Lee Carsley hits back at his England critics with pointed remark after Greece win

Lee Carsley made two pointed references to the focus on the number of players who withdrew from international duty after England’s impressive win over Greece . England put themselves back in control of their destiny in the Nations League by overcoming Greece 3-0 in Athens on Thursday night. Ollie Watkins put them ahead early on with a simple finish from Noni Madueke’s cross to justify his inclusion ahead of Harry Kane .

Jordan Pickford then made some crucial saves to keep the hosts at bay and allow England to go 2-0 up on the counter-attack as Jude Bellingham ’s shot cannoned off the post and went in via the back of goalkeeper Odysseas Vlachodimos. Curtis Jones then rounded off a brilliant night with a stunning flick on his debut. The build-up to the game was dominated by comments from Kane, who criticised some of his team-mates for making themselves unavailable due to injury.



Carsley was without the likes of Bukayo Saka , Declan Rice and Cole Palmer for the game and reacted by naming an inexperienced starting XI and handing debuts to Jones, Lewis Hall and Morgan Rogers. Asked about the squad depth by ITV , Carsley replied: "People were speaking last night about the inexperience in the squad but these players are playing week-in, week-out in the Premier League at a really high level. “Lewis [Hall] is testament to Newcastle and himself that he was able to come on in an atmosphere like that and perform the way he did.

The same with Morgan Rogers – he’s been really good at Villa, and probably could have been in the senior squad a little bit earlier but it was important that we took our time with him, because hopefully he’ll be here a little while.” And asked whether he would speak to incoming England boss Thomas Tuchel about the performance, Carsley brought up a similar point. “I’ll catch up with him after the camp,” he said.

“I think it’s important that we concentrate. He would’ve been very impressed. “I’m sure he watched the game and the amount of talent that we’ve got, like you say without the amount of players not here, a lot of players have done themselves a lot of good.

” England will secure top spot in Group B2 and automatic promotion with a win over the Republic of Ireland on Sunday but Carsley knows the job isn’t done yet. "It represents that we are moving in the right direction,” he said. “We won't get too carried away, we have a big game on Sunday at Wembley, so we’ll recover now and look forward to that.

"It is just important that the players play to their strengths. We have a lot of outstanding talent. The players that weren't here, we concentrated on the ones who were.

We spoke about it yesterday, players getting their opportunity and they took it today.” He added: “We’ve put ourselves in a better position than we were in before the game, but it’s not a job done, it’s not time to celebrate. Hopefully we can do that on Sunday.

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