It was back in March last year when Myles Lewis-Skelly fever had captured the nation.
The teenager was playing every week for Arsenal and had been called up by Thomas Tuchel to the England senior team, bypassing the Under-21s in the process. By the end of the month he had scored at Wembley and wrote himself into the record books as the youngest player to score on his England debut, surpassing Marcus Rashford’s record.
But speaking on the touchline of one of the training pitches at St George’s Park, Ashley Cole, then on the Under-21s staff, found himself in the minority by refusing to get too carried away.
‘What I would say is you’ve got to be careful with these young players,’ Cole, who is one of Lewis-Skelly’s biggest fans, told a few of us that day a year ago.
‘They’re special and they’re precious and you have to take your time sometimes.’
Now, 12 months on, Cole’s warning has come back into sharp focus.
Myles Lewis-Skelly has dropped back down to the England Under-21 set-up after enjoying success in the senior team
His international and club future is up in the air, and he has been offered to Manchester United
Progress and success are not always linear. Lewis-Skelly has had to take a step backwards at both Arsenal and with England. His mental toughness has been put to the test for the first time in years.
To this point Lewis-Skelly’s trajectory had been an improbably steep incline.
He made just five appearances for England’s Under-16s before being pushed into the Under-17s. He has just four caps at Under-18s level, and only five for the Under-19s before bypassing the Under-21s completely to get six caps under Tuchel’s watch with the seniors, starting five of them.
But now he is, finally, in with the Under-21s with his club future up in the air and his prospects of making England’s World Cup squad seen as slim-to-none with Lewis Hall and Nico O’Reilly surpassing him in the pecking order.
He finds himself at a crossroads with Arsenal – Daily Mail Sport understands he is under consideration at Manchester United having been offered up to United by intermediaries – and is on the outside looking in with England.
The question inside the FA was, how would Lewis-Skelly respond to it all? Would he embrace the challenges that come with leading a youth team? Would he fancy it in minus-four degrees on an Astroturf in Andorra in front of thousands of empty seats?
The answer that came back was a resounding yes on all fronts.
‘I’ve been really, really impressed with his quality, and that would have been a tough game for him to come into,’ Carsley told Daily Mail Sport after the 1-1 draw to Andorra.
There has been positive feedback about the Arsenal man’s reponse to dropping back down to the Under-21 side
‘He’s not had a lot of minutes recently so for your first game for the Under-21s, on artificial turf, against Andorra, it would have been a bit of an eye opener for him.
‘But he played in the right spirit, and he was a good example for the rest of the players, considering he’s a senior international. He applied himself very well.’
Staff at the FA are big on the idiosyncrasies that come with an international call-up. How players behave around team-mates, how they interact with staff, whether they are, in the eyes of staff, a good ‘tourist’ or ‘leader’ are all things that get fed back. Both Hall and Tino Livramento got glowing references when it came to this side of it.
‘I noticed how enthusiastic he is,’ Carsley added. ‘That’s always in the back of your mind, when you go from the seniors back to the Under-21s, that the motivation may not be there.
‘But we’ve never had that from any player since I’ve been doing the 21s, so that’s a real positive. He’s been really good around the group, showing his qualities.’
In Andorra, Lewis-Skelly will likely have come away from it frustrated at his limited opportunities to show what he can do. After all, if World Cup hopes are still in play, opportunities to make a case are running out.
On the night he made just 16 pass attempts in Andorra’s half and only made and completed one dribble across 90 minutes.
Often he looked to invert into midfield, routinely finding himself in a No 10 position up alongside, or even ahead of, captain Jobe Bellingham.
It is under Lee Carsley that Lewis-Skelly is now honing his craft, and he will get the chance to impress again on Tuesday
In Carsley’s mind, Lewis-Skelly is firmly a midfielder playing at left back and not a left back drifting into midfield.
But when the players’ debrief arrived the following day, there was also a lot to take from a game that is the type of battle testing that stands players in good stead when elevated to the seniors.
Hall and Newcastle team-mate Livramento both benefitted immensely from time in the Under-21s to hone their game before being catapulted back into the spotlight with Tuchel’s seniors.
Rarely do young, high-potential players get the time to develop back. For Lewis-Skelly, this is a golden opportunity that Hall, Livramento and others such as Elliot Anderson have shown can set you up for senior success.
He will get a second opportunity, in what is hoped to be more mild climates down in Norwich against Moldova on Tuesday night, to show what he is all about while 122 miles away his competitors for the left back spot face Japan at Wembley.
Frustration is normal, if bottled up the right way.
Having made his senior Arsenal debut away against Manchester City and getting a taste of the UEFA Champions League in that same month of October 2024, Lewis-Skelly dropped back down to Arsenal’s Under-21s to face MK Dons in front of 2,427 people.
Things looked easy for him that night – and he often looked frustrated. Then he exploded with the first team, England recognition arrived, and he is still only 19. This moment in time is so similar to back then.
Declan Rice described his team-mate as ‘fearless’ with a big future ahead of him
‘He is fearless,’ Declan Rice said of Lewis-Skelly after he scored on England debut.
‘He has kept his feet on the ground and it is only the start for him.’
Now in with the Under-21s with the talent to go on and dominate these games, Lewis-Skelly must make sure he can cash the golden ticket that those before him used to full effect.
