PERHAPS the anointment of Lee Carsley as England’s new permanent head coach is not such a formality after all. If last month’s victories over Ireland and Finland were a decent advertisement for the current stand-in’s skills, then tonight’s 2-1 defeat to Greece told a rather different story.

Square pegs, round holes. Gareth Southgate was rightly criticised for repeatedly playing players out of position, but Carsley took things to an entirely new level in his third game in charge as he appeared to become blinded by the attacking talent at his disposal.

Jude Bellingham? Play him up front, even though he’s not a number nine. Phil Foden? Play him as a number ten, even though he’ll be making the same runs as Bellingham. Cole Palmer? Stick him in defensive midfield and tell him to make it up as he goes along.

The attempt to form a cohesive whole from so many shoehorned individuals was a complete mess, and while Bellingham briefly threatened to spare England’s blushes when he side-footed home an equaliser with three minutes remaining, Greece claimed the victory they richly deserved when Vangelis Pavlidis made the most of some dreadful defending to sweep home his second goal of the night in stoppage time.

The Greeks now top the Nations League group, and while missing out on promotion would hardly be a disaster if England are unable to turn things around in their remaining three group games, a failure to improve on tonight’s shambles could be more problematic for Carsley. The dog’s dinner of a selection suggests he lacks the tactical nous needed to succeed at international level.

An attacking revolution? Perhaps Carsley will claim he would have done things differently had he been presiding over a game that really mattered against top-class opposition. On this evidence, though, the FA could be forgiven for being extremely reluctant to give him that chance.

Whereas Southgate tended to start with his defensive midfield set-up and build the rest of his side around two holders, no matter what the opposition, Carsley’s approach this evening seemed to be, ‘Get as many attacking players onto the field as possible’.

Compromises were needed, but Carsley was clearly comfortable playing without a recognised centre-forward, with Bellingham led the line as a false number nine. Similarly, he must have been happy to station Palmer much deeper than he has ever played for Chelsea. Admittedly, the sight of Bellingham, Palmer, Foden, Bukayo Saka and Anthony Gordon lining up in the same starting side represented a marked shift from the Southgate era. Goodness only knows what the former England boss would have been thinking had he been watching the game on TV.

Perhaps, ‘I told you so’. The problem when you pack your side full of attacking players is that you leave yourself short in defence. Greece are ranked 48th in the world and have not qualified for a major tournament since the 2014 World Cup, yet they could easily have scored three goals in the opening ten minutes tonight, such was the shambolic nature of England’s defending.

The first warning came just five minutes in, with Vangelis Pavlidis galloping clear on the counter-attack, only to drag his shot wide. Five minutes later, and England would have been behind had it not been for a sensational piece of last-ditch defending from Levi Colwill. Jordan Pickford got himself into an almighty mess, dawdling on the ball after leaving his 18-yard box before shovelling it to Tasos Bakasetas in a panic. The Greek midfielder floated a shot towards what looked like an open goal, but a backpedalling Colwill somehow managed to hook clear as he raced towards his own goalline.

Still, the attacks kept coming, with West Ham defender Konstantinos Mavropanos carelessly wandering offside before heading home from close range as the England defence failed to deal with a routine cross. Declan Rice, tasked with containing the Greek midfield entirely on his own, must have felt like King Canute unsuccessfully trying to stem the tide for much of a first half that also saw John Stones produce a crucial block to again deny Bakasetas.

Palmer blazed over after Bellingham pulled the ball back into his path at the other end, with Gordon also failing to find the target with a header after breaking dangerously into the 18-yard box, but England’s lack of any kind of control over the pace or tempo of the game was alarming. Better opponents than Greece would surely have put them to the sword.

As it was, the Greeks were more than capable of doing the job anyway. Four minutes into the second half, and the visitors were deservedly scoring the goal they had been threatening all night.

Konstantinos Koulierakis fed the ball into Pavlidis on the left of the box, and after skipping between Palmer and Stones, the midfielder slotted a precise low finish into the corner. England’s defending, not for the first time on the night, was pretty much non-existent.

Carsley’s response to the goal was to replace the ineffectual Saka, who appeared to have suffered an injury, with Noni Madueke, but the replacement of one right-winger with another did nothing to address the glaring structural deficiencies within England’s system. The cheer that greeted the arrival of Ollie Watkins, when he eventually came on as a 60th-minute replacement for Gordon, suggested the Wembley crowd could see what was going wrong.

Watkins almost scored with his first touch, blazing over after being picked out by Palmer, but it was Bellingham who hauled England level with three minutes left, firing home a side-footed shot that Newcastle goalkeeper Odysseas Vlachodimos was unable to keep out.

That was not to be that, though, with Greece scoring their winner in stoppage time. Colwill and Rico Lewis got in each other’s way in the area, enabling Pavlidis to steal in and fire home.