Yabuku's 'on the verge of an Everton goalspree'

Oct 30 2007

Everton assistant manager Alan Irvine believes tomorrow’s Carling Cup clash at Luton could spark a goal spree for striker Ayegbeni Yakubu.

Despite scoring on his debut against Bolton last month, the Blues’ record signing soon found himself left out of the starting line-up.

But the Nigeria international has battled his way back into the side and scored his second Barclays Premier League goal for the Blues in Sunday’s 2-0 win over Derby.

Yakubu has been one of the most consistent Premier League goalscorers over the last four years with Portsmouth and then Middlesbrough.

Irvine has been impressed by Yakubu’s goalscoring ability since his £11.25million move from Boro and feels that now he has settled at Goodison, he is set to get back to his best.

“We’ve got good strikers to choose from and we expect all our players to do a great deal of work,” he said.

“We’ve based our way of playing on being workmanlike and hard to beat, and then looking to our quality players to create things and score goals from that base.I think Yak (Yakubu) understands that now.

“He’s a fantastic finisher, one of the best I’ve had the pleasure of working with,” added Irvine.

“He’s very calm in front of goal, very composed, and has a range of techniques to finish with.

“When he went through against Derby, I had no doubt he was going to score. He’s shown that in training a great deal.

“Hopefully that will provide the platform for him to go on one of those goal sprees that he’s had in the past.”

Yakubu is set to continue up front for the fourth-round tie at Kenilworth Road, although Irvine confirmed Everton are yet to decide on which system to play.

Goalscoring midfielder Tim Cahill could play behind Yakubu but Everton are keen not to overload the Australia international after returning from injury just last week against Larissa in the UEFA Cup.

“That’s something that we’ll take into consideration but you can look at it from the other point of view that it’s an opportunity for him to get another game under his belt,” said Irvine.

“We have to balance whether it’s right to rest him or keep on playing him, because we now have the luxury of having a lot of first-team players to choose from and to change our system.

“You’re asking a lot of the same players to play a third game in six days so it’s good that we can make use of the squad that we’ve got.

“We can make changes and the team can still be made up of first-team players. Everybody who will be travelling down to Luton is a first-team player.”

Everton beat Luton 4-0 in last season’s competition and the Hatters are lying mid-table in Coca-Cola League One.

But Kevin Blackwell’s men have already knocked out Sunderland and Charlton, and won eight of their 10 home games this season, so Everton are wary of becoming their latest victim.

Irvine added: “It’s not an easy game. People will look at it and say Luton are the lowest-ranked team left in the competition but their home record is actually very good.

“We’ll go into this preparing in exactly the same way as we would for every other game.

“We’re leaving today, staying overnight and training tomorrow morning. It’s nothing different, we’re not taking any short cuts.”