My Favorite EPL Striker
Prolific strikers who make the jump from the EFL Championship to the Premier League can often be sorted into two categories: they either fail to adapt to the (slightly) less scrappy, and more technical, nature of the English top division, or they’re able to fit in just perfectly, banging in goals for fun and acting as if they belonged there for years.
This was the major question facing Ollie Watkins’s move from Brentford to Aston Villa. His production during the 19/20 season in the EFL Championship, in which he scored 25 goals and got 3 assists in 46 matches, was absolutely superb. But could he replicate that sort of success in the best league in the world?
In the following season in the English Premier League, Watkins registered a respectable 14 goals and 5 assists in 37 matches. 3 of these goals came in a hat trick against Liverpool — performance below.
Quick in transition and always in the right spot, Watkins was by far my favorite striker to watch last year, and I was pretty frustrated to see that he wasn’t in the English squad that played in last year’s edition of the Euros. I thought that his ability to thrive in more direct style of play could have offered a bit of variance off the bench in the case that Harry Kane was having a difficult game, but I digress.
Although he hasn’t been quite as successful this year, Watkins is still at 7 goals and with 15 matches in the season still to go, he can still reach double digits at least. Besides, the entire squad at Aston Villa has struggled for parts of this season, and much of that is probably due to the fact that the team was still adjusting to Jack Grealish’s departure to Manchester City last summer.
And at the age of 26, he still has several years left in his prime, and he’s got several solid seasons ahead of him. In a league where stars like Mo Salah or Kevin de Bruyne can often steal the show, it’s easy to overlook players like Watkins who may not be world class but nevertheless stalwart and thus, easy to become fond of.
And who knows? With Manchester United being an absolute garbage dump of a team nowadays, I’ve severely considered switching to Aston Villa as my club of choice — but regardless if that ever truly happens, you can bet that I’ll be supporting this guy every game he plays.
