MARK Hughes has a selection headache tonight with which striker to play up front.

Benni McCarthy is his big-game player with all the experience, but he's struggling a bit just now.

I think the campaign has just caught up with him. He's had a lot of pressure on his shoulders and he's been able to ride the storm. He's had a fantastic season so far and sometimes the goals dry up a little every so often.

The good thing about it is that, when that happens, there's another striker waiting to take over, like Nonda who has a good goalscoring record or Matt Derbyshire and even Jason Roberts, Franny Jeffers and Paul Gallagher who are all waiting for their chance.

Nonda and McCarthy had a good partnership at the start of the season and I'm just waiting to see if Jason can break into that and forge his own partnership.

To be fair, I was always reasonably comfortable with all the partnerships I had at Blackburn. When I started at the club it was myself and Mike Newell and we did really well, I think we scored nine goals in eight games between us. And then obviously there was Alan Shearer.

He was doing all the scoring and I was chipping in with a few goals. But I think I had my best season when I played next to Chris Sutton.

I think I was very similar to the way Matt Derbyshire has adjusted.

It's been weird the way things are falling into place for young Matt.

He looks able to strike up a partnership with any of the other strikers with the way he plays.

He's got great enthusiasm, clever running and a good eye for goal.

I'm just waiting for him to get a run of games and keep scoring goals.

I spoke to him after the game on Sunday and I told him not to be too disheartened by being caught off-side so many times.

He has blistering pace and I told him to keep making those runs, the more he makes them, the more chance one will pay off and the more goals he'll score.