'That's wrong' – Declan Rice hits back at England legend's claim about Lee Carsley's team's lack of identity

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Declan Rice has told talkSPORT he disagrees with Stuart Pearce’s claim Lee Carsley’s England are struggling with their identity.

England bounced back from their midweek 2-1 defeat to Greece in the Nations League by beating Finland 3-1 in Helsinki on Sunday.

But despite the win, talkSPORT’s co-commentator for the game and ex-England defender Stuart Pearce believes the Three Lions have issues in their playing style, highlighting what he thinks is a lack of identity.

Speaking after the game, he said: “Subs [Ollie Watkins and Noni Madueke] were excellent when they came on. I think it was a performance of England playing well within themselves.

“I think we’re struggling with identity a bit, we’re possession based but that doesn’t mean you have to play slowly and backwards. You need to identify a forward pass when it’s on.”

Rice got himself on the scoresheet, netting the Three Lions’ final goal of the evening to add to Jack Grealish and Trent Alexander-Arnold‘s earlier efforts.

Arttu Hoskonen bagged a consolation goal with three minutes to go after some sloppy England defending from a corner.

But when England’s final goalscorer was quizzed on Pearce’s claim, Rice had a totally different view of how the Three Lions performed in their second game of the international break.

When told about Pearce’s view and asked what he thinks England’s identity is, the Arsenal midfielder started his answer by laughing.

“I can’t really say too much but I think that’s wrong, I think we do have an identity,” he said. “I think you’ve seen that under Lee. Under Gareth [Southgate] we had an identity on how we wanted to play and under Lee we have an identity.

“I think you can see we’re desperate to play out from the back, we want to pass the ball, we want to have short connections, we want to drop people low, we want to create overloads.

“There’s so many things a lot of people wouldn’t see that we work on. We’ve only had a week together this week and it’s been really short term on the grass.

“But this week more than ever we’ve tried to have a reaction since Thursday, but also with the players we have, we have a lot of lads that play the same style so it’s easy to integrate and connect.

“I think we do have an identity and think it’s a good one because the fans are demanding we play this attacking, free flowing football.”

A switched-up team with no out-and-out striker on the field at the start of the defeat to Greece, Carsley’s tactics were called into question.

And Rice admitted that while it’s not ideal if England lose with their style, he insisted everyone involved is always focused on winning.

“So, if we get beat, we get beat trying to play the way we want to play,” he continued.

“It’s obviously not ideal because we’re England, but we’ll keep trying and obviously we want to keep winning games and that’s the main thing.”

England face Greece in their next Nations League clash on November 14.

It remains to be seen how much longer Carsley will be in the dug out, having told talkSPORT that he hasn't formally applied for the senior team job after hinting that he wants to return to his previous role of Under-21s manager.