Everton goalkeeper Tim Howard believes Andy Johnson could be key in tonight's UEFA Cup clash at Fiorentina.

The American told evertonTV: "Andy is someone that adds such an amazing dimension to our team with his pace and he's a guy that will run down the channels all day long and get stuck in the tackles and he's a terrible player to play against. And obviously Yak has been a massive asset to us. But what AJ has done last year and this year is fantastic. So for the two of them to be spearheading our charges, it's been fantastic.

"Fiorentina beat Juventus on the weekend so that says all you need to know. It's the last 16, there's no easy team, we know that, but as you've seen recently we're up for it. We're ready to fight and ready to challenge and our football has been great.

"I think they're very defensive minded. They're tremendously organised and tactically they're set up is going to be nearly perfect, so they're going to take some breaking down but as you've seen over our European journey we've broken teams down and we've had the patience to do that and hopefully it will be the same on Thursday.

"Obviously we want the win but if we can get our away goal I think that that is very important as well. We have been unbeaten, but at the beginning of the year we had to qualify and no one would have foreseen a perfect 100 percent record in Europe since then, but we've done that."