{"id":182408,"date":"2025-09-26T06:11:08","date_gmt":"2025-09-26T06:11:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/182408\/"},"modified":"2025-09-26T06:11:08","modified_gmt":"2025-09-26T06:11:08","slug":"aston-villa-unai-emery-backs-england-striker-ollie-watkins-to-end-goal-drought","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/182408\/","title":{"rendered":"Aston Villa: Unai Emery backs England striker Ollie Watkins to end goal drought"},"content":{"rendered":"

When Morgan Rogers handed Ollie Watkins the ball, the Holte End chanted the striker’s name.<\/p>\n

Seconds after his weak penalty was saved by Bologna’s Lukasz Skorupski, Watkins’ name was again chanted in support. <\/p>\n

The England striker is enduring a 10-game goal drought for club and country at a time when Villa need him at his sharpest, despite Thursday’s Europa League win.<\/p>\n

His nine games without scoring in the club shirt is the joint longest he has gone without a goal in his Villa career, having previously had nine-game dry spells in 2020-21 and 2022-23. <\/p>\n

His second-half spot kick was the ideal chance to end that but the scuffed strike lacked confidence and allowed Skorupski to save with his legs. <\/p>\n

Watkins has now failed to score three of his last five penalties for Villa, including missing in the Champions League against Celtic last season. <\/p>\n

Ultimately – thanks to Marco Bizot’s late save from Martin Vitik – it mattered little as Villa earned their first win of the season thanks to John McGinn’s early strike.<\/a><\/p>\n

It allowed boss Unai Emery to relax after victory and assert with confidence that Watkins will end his drought.<\/p>\n

“He didn’t score, okay, it doesn’t matter, the goal is coming through the work he did today,” Emery said.<\/p>\n

“I am happy because he played doing his task. He worked, this is the most important. <\/p>\n

“He pressed, he was getting in duels, he got chances, he got a penalty, he missed but the most important [thing] is how he played in 30 minutes doing his task and he did a fantastic job.<\/p>\n

“He has to feel after each match like I am feeling now, be happy because he did his work. He has to feel the same and if he is scoring he is going to feel better. <\/p>\n

“The most important thing is how he is working in his tasks for the team. Today he played a good match, not enough because he didn’t score but he played good. This is the first step.”<\/p>\n

Watkins’ struggles can be charted back to the second half of last season when he scored just four times in Villa’s final 19 games.<\/p>\n

The 29-year-old started 13 of those but was left out of the starting line ups for their Champions League quarter-final defeat by Paris St-Germain<\/a>, playing just 25 minutes across both legs.<\/p>\n

This season he has missed all five of his big chances, has managed just 40 touches in the opposition’s box across his nine appearances and is averaging less than one shot on target per game. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"When Morgan Rogers handed Ollie Watkins the ball, the Holte End chanted the striker’s name. Seconds after his…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":182409,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[69],"tags":[403,99],"class_list":["post-182408","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-soccer","tag-soccer","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/182408","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=182408"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/182408\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/182409"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=182408"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=182408"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=182408"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}