Lee Carsley: 'MU21s have been outstanding'

England under-21s head coach Lee Carsley was pleased with his squad’s performances in November, after victories over Republic of Ireland and Slovakia made it five wins from five in their UEFA U21 EURO qualifiers.

The Young Lions brought a successful 2025 to an end on Tuesday evening with a 4-0 win in Slovakia, following on from the 2-0 victory over Ireland in Carsley’s hometown of Birmingham last Friday.

And he’s happy with the way his charges have bonded and taken to the new campaign, on the back of a title-winning summer with Carsley’s previous group.

"We've had probably our most difficult camp in terms of the quality of the opposition and also the conditions when we've gone from really, really wet last week to really cold in Slovakia,” he said.

"You always want to give young players these different kinds of experiences and set them up with that pressure to perform and then obviously win.

"They can take a lot of credit from their performance tonight, a lot of them won't have had to come away from home, played against the group leaders and then beat them so convincingly before.

"The defenders and the goalkeepers should take a lot of credit, there's been a lot of blocks and the unpopular side of the game which we don't talk about a lot but we really value - they've been outstanding.

"There's still a lot of football to be played and this is a new group, five games in. We're in a good position with some tough games coming up.”

Carsley also spoke about some of the individuals who have performed well so far this campaign, with the likes of Chelsea’s Josh Acheampong and Arsenal’s Ethan Nwaneri already proving to be valuable members of the squad.

"Josh is a player we rate highly and he's doing well at Chelsea,” he added. “He's got a lot of potential and he just needs to keep playing and getting the experiences he's getting with club and country

"And Ethan's already done a campaign and a EUROs with us, and this a brilliant team for Ethan to be a part of.

“I'm glad he got his goal [against Slovakia] because I know how desperate he is to keep improving and build on what's an already promising career.”