Ollie Watkins

[Paul.S]

Goalscorers cost huge money. There are scouts all over the world looking at the same ones and they are all aware of up and coming talent as well.
If you add the financial restrictions it’s even harder to go out and buy anyone. We are constantly selling and buying every summer to avoid sanctions. A goalscorer is the hardest position to fill, we’ve already sold one so I’d suggest we don’t need to sell another.

[Dave]

I think it’s OK to be a little sceptical about Monchi’s ability to find us a ready made replacement for Watkins.

I don't see why the expectation would be for the club to suddenly find a player who is currently giving his current club us everything Watkins does. The Watkins that Emery found wasn't giving us then what Watkins gives us now. Ollie's Premier League career was 14 goals, 11 goals, and 2 goals in the first 13 games of 22/23 before Emery arrived.

I'm very happy with Watkins, and there are probably half a dozen positions that *could* be upgraded before we needed to worry about centre-forward. But also if an offer came in for him and he wanted to go I would bet a lot of money that he would be nowhere near as good at his next club as he is for us. And also that the club would only do it with the expectation that we'd turn the next decent, solid striker into something great, just left Emery did when he joined us.

[Toronto Villa]

And we don’t need to have an Watkins type of player any more than we needed a Doug type of player once he left. If Emery thought for example David was a player he wanted he’d get the most out of him even if the style of our play needed to evolve away form what Watkins does today to something else that ultimately gets the same results or better.

[Footy-Vill]

Solanke hasn’t scored for 7 matches yet still gets called up ahead of Watkins .

i can only think Watkins was left out only to recover .

[Dave]

Watkins is injured. There is no point calling up an injured player for home games against Albania and Latvia.

[Footy-Vill]

I've come full circle on this recently.

He's 29. His value is probably at its peak. I can see the sense in selling him now. We'll have to replace him eventually anyway, and while that will be a difficult task, it'll be a bit easier if we have a shitload of money.

I’d be in agreement if signings like Diaby and Onana had set the world alight. For the most part our best players are still Dean Smith signings.

so, you're disregarding Digne, Torres Tielemans, Garcia, Rogers, Asensio, Malen....
... I don't really understand the point you're trying to make.

I’m saying that barring Torres and Rogers none of Monchi or Emerys signings have significantly improved the first team. So I currently don’t have faith in them being able to find a player equal to or better than Watkins.

We’ve signed two left backs and two right backs since Gerrard was sacked, none of whom are better than Digne or Cash. Garcia might be in time. Heavy emphasis on might.

Diaby was not an improvement on Bailey, Philogene was moved on quickly, Moreno didn’t displace Digne, Onana has hardly played. Tielemans has been a bargain but is he really any better than Luiz?

I’m saying that their record in the transfer market is “mixed” at best.

who signed Bednawreck? awful player. Callum Chambers ?
the point is we aren’t signing those sort of players anymore!

[Footy-Vill]

BBC Radio WM's Mike Taylor on the form of Ollie Watkins

Arthur asked: How do you rate Ollie Watkins' season? He remains a threat and has been creative (although less than last year). His finishing has been really poor though. If he had a better conversion rate, would we would be challenging the top of the table?

Mike said: Not as productive as last season, clearly, but still pretty good.
I'm sure nobody wishes more than Watkins himself that he had taken a few more chances, but you will have heard as often as I have when managers say the most important thing is that he was in position for the chance in the first place.

In the first half of the season, I thought the best way to assess Watkins and Jhon Duran was to think of them as adding up to one player, as they were so rarely on the field together.
Watkins ran defenders ragged for an hour, and then a fresh Duran came on to take advantage. In the days of five substitutes, this was a good method for so long as both players were content with the arrangement.

When Duran started, Villa's whole structure – a favourite Emery word – never seemed quite as productive. There are more statistics in football than ever, but I'm not sure they entirely do justice to Watkins' overall productivity.