Goals from Tom Dele-Bashiru, Sadou Diallo and Lukas Nmecha saw City safely into a fifth round tie with Southampton and Carsley insisted it was the focus of his team that made the difference.
He said: “That result at the start of the season was in our minds. We spoke before the game that the biggest threat was that we had beat them comfortably and sometimes you can go into games like that taking it for granted and assuming that you’ve just got to turn up.
“We were well prepared for the game tonight and considering that we beat them 7-0 at the start of the season, I thought they gave us a really good game.
“We were very professional though in our performance. We had to be patient and even though they had a bit of belief at 1-1, we saw it through. They’re usually a really attacking side with a lot of threat going forward and we’ve seen that at times tonight.”
Having lost to Chelsea in final of both the 2014/15 and 2015/16 editions of the FA Youth Cup, Carsley believes City are well placed to succeed in this year’s tournament.
“I’ve come in with fresh eyes this season and the real positive for us is that a lot of these lads played in the finals young so they have had that experience of losing and can use that as motivation,” he said.
“Some big teams have been knocked out already but we have to make sure we’re not one of them in the next round.
“Southampton are a very dangerous side and having seen some of them already this season, we know we’ll have to be fully focused on that.”
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