Why Ollie Watkins Is The Best English Striker In The Premier League

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Ollie Watkins is no longer the all-round, jack-of-all-trades striker who chases down balls into the corners: this is a new, mature Watkins who is spearheading Aston Villa further and further up the table.

Transcript

00:00 [ding]

00:02 Okay, so it feels about 10 years ago, but Stephen Gerrard of Al-Etifak fame actually managed

00:09 Ollie Watkins at Aston Villa. I know!

00:12 Firstly,

00:14 who else forgot that Jan Bednarak had a stint at Villa Park because that just

00:19 totally passed me by.

00:23 So this Christmas tree formation kind of came about at Rangers when Michael Beale was assisting with Gerrard.

00:30 And the key feature here is the two number 10s

00:35 behind the number one striker.

00:37 The width

00:39 is provided from the fullbacks and then you've got a more workman-like midfield three.

00:44 But

00:46 Ollie Watkins is not playing up front in this system. There were two strikers

00:51 in Watkins and Ings.

00:53 So Ings was one of the buys that came in after Jack Grealish left for £100m.

00:58 And Watkins was actually tasked with more of a sort of wide role, more of a sort of playing off of Ings.

01:05 And actually Gerrard found that having Watkins out wide, he would put in the yards.

01:10 He's got that pace to take on a fullback. He's also got that explosiveness as well.

01:16 So he can push past you and use his physicality.

01:21 And

01:22 given that Ings was more of that stereotypical kind of box poacher,

01:26 Watkins was seen as an almost kind of like Jack of all trades, a kind of all-round striker, which

01:33 it suited him really.

01:35 But the big thing that Emery has done is to simplify

01:39 Watkins' role. He is no longer that all-round striker who will go into the corners as he mentioned yesterday.

01:46 He will stay central.

01:49 He will lead the line properly. And if we look at a stereotypical

01:53 Unai Emery team as we've got here, this is what he did at Villarreal. This is what he tried to do at times at Arsenal actually.

02:00 And you've got your typical 4-4-2 shape.

02:05 Emery likes to flood the midfield with sort of natural central midfielders.

02:10 This is the team that faced West Ham yesterday. And as you can see, you've got

02:16 you've got your two forwards up top who are going to lead the press and with this system, they want to press teams

02:23 into

02:25 the touchline. They want to funnel teams

02:27 wide.

02:29 So the interesting thing about this Emery team is not

02:32 necessarily that they press particularly high. They actually win the ball back

02:36 in more of this sort of area. They play with this high line, but ultimately Emery would like to

02:44 tempt teams onto Aston Villa

02:46 in order to then break at pace and use

02:49 those incredibly quick forwards that he's got at his disposal. It's almost like

02:55 creating a transition. You're not

02:58 dominating a team and keeping them in their final third. You're keeping them in more of the sort of middle of the pitch

03:04 and then unleashing hell later on.

03:07 And if we look at Watkins' heat map, which I'm just going to overlay here, you can see that he is

03:13 staying central and I find it quite interesting that he's got this kind of strike partner next to him

03:18 who isn't your stereotypical strike partner where you do the same things and you sort of

03:24 one man goes, everyone comes short.

03:27 It's almost like Moussa Diaby's job here is to create chaos. He's got to run into these channels. He's got to kind of

03:33 occupy defenders where

03:36 Watkins has got the opposite job. He's got to stay

03:39 focused. He's got to stay patient and he might not touch the ball for a good 10 minutes, but

03:43 he's got to stay

03:45 within that central area of the pitch

03:47 and wait for his teammates to bring him the service.

03:51 So I've actually got the FB ref stats up with me here and I'm comparing

03:58 2021 to 22. So that's, you know, like two seasons ago

04:03 versus the last 365 days of playing

04:08 under Emery.

04:10 And you can see there's a dramatic improvement here with goals, non-penalty goals. He's taking

04:15 slightly more shots,

04:17 more sort of expected goals and shot creating

04:20 actions here, but actually

04:23 you compare it to 21-22.

04:25 He's more of an all-rounder here. You see he's making more progressive carries. He's attempting more passes

04:32 and

04:34 it illustrates really well how he's literally just focused now

04:38 on that centre forward role. You want to be able to have that kind of pacey forward who, as your

04:45 opponent's back line is creeping forward, creeping forward, you know, trying to get higher up the pitch to push you higher and higher.

04:52 Somebody like Watkins to then explode off the shoulder of a defender and get in behind.

04:58 I mean, look at the goal against West Ham yesterday.

05:01 It's that perfect Aston Villa goal where they pick up the ball within their own half,

05:06 still sort of in the middle third of the pitch.

05:09 And then they just catch the opponent on the back foot as West Ham are trying to

05:15 muster their own attack and try and push forward and

05:19 pen Villa into their own half. Villa are having none of it and they go from back to front or well, sort of middle to front

05:26 in a blink of an eye. When you've got a player like Watkins leading the line,

05:30 when you've got Leon Bailey or Moussa Diaby next to him,

05:34 you've got that searing pace that defenders don't like to defend against when they're on the back foot, when they're having to

05:41 turn back to their own goal.

05:44 But just watching Watkins under Emery, he feels like he is better at decision making and I think I've got a stat to sum it up actually.

05:53 So,

05:54 looking at the FB Ref stats again,

05:58 Watkins is actually in the 90th percentile

06:00 for assists for a forward. So he's in the top 10%

06:06 of making assists for a forward.

06:08 And as I mentioned earlier, he's not exactly a link-up striker.

06:13 He's not the kind of striker who's always looking to supply a teammate, which suggests one of two things for me.

06:21 Either his teammates are very, very clinical and he can just pass to John McGinn and John McGinn will always score a goal,

06:29 which is fairly possible. John McGinn is very good at scoring goals.

06:32 Or, and I think it's slightly more likely,

06:35 Watkins is giving his teammates the ball

06:38 in very dangerous areas and he's knowing when to release the ball, whether he's the one making the shot himself or he's the one supplying

06:47 one of his teammates. And it's just a really subtle thing,

06:51 I think, about his game that sums him up as a player. That ever since he's moved into this more central role

06:57 and ever since Emery has kind of built this team around him and his strike partner,

07:02 he's almost grown a few inches that he seems

07:06 more confident as a forward. He knows what his role is all about.

07:10 Like we're no longer at this stage where it's like, "Oli Watkins is scoring loads of goals,

07:16 I'm going to get him in my FPL team." I actually haven't got him in my FPL team because I've got Alvarez and Harland,

07:22 so I mean really I should practice what I preach and put him in. But like he's been doing this now for

07:28 over a year,

07:30 Watkins. He's been performing at this level and when he doesn't score goals,

07:35 he's still making the space, he's still stretching the play for everybody else.

07:40 But hey, that's just what I think. Please let me know what you think in the comments below, whether you're an Aston Villa fan or not.

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