Ollie Watkins’ football journey

Cover image by Reuters/Heute licensed under CC-BY-4.0

Aston Villa and England striker Ollie Watkins is now a mainstay at the pinnacle of elite level football, but that wasn’t always the case for the 29-year-old.

Born in Torquay, Watkins was made to wait before tasting the flavours of top-flight football, gradually working his way through the football pyramid before finally establishing himself in Aston Villa’s claret and blue.

His journey began at Exeter City. Watkins joined the club’s academy at under-11 level, two years after initially failing a trial at age nine.

Having risen through the ranks, he made his first team debut on the final day of the 2013/14 season, against Hartlepool United.

He soon built on the opportunity too, going on to bag his first senior goal in the Football League Trophy during the following campaign, before enjoying a successful loan spell with Weston-super-Mare. He racked up 10 goals in 25 appearances for the club, before returning to Exeter with hopes of nailing down a place in the starting eleven.

And during 2015/16, he did exactly that. He scored four times in six games to win the Football League Young Player of the Month Award in March of that season and ended the campaign with 10 goals in 22 matches.

His first full season as a starter came in 2016/17, which would prove to be Watkins’ final season in Exeter colours. It’s easy to see why clubs in the higher leagues were circling, given he ended with a whopping 29 goal contributions to his name. He ended the year as the EFL Young Player of the Year, but was left disappointed after seeing his side suffer a 2-1 defeat in the League Two play-off final to Blackpool.

That’s when Brentford came calling. The Bees were still in the Championship at the time, but were targeting promotion to the Premier League for the first time since the competition’s inception in 1992.

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It didn’t take Watkins long to get used to his new surroundings. He scored his first goal a month after signing, in his side’s 3-1 win at Wimbledon in the EFL Cup.

The Englishman established himself as a key pillar in the west London side’s team, earning himself a fresh four-year contract extension in 2019 as a reward for the performances he’d put in. And at the end of that 2019/20 season, he finished with an impressive goal haul of 26. But he would again experience the agony of play-off disappointment as Brentford came up short at Wembley.

The end of that campaign would see him finally secure a move to England’s top-flight with Aston Villa, where he has since established himself as one of the best goalscorers the Premier League has to offer.

Yet, his journey to the EFL should never be forgotten: the old-fashioned route of working his way through the divisions, making a name for himself brick by brick, before finally seeing his name up in the lights in the glitz and glamour of the top-flight.

In a world where progression seems to hinge on landing a place in a Premier League academy, his story remains an important reminder of what’s possible with the right work ethic.