Roy Hodgson has a fight on his hands to get message across to young England stars at Euro 2016, warns John Barnes

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Giuseppe Muro8 June 2016

John Barnes believes England coach Roy Hodgson has his work cut out this week preparing his inexperienced stars for the rigours of the European Championship.

The former Watford and Liverpool winger, who earned 79 England caps, says that having a squad with an average age of 25 brings its own challenges, especially when a formation has apparently not yet been decided.

He said: "You cannot do much in the week leading up to a tournament but when you have experienced players you do not really need to do much.

"But with inexperienced players, and when you have not really got a formation, you have to work a lot on shadow play: putting 11 players out there and going through positions and what players have to do when the ball is in certain parts of the field.

"You do not have to do that with experienced players because they understand that. That is my one worry because a lot of this team are players who, let alone being new to international football, are new to Premier League football. So it is not ideal.

"It is important for Roy this week to say 'this is the team and this is how we are going to play', and then work on that leading up to the first game."

Hodgson has experimented with a midfield diamond to accommodate a forward partnership between Harry Kane and Jamie Vardy and he has also tried a 4-3-3.

Barnes believes the 68-year-old coach should have decided on his preferred formation before the recent warm-up matches against Turkey and Portugal.

"I do not think we know our system well enough to be able to experiment as we have done," he said.

"Some teams, like Spain for example, can experiment because they have an identity to how they play.

"So if they try to play different formations in a couple of friendly matches, they know how they play when they go back to their normal system in a tournament.

"Whereas England do not really have a tried and tested way of playing.

"Really I think the way we are going to play should have been done in the friendlies."

Barnes believes England can do well in France but admits he does not know what to expect from a squad which has so little experience of tournament football.

"England teams of the past have been experienced teams who you know will perform consistently, even if it is consistently average," he said.

"With this team we could beat the best teams in the world but we could also lose. We saw that by beating Germany but losing to Holland and not performing against Turkey.

"It is impossible to say how you are going to do before you know who you are going to play in the knockout rounds.

"If we play Spain in the last 16 then I think Spain will beat us. What we do know is that we should qualify from our group."

John Barnes is a brand ambassador for Titanbet.co.uk and was talking at a Titan Bet Euro 2016 preview.

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