Could England honours be next for Aston Villa’s former City star Ollie Watkins?
OLLIE Watkins has been tipped for England honours by Exeter City boss Matt Taylor - if he can carry on his goalscoring start to his Aston Villa career.
The ex-Grecian has hit the net five times for his new club so far, including a hat-trick against Premier League champions Liverpool, and follows him being the leading goalscorer in the Championship for Brentford last season.
Taylor, when asked about how good Watkins could be, said that he can’t be far off being considered for international honours if he keeps scoring, and that his success in the top flight is so pleasing for everyone at Exeter City.
“Watching Ollie perform so well against the league champions and a fantastic team in Liverpool is so pleasing for everyone involved with the football club, and a lot of people no longer at the club who have to take a lot of the credit,” Taylor said.
“The academy will get all the plaudits and rightly so for Ollie’s development, but a huge chunk of people, Brentford included, take a huge amount of credit.
“If you score a hat-trick and then you have a chance of a callup. He has to find his feet and as well as he has started, it’s never that easy at the top level, so he has to get experience playing against top opposition, but if you look at other options for England, he must be close to it, and if he continues well then that may produce an opportunity for the next round of games.
“If you perform well then the next level is international football, and to see him in an England shirt would top the lot - it would even top the hat-trick against Liverpool.”
Taylor said that he thought the move to Aston Villa, and not a ‘bigger’ club like Manchester United was the sensible move to make, and if he were in Ole Gunnar Solsjkaer’s shoes he probably wouldn’t have signed the 24-yearold this summer.
“That’s’ no disrespect to Ollie, but needed to go to the next level like an Aston Villa first,” Taylor said. “The top six clubs are another level up from that, and he needs to being playing week in week out, and if he has success with Villa and scores goals, then there will be suitors. I thought it was a really sensible move for Ollie to go to Villa and to a manager in Dean Smith that knew him.”
Despite being highly rated in the academy, Watkins had initially struggled to make his mark in the Grecians side, and it was only after a spell playiong as a left wing-back and a loan spell at weston-superMare that he returned to St James Park and really thrived.
It was there, playing in a more favoured winger role, that Watkins found his form, netting 10 goals in 25 games, and when he finally broke into the Exeter line-up midway through the next season, he hit eight goals in 13 games, and make himself a regular.
Taylor said: “Between 18-20, he was a bit part player, went out on loan, didn’t always feature for City and missed a lot of squads, but the staff believed in him and gave him a platform to perform. When he got his chance in the first team, he held his own, and in his last season, he was almost unplayable and best player in the league by a mile.
“Academy products come to us at a certain level, we produce good players, but it is what happens next and how we work the transition into the first team and how we work with them when out of the academy. We have a lot of successes in the first team and the fringe players at the moment, but to see one play well and score a hat trick and that he should have scored more is incredible, and the headlines will mention Exeter City.
“Even when Ollie was with us, we could see the potential, but wouldn’t have necessarily said he would take the championship by storm and then be leading goalscorer and then perform in the Premier League so well.
“Anyone who plays for us has that opportunity. He turned himself into an absolute beast physically which meant he could hope his own on the field, and then his football did the rest.”