England Under-21s 1 Greece Under-21s 2

STUART PEARCE admitted England face an uphill battle to qualify for the Under-21 European Championship next summer after last night’s 2-1 defeat by Greece.

England, who were runners- up to Germany at the last tournament in 2009, went into the clash at Doncaster’s Keepmoat Stadium knowing victory would take them above their opponents to the top of Group Nine and within touching distance of the play-offs for the finals in Denmark.

But they were second best from the first whistle and goals from Kyriakos Papadopoulos and Ioannis Papadopoulos meant Nathan Delfouneso’s second half strike was of little consequence.

Pearce said: ‘‘We weren’t at the races tonight, we were poor. We didn’t play to a standard that’s acceptable to us.

We tried to go from back to front too much, we didn’t play enough through the midfield and we gave possession away too lightly.

‘‘I’ve got to give credit to the Greeks, I thought they played very well and certainly deserved their victory. We have to learn the lesson from it.

‘‘Rarely have this team let me down. I’m disappointed with it and, more importantly, the players are as well.’’ The defeat left England five points adrift of Greece with two matches left – an away trip to Portugal and a home match against Lithuania in September.

Victory for Greece in their remaining game against Macedonia would leave Pearce’s men playing for one of four play-off spots available to the best group runners- up.

And the former Manchester City manager, who suffered his first competitive home defeat in three years with the under-21s, is confident six points will be enough.

‘‘We’ve got to win the last two matches now, which will be difficult,’’ he continued.

‘‘We know what we’ve got to do.

‘‘Seventeen points gets you through as runner-up, that’s been historically the case. It’s either win both games or that’s our lot.

‘‘We know what’s in front of us. We’ve had a good run in the competition. We can and we will play a lot better than that.’’ England failed to create a single clearcut chance before Delfouneso’s goal 11 minutes from time but Pearce defended his decision to start with only Newcastle’s Andy Carroll up front.

He said: ‘‘We’ve been playing that way for the best part of three years now.

“It’s been a successful formula for us.”