TIM CAHILL is being primed to lead Everton’s line once again following his impressive performance in the lone centre-forward role at Manchester City last week.

Louis Saha and Victor Anichebe were both ruled out of the 1-0 win – which came courtesy of Cahill’s injury-time header – leaving Everton with no fit recognised strikers.

Hamstring victim Saha and Anichebe, who has been suffering from both back and hamstring problems, both face fitness tests this morning to assess the likelihood of featuring at home to Chelsea on Monday.

But assistant manager Steve Round is confident that the work they have done with Cahill on the training ground this week combined with his experience at Eastlands, will stand him in good stead for playing up front against a side that has only conceded one goal in eight away games in the league this season.

‘It’s not the end of the world if we have to play him there again,” said Round. “In fact, it was probably as good a striking performance as we’ve had this season.

“He has those capabilities. He’s an international. He’s played in the Premier League for a while now. The question is whether he can consistently do that as a centre-forward or would it take that midfield game away from him? But what we know is that he can play both.”

Round added: “We have done a little bit of work with Tim up there. It was getting the right balance between some of the key points of playing the position and not over-coaching him so that he was confused.

“You are trying to put everything into him to get a performance so it’s trying to get the happy balance.

“We wanted him to be free to play the Tim Cahill game and also give him a few pointers about what we expected of him in the role.

“I thought his performance was really good at City. His work ethic was tremendous and he got the goal.

“And the way he works up front he’s our first line of defence.”