Winning start for Carsley as Rice and Grealish deliver

After all the focus on the soundtrack, Lee Carsley’s first game as England manager was certainly loaded with narrative.

- MIGUEL DELANEY

The inevitable line is that you couldn’t script this but, well, it’s really the first thing you’d script.

Declan Rice and Jack Grealish scored the goals in a 2-0 England win over Ireland, the national team they both left, to also overcome a constant chorus of boos. If anything, such a response seemed counterproductive and drove them on, in the way that often happens. At least for a time. This win really just evolved into the sort of win over a smaller country that England have long learned to expect under Gareth Southgate, albeit with one important twist. The attacking under Carsley was different throughout and, for a brief period, quite exciting. There was a sense of evolution.

Any sense of competitiveness in this briefly feisty match dissipated with Rice’s superbly taken opening goal. After that, other than trying to discern the nice patterns and the differences to Southgate, it turned into one of those occasions where people will mostly be talking about all of the colour around it. And colour there certainly was.

After a week of build-up about Rice and Grealish, and so many identity discussions given that Carsley’s first game was against the country he represented as a player, there was an otherwise forgettable admission that brought all this to a head. Carsley very reasonably stated he doesn’t sing national anthems because he finds himself too focused on the football. A somewhat inexplicable media storm ensured that most of the attention was on him in the moments before the game, only for the new manager to try and go to the home dug-out.