Aidy Boothroyd has challenged his players to continue their winning record at the U21 Euro Finals next summer.
The Young Lions secured their place in the last eight of the competition on Thursday evening, when a 7-0 victory over Andorra in Chesterfield ensured top spot in their group.
And with the majority of his squad having already won international titles with England at U17, U19 and U20 level in recent years, Boothroyd now wants to help them succeed at the next stage.
“Whatever tournament we go into, we want to get to the latter stages and then the latter-latter stages,” said the head coach.
“We want to win things and this group of players have won things previously with the junior teams so we want to make sure they continue that.
“It’s been a little while since the U21s got to the Final under Stuart [Pearce, in 2009] but I can tell you from the last time, it’s very difficult.
“Every team in that Championship deserves to be there. They’re the best in Europe, so we’ve got to be our best.
“But we’ve qualified, which is the biggest thing now, to get these boys some tournament experience.”
Goals from Ademola Lookman, Ezri Konsa and Dominic Calvert-Lewin set England on their way in the first half, before Calvert-Lewin added his second from the spot and substitutes Dominic Solanke and Reiss Nelson scored late on, coupled with an own goal, to complete the rout.
And Boothroyd was pleased with the way his side performed, regardless of the level of opposition in front of them.
“We should win the game and you know that going into it, but you know what football’s like,” he added.
“There’s always that banana skin or a worry that you don’t score, or their goalkeeper makes a few saves, which in fairness, he did tonight early on.
“But we managed to score early enough that we could enjoy what we were doing and the performance was excellent and some of the football we played was fantastic.
“The fact we can put the team out that we did, considering the players who have moved up to the seniors, and bringing in players from the younger groups like Phil [Foden], Reiss and Jay [Dasilva], they were all excellent.
“It was a really good team performance, they created space for themselves and their team-mates and that’s the sign of good players.
“I’m thinking about Scotland now and we want to get as many points as we can and we always want to beat the Auld Enemy, like they always want to beat us.”
As Boothroyd refers to, England now round-off their qualification campaign on Tuesday evening (5.30pm), when they travel to Edinburgh to face Scotland at Tynecastle.
