Ollie Watkins’s career path from Non-League to the English Premier League has been nothing but a huge surprise with the new heights the England international has reached at Villa Park.
Watkins is a product of Exeter City’s academy, a club which is about 20 miles away from his town Newton Abbot, Devon. Truly he was a product of the academy, but his career rise began with a loan spell at non-league side Weston-super Mare where he had his first taste of senior football in the 2014-15 campaign.
The Villa forward was tested by his then manager in a number of positions during his time at Exeter City as a young boy. However, he couldn’t convince Tisdale enough to give him more minutes which led to his sojourn in the non-league where he scored 10 goals in 24 appearances.
Ollie Watkins Meteroic Rise
Following Watkins’s return from his loan spell at Weston-super Mare, he enjoyed a breakthrough season at Exeter City under Paul Tisdale where he went on to showed the manager his technical and physical side of his game scoring 26 goals in 78 games for “The Grecians”.
As a young player who is still trying to reach the pinnacle of his football career, having had a decent season with Exeter City, where he had a brilliant auditioning in the unsuccessful play-off that should have qualified them to the League One that season.
Kevin Nicholson, his coach at the youth level at Exeter, felt Watkins benefitted from being at a club with a clear pathway from the academy to the first team.
“Ollie was at a club that was willing to give players the opportunity to be involved in and around the first-team environment,” he told Sky Sports in 2018.
“At 17, he had the chance to move to the pitch next door where the first team was training and get involved with them. Even if it was part-way through a session, that helped him grow and develop even more.
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However, despite failing in helping “The Grecians” in qualifying to the League One via the play-off, Watkins never gives up on aspiring for the bigger stage. As such following his impressive performances for Exeter City, the forward signed for Championship side Brentford for a fee believed to be less than £2m under Dean Smith now manager of Aston Villa.
“The boy could always finish, that was a natural thing that he had,” his former team-mate Clinton Morrison told Sky Sports in 2018. “Nine times out of 10 he would hit the target.
“He never played up front [at first], he played as a No 10 or as a winger cutting in from the left, but he has always had the ability.
“He has a great physique. He is powerful, quick, and direct. He is a threat and he is a handful and defenders hate playing against him.
“He is a quiet lad, so he is nothing like me, but he is a good character, a positive guy who knew what he wanted. He worked hard for it. He wants to be the best.”
Watkins notched 10 goals and five assists in his maiden season in the Championship, while in the second campaign he did impressively well by improving on the total goals. He scored 18 goals in the following season proving Dean Smith’s decision in signing was the right one.
Dean Smith left Brentford for Aston Villa in 2018 leaving Watkins in the hands of Thomas Frank the assistant manager of the club.
Surprisingly the Devon-born didn’t disappoint with his performances for the “Bees” netting 26 goals in 46 averaging more than a goal in every other match in the 2019-20 campaign.
As Watkins continues his impressive performances for the Bees, it was evident that he’s destined for greatness but no one really knows how fast that would come. In that regard, Tottenham Hotspur came knocking, but Brentford board and Frank refused to let him leave for London claiming the Devon-born isn’t for sale.
In the 2019-20 season following Aston Villa’s promotion to the Premier League, things didn’t work out fine for the Claret. They had to fight hard to survive the relegation battle with the majority of their top signings failing to live up to expectations due to injuries and loss of form.
In Aston Villa’s quest to address the problems facing the team that made them struggled following their promotion, they opted to address that by recruiting some keys players. In that regard, they trusted the former Brentford gaffer to fix that, in doing so he went to a familiar place to get a familiar player whom he had worked with at Brentford.
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The Claret splashed £28m on Ollie Watkins who has never tasted action in the topflight before. However, Dean Smith trusted him because he knew what he could bring to the team, having worked with him at Brentford before he got the managerial job at Aston Villa in 2018.
With Watkins’s contribution to the Claret side in terms of goals and his all-around performances, you would agree to the fact that Dean Smith got his decision right by bringing the former Brentford forward to the Villa Park.
He scored 14 goals and assisted 5 this season for the Claret, a great improvement in his performances and goal scored compared to last season in his debut season.
Should he continue with the same kind of form in the new campaign, with hard work and dedication then we might be seeing another talisman for the England national team in the years to come.
No doubt Watkins’s impressive career is just starting with Aston Villa, and with the Claret playing good football, then Ollie has what it takes to become one of the most sought-after strikers in world football.
