Premier League Preview: Everton v Cardiff City

Cardiff City’s misfiring strikers have been given special training sessions with Ole Gunnar Solskjaer ahead of Saturday’s trip to Everton.

The Cardiff manager knows a thing or two about finding the net in English football as he scored 126 goals in 366 appearances in all competitions with Manchester United.

Solskjaer hopes to pass on some nuggets of wisdom to his forward players in a bid to help them become prolific in the Premier League.

A return of 22 goals from 29 league games this season leaves Cardiff in the bottom three on goal difference heading into the weekend, but Solskjaer is determined to oversee a change in fortunes.

“It is all about practising as a striker,” the Norwegian told Wales Online. “I have started putting crosses in, don’t worry about that.

“I have been a striker and I know what they think and how they feel and what they want from the training and what kind of situations will benefit them.

“That is what we are doing.”

At this stage of proceedings it matters little where City’s goals come from and they arrived via an unlikely source last weekend.

Skipper Steven Caulker bagged a brace from centre-back as the Welsh club secured a vital 3-1 triumph over basement club Fulham to move level on points with fourth-bottom West Brom.

Caulker’s opener in first-half stoppage time was his team’s first goal for 445 minutes and set up a result that ended a barren run of four defeats and a draw from five league games.

While Everton carry patchy recent form into Saturday’s game, Roberto Martinez’s side are striving to secure a seventh successive win at Goodison Park in all competitions.

Martinez’s men return to league action after a 4-1 defeat at Arsenal ended their FA Cup bid at the quarter-final stage last weekend – a scoreline that failed to do justice to a competitive display at the Emirates Stadium.

That loss was a fourth in eight games across the two competitions. The remaining four matches have been won, but league losses to city rivals Liverpool, Tottenham and Chelsea have placed a dent in the Merseysiders’ European ambitions.

In their enforced absence from last weekend’s Premier League schedule, Everton dropped to seventh in the table behind Manchester United on goal difference, although they have played a game less than the reigning champions and have two matches in hand to chip away at Tottenham’s five-point advantage in fifth.

Having been sidelined throughout February and without a goal since the turn of the year, top scorer Romelu Lukaku has netted in his last two games – scoring decisively to send West Ham away from Goodison Park empty-handed before his cup strike.

Martinez recently described Lukaku “an irreplaceable footballer” and the on-loan Chelsea forward will be gunning to make it three in three this weekend.