Pearce expects players to get better

England Under-21 boss Stuart Pearce feels his youngsters are picking up the habit of winning without reaching their full potential yet.

They went top of their European Championship qualifying group after their victory over Montenegro at the Walkers Stadium on Friday night, courtesy of Matt Derbyshire's first-half winner, maintained their 100% record in Group Three.

Pearce, however, feels improvement is needed for the next qualifier, in Ireland on Tuesday, as he said: "The boys were a bit quiet in the dressing room compared to the two wins in Eastern Europe at the start of the campaign. They knew they didn't play as well as they were hoping to. If you can learn and keep winning it is a great position to be in."

He added: "We didn't play particularly well for 90 minutes, we were scratchy then got our noses in front. We were hoping for the second goal but gave the ball away too cheaply.

"We won playing not particularly well. We've had three wins on the bounce with three clean sheets but we are going to have to play better than that on Tuesday against Ireland."