It required a double-take. Was that Lee Carsley, the new England manager, albeit on an interim basis, laying out the cones for a warm-up drill on the Aviva Stadium pitch before his first game in charge against Republic of Ireland on Saturday?
The top man on the coaching staff almost never does this; he delegates to an assistant. But yes, it really was Carsley – doing what he does, setting out as he intends to go on. “Well, I do have my qualifications,” he said with a smile after overseeing a 2-0 victory that offered cause for optimism, even if the paucity of the opposition had to be considered.
We are learning more about Carsley each day, taking in his every move and it does remain “strange” – to borrow a line from the England captain, Harry Kane – to have a fresh face at the helm after all of those years under Gareth Southgate. It is inevitable that there will be comparisons. The adjustment will take time.
“I definitely don’t want to lose that … one of my biggest strengths is my coaching,” Carsley said, when asked about being the pre-match cones man. “It’s another chance to affect the players and spend some time with them. Even the possession [drill] we did before the game had a tactical element to it. So it helps. I have spoken before about the lack of time you get with the players.”
Morgan Gibbs-White, who made his debut as a 77th‑minute substitute, knows Carsley well from playing under him with England Under-21s. “He’s a very hands-on manager,” the 24-year-old Nottingham Forest player said.
“I believe that shows he believes in his own ideas and us seeing that makes us believe in him. It’s obviously a good thing when you’re hearing it directly from the manager on and off the pitch.”
Carsley is about the tracksuit rather than the sartorial three‑piece number. He wants to coach, rather than manage. And it does raise a question, especially after what he went through on the eve of the Ireland match – the story about how he does not and would not sing the national anthem, his first stormy moment before a ball was kicked. Can the England manager be a pure boots‑on-the-grass coach? What Carsley wanted to make plain was that he was his own man; he could not change even if he wanted to. He will do things his way.
“I wouldn’t say I was a manager, definitely not,” he said. “I see myself as a head coach. I have some real good support around me who help and take a lot of pressure away from me. That gives me the chance to coach and be on the grass and hopefully make a difference. That’s the way I have got to do it. I couldn’t see myself doing it any other way.” Carsley was asked whether he had been clear with the Football Association about how he would approach the job. “I am really lucky with the people that are my bosses,” he replied. “They know what my strengths are and they aren’t going to ask me to be anything I am not.
“My strength is coaching, being on the pitch. What I am doing now [talking to journalists] isn’t my strength. It’s something that I understand comes with the job, as I saw on Friday …”
A brief bit on the anthem shemozzle, which had to have been quite the eye-opener for Carsley – some of which has already been written. When an England manager, one born and raised in Birmingham, indicates that he will not sing before kick-off, it is a story, mainly because it is unusual and therefore interesting; likely to generate discussion.
Ideally, that would focus on and critique Carsley’s reason for the stance, delving into the context, too – a part of which is his dual nationality; he feels strongly about his Irish heritage. England being England, there are many views, most of them strident, thrown into the mix.
It was impressive to see how Carsley dealt with the fallout after the game; no hostility, no recriminations, move on calmly. Equally, he had a nice line to make light of his pre-match seating plan faux pas, having installed himself momentarily on the Ireland bench. “As you know, I’ve spent a lot of time on the bench so I know exactly where that is.”
The episode recalled the time from the 1998-99 season when Ron Atkinson, summoned from a Caribbean beach to save Nottingham Forest from relegation, accidentally went into the visitors’ dugout at the City Ground – occupied by Arsenal. He said he had looked at Dennis Bergkamp and Marc Overmars, two of Arsenal’s stars, and wondered “how on earth this lot were bottom of the league”.
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Carsley is easy to warm to; he will answer questions as openly as possible. But can he emulate Southgate in terms of reading the thornier issues of the day and using the power of his platform to say the right things? Do we need him to do this?
Carsley will lean on his inner circle of coaches for support and also the FA’s technical director, John McDermott, with whom he has a close relationship. He met McDermott at a pivotal time in his career, after being dismissed from the assistant manager’s role at Sheffield United in October 2013.
Down and frustrated, Carsley got a job with the Premier League in which he looked at the coaching programmes for Arsenal, Aston Villa, West Brom and Tottenham, the club where McDermott worked.
Carsley credits him with opening his eyes to so much, especially the development side of the game, in effect helping to light a pathway for him, and it is lost on nobody that McDermott is now central to the hunt for England’s next permanent manager.
McDermott was spotted in conversation with Carsley after the Ireland game by the side of the pitch. What did he say?
“‘Well done, it’s a good start, make sure we win on Tuesday,’” Carsley replied. He, too, is looking forward to Finland at Wembley.