Aston Villa striker Ollie Watkins has seven goals or assists in 12 matches against West Ham United; a record he will be looking to improve upon on Sunday afternoon.
Nuno Espirito Santo’s Hammers face Unai Emery’s Villa, kicking off at exactly the same time as a bona fide ‘six pointer’ between Nottingham Forest and Tottenham Hotspur.
West Ham United are coming up against a striker who will not be short of motivation, either.
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Ollie Watkins was omitted from Thomas Tuchel’s England roster on Friday. Furthermore, while Aston Villa are on a run of three straight league defeats, Watkins has not scored in his last six top-flight outings.
Yet, like Hammers skipper Jarrod Bowen, Watkins is rightly held up as one of the finest exports from England’s second tier. David Moyes even admitted, back in 2024, that wished he had brought the former Brentford talisman to East London around the same time that Bowen was snapped up in a £20 million deal from Hull City.
David Moyes admitted West Ham United should’ve signed Ollie Watkins from Brentford
West Ham’s so-called ‘striker curse’ would eventually claim another victim in Moyes.
The ill-fated £30 million signing of Gianluca Scamacca became a stick with which to beat the veteran Scot in his final campaign; many accusing Moyes of failing to harness the talents of expensively-acquired, technically-gifted attackers.
“If you buy a centre-forward and he doesn’t score the goals, you probably lose your job,” Moyes admitted two years ago, via The Standard. “That means unless you’re going to buy one at top money that you know is proven, it becomes very difficult for managers.
“We’ve tried for years to find people that we believed might be right. If you look back over the last two or three years at the number of centre-forwards [people have] named that might be coming here, there might be quite a lot of them that have failed and they wouldn’t have been any good.
“[But also] we’ve missed out on ones we would’ve like when you look back. Maybe Ollie Watkins, people like that. But it’s a journey, sometimes you get it right and sometimes you don’t.”
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According to The Sun, West Ham ‘considered’ a move for Watkins in January 2020. Coincidentally, the same window in which Bowen arrived from Humberside.
Brentford refused to engage in dialogue at the time, their sights very much fixed on the Premier League.
It was only after the Bees lost to Fulham in the play-off final a few months down the line that Watkins was eventually sold to Aston Villa, for an eye-watering and, in hindsight, bargain fee of £28 million.
Flash forward to the present day, while Bowen has come under fire despite seeming destined to break into double figures for a third-straight Premier League season, Watkins’ England omission and ongoing goal drought means serious questions are now being asked of his longevity.
West Ham’s one-that-got-away will not be short of motivation, then, when he faces his old suitors on Sunday.
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