the one Carsley has been on.

Then there is the small matter that he won a trophy with England’s Under 21s at last year’s European Championship.

On Thursday night, Carsley was betrayed by his inexperience. However well you do with the Under 21s, it does not prepare you for the glare of the Impossible Job. It does not warn you that there are no free hits with the senior team.

Carsley was right to try to begin the process of evolution in the team, but he was too bold. His crime was naivety. He underestimated the need for pragmatism in a job carrying so much scrutiny.

Carsley was right to attempt to begin a process of evolution but he paid for his naivety

Gareth Southgate understood England needed to sacrifice flair to protect the defence

The attacking approach against Greece left Declan Rice exposed as he was left alone

Southgate was pragmatic for a reason. He realised that if England were to get close to winning major championships, he needed to pick a team that would protect a defence that was average at best, even if that meant sacrificing attacking flair.

Carsley ignored that. He was too cavalier and England were overrun by Greece. Their defence was exposed again and again. Declan Rice was exposed again and again. He was left alone on a burning deck while chaos reigned down on him.

Now all the people who were demanding Carsley be adventurous, and that he be everything that Southgate was not, are the ones who are demanding he should be discounted. That’s how the England job works.

The important thing now is that Carsley learns and that he learns fast. There can be no repeat of Thursday night, neither on the pitch nor off it, where his post-match press conference added even more confusion to the evening’s events.

Carsley is trying to protect himself by being evasive about whether he wants the job full-time, but that made him look indecisive and disingenuous. There is nothing wrong with wanting the top job. He should own his ambition.

It felt as if he were wrestling with impostor syndrome. He needs to get rid of that fast. He deserves to be in the frame for the England job. He has worked with England’s best young players for some time and won things with them. He has their respect. They know he is a winner.

So he needs to go out and grab the job. Not by being reckless, as he was at Wembley, but by being decisive. He has to restore balance to his side, banish any idea of being a crowd-pleaser and be ruthless.

Most of all, that means grasping the nettle of which of his talented creative players to leave out. Maybe Thursday did him a favour because it showed that it is pure folly to try to accommodate all of them.

Carsley must grab the job by being decisive and banish ideas of being a crowd-pleaser

Phil Foden is a sublime player but may need to be left out to restore balance to England

It is a divisive issue and some will see it as sacrilege whoever he leaves out, but it is getting harder to make a case for Foden to be picked ahead of Palmer or Bellingham.

Foden is a sublime player but, for whatever reason, he has never excelled for England as he has for Manchester City. So play Bellingham next to Rice in front of a back four, because Bellingham is good enough to excel anywhere, and make Palmer the creative fulcrum of the side, because his genius demands that. If all goes well on Sunday, maybe we will even be able to see a positive element to the debacle that unfolded against Greece.

Carsley is a fine coach and he will be a better manager for the experience of what happened at Wembley. He will not make the same mistakes again.

The England job can still be his, if he wants it.