Unai Emery admits £28m Aston Villa player has really impressed him in training this week

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Aston Villa manager Unai Emery has admitted he’s been very impressed with striker Ollie Watkins in training this week.

Emery was speaking to the club’s official website after an impressive 1-0 win over Chelsea at Stamford Bridge.

Aston Villa piled the misery onto Mauricio Pochettino’s side on Sunday as they once again failed to score.

A red card for Malo Gusto in the second half tipped the momentum in the visitor’s favour.

Ollie Watkins finally scored his first league goal of the season converting at the second attempt past Robert Sanchez.

The £28m England international has been much better at laying on chances for his teammates than scoring them in the Premier League this season.

He’s already got a couple of assists while he showed his quality in Europa Conference League qualifying by scoring a hat-trick against Hibernian.

Emery has now suggested that he’s been very impressed by what he’s seen from Watkins in training.

The centre-forward has now finally put his poor run behind him and his work behind the scenes appears to be paying off.

Emery impressed with Watkins in training

Speaking after the match, Emery said: “Always we need the goals of our strikers, and I’m very happy with him because he’s always trying to be committed with his teammates.

“His behaviour every day is very good and he was practising a lot and trying to get his best performances from the team.

“Today he scored and we’re very happy for him and for our victory.”

Watkins was replaced in the final minutes by Jhon Duran who looks like a very exciting deputy to the

However, Watkins is very much Emery’s first-choice striker and will be glad he’s turned good performances in training into goals in the league.

The irony is Sunday’s opponents are in desperate need of goals and have been linked with Watkins.

Given how much they’ve spent under the ownership of Todd Boehly, Villa would likely put a huge price tag on Watkins’s head.

Whether they’d even consider selling him is another matter, especially considering his standing with the Aston Villa side.