Unai Emery gives Ollie Watkins verdict as Aston Villa striker selected ahead of Jhon Duran
Unai Emery hailed Ollie Watkins after he scored the winning goal for Aston Villa at Goodison Park on Wednesday night.
The striker broke the deadlock shortly after the start of the second half after being set free by Morgan Rogers on the counter-attack. It was Watkins first goal in open play since the end of November after bagging two penalties in home matches against Brentford and Brighton.
"Ollie always responds on the field, sometimes not with goals but always with his work," Emery said after the win over Everton. "Today he did it and he had a good chance in the first half but he kept going. He then scored a fantastic goal.
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"The most important always with the players is the commitment they have to work on what we need on the field. The strikers have to score and they have to try to be offensively close to our attack to score goals or get assists.
"We’re happy because his work is fantastic to be able to always come back, to fight for the second action from another player.
"It is good because we won and it is good as well because he scored. It is good as well because after this clean sheet we have to analyse again how we can get stronger."
Speaking of the victory more generally, Emery said: "It was very important today to win. We have broken our bad spell in the league away from home. We want to be more consistent in the table.
"We are trying to be all the season, more or less, to have the possibility to get the target for the league and this result was very important. We played the first half better than the second half. We created two very good chances we didn’t score. We played the second half controlling less than the first half, but we scored one goal.
"We dominated defensively their attack and we competed very well in the second half defensively. We deserved to win, which is very good for our confidence."