WATKINS WANTS IT OLL’ IN THE COMING WEEKS
OLLIE WATKINS is chasing the Golden Boot and a place in the Aston Villa pantheon by “proving the doubters wrong”.
The striker’s 19th Premier League goal of the campaign — and 26th in all competitions — sealed Aston Villa’s superb 2-0 win at Arsenal and boosted their hopes of Champions League football next season.
Watkins is now just one goal behind Erling Haaland and Cole Palmer in the race for the most coveted footwear in the game.
And he is also just one goal away from matching Peter Withe, the last player to score 20 in the top flight for Villa, after matching Christian Benteke’s 19 as the club’s highest tally in the Premier League.
Seven years ago, Watkins was playing on the wing for Exeter City in League Two — now he looks a shoo-in for England’s Euro 2024 squad.
Favourite
Haaland (inset) remains oddson favourite with the bookies to win the Golden Boot, but Watkins said: “I want to score every game and I want to win it.
“I’ve got my eyes set on it.
“I put talkSPORT on on the way to training the other day and heard Simon Jordan saying that he’s not worried about me or Aston Villa causing Arsenal problems.
“It is nice to prove doubters wrong. Nice for him to eat his own words, really.
“I’ve had my eyes on 20 goals in a season since I joined the club. Obviously Benteke’s scored the most goals in the Premier League with 19 and I’ve equalled that with five games left.
“I’m looking to get to 20 goals.
“Once you get to 20 in a season, I think people start to really put you in that top striker category. That is something I’m working hard to achieve.”
After Tottenham’s 4-0 drubbing at Newcastle 24 hours earlier, Villa seized their chance to regain the initiative in the battle to finish in the top four behind City, Arsenal and Liverpool.
Remarkably, Villa are unbeaten in 11 trips to London under Unai Emery, dating back to Steven Gerrard’s dismal swansong at Fulham in October 2022.
Defend
Now, following a tricky Europa Conference League quarter-final in Lille, where Emery’s side defend a slender 2-1 lead from the first leg, Villa face a bananaskin home game with surprise package Bournemouth.
Watkins warned: “We’ve worked so hard to win at Arsenal, we can’t now just throw it all away next weekend. “We need to keep building from this, keep going and proving people wrong and show them we can get in to the Champions League.
“Some people may be surprised (by Villa winning at Arsenal), but I’m not. We’ve shown what we can do against the big teams and we deserve to be where we are.”
Watkins revealed the key to Sunday’s textbook heist at the Emirates was Emery’s meticulous preparation, which included THREE team meetings on matchday alone.
He said: “Three meetings? Normally we have one the day before the game. It is full-on, but it gets us up for it and gives us a very clear structure of what we are going to do when we go on the pitch.”