Aston Villa’s Ollie Watkins accused of lacking ‘real quality’ after Sunderland miss

Were it not for Harry Redknapp, few would remember the moment when Darren Bent nodded wide for Tottenham from six yards out late in a Premier League game at home to Portsmouth in January 2009. 

But when Redknapp quipped, “My missus could have scored that one,” Bent’s miss was instantly immortalised as an archetype of the squandered opportunity. 

These days, the pair laugh about the incident when they bump into each other, but it’s a fair bet Aston Villa striker Ollie Watkins won’t be laughing after a wayward stoppage-time header at Sunderland was likened to Bent’s infamous blunder.

Matty Cash scored Villa’s first goal of the season at the Stadium of Light, but it was not enough to prevent Sunderland from salvaging a 1-1 draw despite the first-half dismissal of Mozambican defender Reinildo for violent conduct. 

‘There’s someone not quite right with Ollie Watkins’

Villa are yet to win in the Premier League this season, a run of form that has left the club in 18th position and prompted manager Unai Emery to brand his players “lazy”. As the club’s record goalscorer, Watkins has come under particular scrutiny, and while questions have been raised about whether the 29-year-old is receiving adequate support from his team-mates, former Manchester United midfielder Paul Scholes believes the issue may run deeper. 

“There’s someone not quite right with him,” Scholes, who scored 155 goals in 718 games for United, said on The Good, the Bad and the Football podcast. 

“I don’t think he’s ever been a brilliant finisher anyway. I think he works brilliant[ly] for his teammates, he gets in good positions, but the amount of times I see him choose the wrong finish. I think that’s [the difference] between him and the top class centre-forwards. 

“I switched on [for the Sunderland game] and, when I saw that chance, he has got to score. It reminded me, remember when Harry Redknapp went mad at Darren Bent years ago and said, ‘My wife would have scored’? It felt like that.

“I like him, and there was talk of him coming to Man United at one point – Man United should have bought him – but I just think it’s that last bit of real quality that he misses. 

“But without being disrespectful to him, that’s where he’s at: you’ve got the top forwards, and he’s in the category just below that.”

Why has Ollie Watkins lost form for Aston Villa?

Although Watkins broke Gabriel Agbonlahor’s club record of 74 goals when he found the net at Bournemouth in May, he struggled towards the end of last season, scoring just four times in three months. 

Opinion varies as to the reason for the striker’s malaise. Some point to the unsettling effect of a £40m bid from Arsenal in January, others to the effect of playing through a knee injury in the early weeks of the season. 

Another school of thought, one subscribed to by former Villa front man Dion Dublin, suggests Emery must bear a measure of responsibility after dropping Watkins from the starting lineup for both legs of last season’s Champions League quarter-final against Paris Saint-Germain, decisions that the attacker has admitted left him “fuming”.

“When they played against PSG, he didn’t play Ollie, he played [Manchester United loanee] Marcus [Rashford] instead, and I think Ollie’s possibly still carrying that around,” said Dublin.  

“A huge game, Ollie Watkins’ hard work got them to that situation in the first place, and he was probably thinking, ‘My nose is put out of joint here. All I’ve done for you, and you don’t play me.’”

Whatever the truth of the matter, Villa badly need Watkins fit and firing before a slow start to the season becomes something altogether more worrying.