Aston Villa manager Martin O'Neill believes striker John Carew has the capabilities to become a 20-goals-a-season player.The Norway international is Villa's leading scorer with nine goals so far this season, despite a two-month lay-off with a knee problem earlier in the season.

O'Neill is confident the former Lyon player can hit the target on an even more consistent basis.

"To see John up to the nine-goal mark is great - and there's no reason why he shouldn't go on to become a 20-goals-a-season man," said the Villa boss.

"John had a knee injury earlier in the season, and to be a 20-goals-a-season marksman you have to play the requisite number of games.

"But he should be able to do that and also reach that number of goals, no doubt at all.

"That's the sort of thing I'm looking for from him, and I think he's a miles better player than he thinks he is himself."

O'Neill believes Carew has all the right qualities for his job.

"He's a nightmare for defenders - but not just with pace, power and presence," he added.

"He has great ability to get the ball down, manoeuvre and bring people into the game.

O'Neill has often called for Carew to show more consistency and is aware he has the potential to become one of the more feared strikers in Europe.

"John is looking for consistency," he explained.

"You are striving for excellence every game you play. But if you don't achieve that, you still want to cause a lot of problems to defenders.

"Ironically, in some of the games I felt John wasn't as effective as he can be - but opposition managers have said afterwards that he has been a handful all afternoon.

"He has got the ability - and if he could get increase that consistency factor, there is no reason to stop him being one of the best centre-forwards in Europe."

O'Neill points to his players operating with a lack of fear as a major reason for them challenging for a European spot.

He said: "We are where we are in the table but we are improving and we are capable of causing teams problems - and we caused Arsenal plenty of problems last weekend.

"We are causing teams problems because we can get at them. At the minute, we are playing with no real fear -which is great, considering the stakes are pretty high.

"It is a level of performance that we are finding. Like anything else, it is not just a case of somebody telling the players to believe in themselves. You have to go out and you have to perform.

"The performances themselves will be enough for those players to believe that they can do it. We are winning consistently, or at least not getting beaten, and we have shown that we can attack."

More Football News from TEAMtalk