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Wales hot-shot Earnshaw, shading Premiership predators Ruud van Nistelrooy and Thierry Henry as the leading marksman in British soccer with 28 goals at club and international level this season, knows City have spilled crucial points to struggling opposition in recent months - Huddersfield, Cheltenham and Barnsley all doing damage.
Cardiff are within touching distance of an automatic promotion ticket but they haven't managed to chalk up consecutive League maximums since early November.
City face a trip to relegation-haunted Port Vale next Tuesday, then face Stockport and Brentford inside seven days and Earnshaw said: "It's a tough schedule, but we've got to come through this.
"If we have serious aspirations to play First Division football, we must be seeing off teams at the bottom of the table. We know some clubs are fighting for their lives and see Cardiff as a big scalp, but we've got to get ruthless."
And Earnshaw, who bagged the second strike of his four-cap international career in the Dragons 2-2 draw with Bosnia-Herzegovina at the Millennium Stadium 11 days back, is fed up with a section of opinion convinced arch rivals Crewe, 2-0 winners at Chesterfield yesterday, possess a better squad than the Bluebirds.
He insisted: "You've got to look at some of the players who are not getting a regular game with us - they'd walk into a lot of other Second Division sides." Earnshaw, rated at £10m and now being trailed by a posse of Premiership, Serie A and La Liga club scouts, has plundered an astonishing 69 goals in just 91 City starts. The Welshman, 21, is now just seven strikes short of smashing Stan Richards' club record haul of 30, notched in Division Three South 56 years ago.
He said: "Somebody mentioned a figure of 40 goals to me the other day, but I'm wondering if there's enough games remaining to reach that. I'm not the finished product - there are still so many aspects of football I need to perfect."