Manu Tuilagi
Tuilagi hasn't played for England since last year's defeat to Wales in Cardiff.

England coach Stuart Lancaster will give Manu Tuilagi and Marland Yarde every chance to prove their worth ahead of the critical Six Nations clash against holders Wales at Twickenham.

Both players have been included in England's training squad for the first time in the Championship after suffering from respective pectoral and hip injuries and are in contention to feature this weekend.

Tuilagi played for the first time since September in Leicester's win at Newcastle on Sunday while Yarde started as London Irish crashed to defeat to Exeter Chiefs, with the pair both producing rusty performances.

And while Lancaster is conscious of not disrupting an England team who are the marginal bookmakers' favourites to claim both the Triple Crown by beating Wales and also win the Six Nations, the coach will give the duo every chance to be involved.

"We'll see how it goes after training on Tuesday/Wednesday but obviously it would be a big step, in particular for Manu as he has only played one game and he has not trained with us all year," Lancaster admitted.

"Marland has been [training] with us a bit longer and obviously we've got some decisions to make there. He played well at the weekend but it's still quite a bit step.

"I don't feel any pressure [to bring Manu back], the only pressure I feel is to do what's right for the team. You've got to be fair to the players who have played and played well but also recognise Manu's quality.

"But you have to be fair to him and give him the chance to get some games under his belt, while also giving him time to get used to our systems and structures. We've moved on quite a lot since he was last in camp training with us and it will be good to see him and get him up to speed with everything."

Tuilagi missed England's entire autumn campaign as well as the first three games of the Six Nations while Yarde played in November's win over Australia before being ruled out for four months.

As well as seizing the upper-hand in pursuit of the Six Nations championship, England will be looking to exact revenge for their defeat to Wales at the Millennium Stadium last Spring, which ended their grand slam and title hopes.

Though England have shrugged off the scars from Cardiff, Lancaster is keen to identify the mistakes made 12 months ago.

"On the day it doesn't matter what will happen in the future or what has happened in the past," he added. "But in the lead up to the match you do take lessons out of previous games. Not just our game against them last year but when they played against Australia, against South Africa, against Ireland.

"We've had a good winning record since that point, we went to Argentina and played well, then we had the QBE Internationals and won two out of three when it probably could have been three out of three.

"Obviously we were disappointed to lose in France but we're in good shape overall. And the team has changed quite a lot since that point, mainly through injuries but that has created opportunities for other players in our squad, which has created more depth in our squad that we've had before."