A SHEAR STEER CAN FIRE HARV

HARVEY BARNES is hoping Alan Shearer’s goal tips can fire him to international glory.

Leicester City’s in-form winger is still in finishing school and knows that only finding the net on a regular basis will see him graduate.

He has found a way to goal three times so far this season but competition for places in Gareth Southgate’s Three Lions’ squad has intensified ahead of the run-up to next year’s European Championships.

Barnes, 22, made his debut for England against Wales last month but did not feature during the last fortnight as Aston Villa’s Jack Grealish wowed the nation.

However, Barnes – who also qualifies for Scotland – is banking on a few pointers from the Premier League’s most prolific goalgetter helping his cause.

It was 19 months ago when Shearer passed on constructive criticism during Match of the Day when Barnes twice raced through and found himself face-toface with Spurs keeper Hugo Lloris and missed.

He said: “Alan highlighted that I needed to look up before taking a shot and, yes, it’s definitely something I’ve tried to work on, when you do find yourself in that position. It definitely helps.

“Sometimes you don’t always have the time or space. You’re in different situations, so it’s not always that easy.

“But it’s been something I’ve been working on.

“When you’re one-on-one with the keeper, it’s all about composure and picking your spot.

“But I’ll take any advice from him, he’s scored I don’t know how many goals – he’s someone I can definitely learn from.”

Barnes broke through last season

Barnes knows he has to find the net more often but had to wait until the friendly against Ryan Giggs’ side to take his bow for the national side.

He is well aware that one of Southgate’s measures is a goal return.

The Foxes’ flier said: “I’m looking at the England players around me. The top ones in the league are scoring.

“I’m looking at them and they score goals. I’m trying to base my game on them and hit the levels that they are hitting.

“It’s obviously a big challenge. I mean, look at Raheem Sterling, throughout the last few seasons the goals he’s been getting.

“For me it’s about setting targets, getting up to where they are. Scoring as many as I can will help.

“I know I need to add more goals to my game. As an attacker, it’s massive. “You can have your best performance but if you haven’t scored at the end of it, it’s not always a good thing.”

Leicester head into today’s game against Liverpool full of confidence.

And Barnes revealed that it was the form after Project

Restart, where the Foxes blew an eight-point advantage over fifth place to fail to qualify for the Champions League, that has played a part in their promising start.

He said: “After lockdown, we struggled to regain the form we had earlier in the season.

“Things weren’t going right for us, we were conceding some sloppy goals and weren’t quite as clinical as we had been.

“This year we’ve tried to iron out as many of them as we can and so far it has been very positive.

“Liverpool have a quality squad but we have been to Manchester City and not too many teams will go there and get the result that we did.

“What pleased us was the way we set up – we executed it perfectly and they weren’t expecting it – they didn’t know how to deal with it.”