{"id":28691,"date":"2025-05-10T21:36:38","date_gmt":"2025-05-10T21:36:38","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/news\/ollie-watkins-fantastic-aston-villa-striker-shows-weight-in-gold\/"},"modified":"2025-05-10T21:36:38","modified_gmt":"2025-05-10T21:36:38","slug":"ollie-watkins-fantastic-aston-villa-striker-shows-weight-in-gold","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/news\/ollie-watkins-fantastic-aston-villa-striker-shows-weight-in-gold\/","title":{"rendered":"Ollie Watkins: &#8216;Fantastic&#8217; Aston Villa striker &#8216;shows weight in gold&#8217;"},"content":{"rendered":"<p> <br \/>\n<\/p>\n<div>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\"><a href=\"http:\/\/www.bbc.com\/sport\/football\/live\/cvgp2j0v505t#Report\" class=\"ssrcss-k8mrr8-InlineLink e1kn3p7n0\">On Saturday at a sun-kissed Bournemouth,<\/a> Watkins guided Morgan Rogers&#8217; low cross into the bottom corner with a delicate, deft touch.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">It was his 16th Premier League goal of the season &#8211; no other Englishman has more.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Longevity is key. Watkins has scored at least 10 league goals in all of his five seasons at Villa, helping him move ahead of Dwight Yorke, Dion Dublin and Juan Pablo Angel in the club&#8217;s top-scorer charts.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;It&#8217;s a big achievement. some unbelievable players have played for this club,&#8221; Watkins told BBC Match of the Day. <\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;You look at the names, so to be up there on the top of that I&#8217;m really proud. It&#8217;s great achievement.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">This season, Watkins has had to battle for a starting place with Jhon Duran, who then moved to Saudi Arabian club Al-Nassr for \u00a371m in January, and Marcus Rashford, who joined on loan from Manchester United in the same window.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Watkins had started each of Villa&#8217;s first 14 Premier League matches, but was limited to two league starts and three substitute appearances in April, and didn&#8217;t start either of Villa&#8217;s Champions League quarter-final matches against Paris St-Germain.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">With Emery preferring Rashford in the starting XI, speculation was rife that Watkins may leave Villa.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">The club had already rejected a \u00a340m bid for the England international from Arsenal in January.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">But Rashford was ruled out for the rest of the season last month with a hamstring injury and, since then, Watkins has returned up front to shine again.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;He&#8217;s shown his weight in gold,&#8221; former Aston Villa midfielder Lee Hendrie told Sky Sports. <\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;It&#8217;s not only his goals, but his team play. He works hard off the ball. He was chasing defenders in the last five minutes. He&#8217;s always looking what he can do to affect the game &#8211; that just shows how important he is.&#8221;<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p><br \/>\n<br \/><a href=\"https:\/\/www.bbc.com\/sport\/football\/articles\/cvgn3r8lnd8o\">Source link <\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>On Saturday at a sun-kissed Bournemouth, Watkins guided Morgan Rogers&#8217; low cross into the bottom corner with a delicate, deft touch. It was his 16th Premier League goal of the season &#8211; no other Englishman has more. Longevity is key. Watkins has scored at least 10 league goals in all of his five seasons at [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":28692,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[67],"tags":[5811,7780,3513,3052,4591,2257,8362,9967,4209],"class_list":["post-28691","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-top-news","tag-aston","tag-fantastic","tag-gold","tag-ollie","tag-shows","tag-striker","tag-villa","tag-watkins","tag-weight"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28691","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=28691"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28691\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":28693,"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28691\/revisions\/28693"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/28692"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=28691"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=28691"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=28691"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}