Carew’s Gunnar emulate Solskjaer

ASTON VILLA striker John Carew has set his sights on making the same impact on the Premiership as fellow Norwegian Ole Gunnar Solskjaer.

Solskjaer has experienced outstanding success during the past decade at Manchester United and has lived up to his nickname as the ‘Baby-faced Assassin’.

Now Carew is looking to follow in his footsteps and the 27-year-old has quickly become a favourite with Villa fans after scoring the winner on his home debut against West Ham.

Carew said: “It would be good to make an impact in the Premiership like Ole has. That would be great for me. I know Ole very well from playing with him and talking to him when in the Norwegian squad together and I have chatted with him a little bit about what to expect in English football.

“I will try to do my best and do a good job here and scoring the winner on my home debut was excellent.”

Carew experienced Champions League football with Valencia and Lyon and believes he can eventually achieve the same feat with Villa.

He said: “The club now has big ambitions and I want to help the club achieve everything it wants to. I want to do my very best to push the club forward.”

Young, who set up Carew’s first-half winner against the Hammers, believes the pair of them can be successful at Villa.

He said: “I thought it worked well on Saturday. We linked up well, I thought he did well and personally I did well. John is a nice guy and the partnership looks good on the pitch.”

While Villa can look forward with confidence, the signs are not good for West Ham who are five points adrift of safety following Wigan’s win over Portsmouth. A late rally, in which Villa goalkeeper Thomas Sorensen made two fine saves, should not mask a performance lacking in confidence and self-belief after an eight-game run without a win.

It has left Alan Curbishley admitting his side have to collect maximum points from their next two games with fellow bottom-three sides Watford and Charlton.

He said: “Some results went for us at the weekend and some did not but we need to win some matches ourselves. We have got to beat Watford next week and I think we have got to beat Charlton in the game after that. They could be defining games for us now.

“We’ve not put enough three-pointers on the board. The opportunities were there, for example, against Fulham and Newcastle but we haven’t managed it. We have got to start next week.’’

West Ham’s injury curse struck again with new £7.5m signing Matthew Upson suffering a first-half calf injury on his debut which will rule him out of the clash with the Hornets.