Aston Villa have one of the most enviable striker tandems in world football, as Jhon Duran has broken out as a lethal goal-scorer off the bench behind starter Ollie Watkins, who was a Premier League Player of the Season candidate in 2023/24.
Duran has scored four goals in just about 250 Premier League minutes so far in the 2024/25 campaign, while Watkins is sitting at five goals in ten games with two assists for good measure.
But it’s fair for Unai Emery and Aston Villa to want even more from their 28-year-old star man, because he is at the peak of his athletic powers and can still develop his decision-making.
Last season, Watkins scored 19 goals with 13 assists, and while he’s at a similar pace so far in 2024/25, the name of the game for Emery is constant improvement. Emery has such a meticulous attention to detail, so it’s not surprising to see he’s taking steps to instill that in Watkins.
Per a report from The Athletic’s Jacob Tanswell, Unai Emery is showing Ollie Watkins film of two brilliant strikers he coached in the past: Carlos Bacca at Villarreal and the famed Edinson Cavani of PSG.
Cavani is widely recognized as one of the greatest strikers of the 2010s while at Napoli and PSG, even though he was under the shadow of Zlatan Ibrahimovic in Paris.
What made Cavani so great was his intelligence off the ball. He wasn’t the most consistent finisher, but he could create chances at a high rate, like Watkins, and was one of the best in the world – maybe even second after Cristiano Ronaldo – at creating a high volume of clear chances for himself just by being in the right place at the right time.
Bacca was a wonderful striker for AC Milan and multiple La Liga clubs. He was one of the best of the decade in his own right and certainly even more underrated than Cavani, who at least did get some mainstream credit.
Watkins had 19 goals and 13 assists in a Premier League season, so it isn’t outrageous for Emery to expect him to be on Bacca’s or even Cavani’s level going forward.
In fact, Aston Villa should love that their manager is pushing one of his most talented players to this level. That is Emery’s job as a manager, and because he worked with Bacca and Cavani, he knows exactly how to tailor Watkins’s game to their strengths while not changing the core of what makes the England international so good.
