Ollie Watkins has the bizarre task of facing his boyhood club, but he’s been told to thrive off it.
Aston Villa‘s star striker is set to go up against his beloved Arsenal when the Gunners visit Villa Park.
Mikel Arteta‘s side are currently top of the league, sitting two points clear of second place Liverpool, whilst Villa are in third, just four points behind Arsenal.
That means a win for Unai Emery, who replaced legendary Arsenal boss Arsene Wenger following his exit in 2018, and his side will put them in touching distance of the top of the table.
It’s ironic, then, that the man they’ll be hoping can find the net on Saturday is a self-confessed Arsenal fan who sees club legend Thierry Henry as the best striker the Premier League has seen.
Of course, Watkins isn’t the first player in English football history to have to have dealt with this conflict of interest – in fact, one of talkSPORT’s very own has been in the scenario himself.
talkSPORT Drive co-host Darren Bent is also a Gooner and had to face his club a whopping 13 times in his career. However, he says he never really found facing his own club weird – with one exception.
“The only time it was a bit strange was when I played against Arsenal for Charlton and it was the last season at Highbury,” he told talkSPORT.com, referring to the 2005/06 campaign. “Obviously I’d been going to Highbury for years, so it felt a little bit odd. Obviously they then moved to the Emirates.
“It was one of them where until that moment, obviously I’d always been an Arsenal fan, but being there in that particular stadium, that’s probably the only time it felt a bit surreal.
“I’d played there before in the Youth Cup, but never in the first team, so I played at Highbury before and scored at Highbury. But being in the first team, being an Arsenal fan and walking through the Marble Halls and all that, that was a surreal feeling yeah.”
When asked what was going through his mind as he went up against the stars he loved watching, he said: “That first time, playing against people like Thierry [Henry], Dennis Bergkamp, [Robert] Pires, again it was a little bit surreal. But it felt like almost like a privilege to be on the pitch with these types of players.”
Bent and Charlton weren’t victorious on that day, with Arsenal winning 3-0. But the former England striker did go on to net eight times against the Gunners in his career, winning two, drawing three and losing eight of the fixtures.
But did he ever celebrate when he scored against them?
“When you become a professional footballer and you’re playing in the Premier League, the fan almost gets knocked out of you,” he said. “You have a job to do.
“[I’d celebrate] Loads. In my whole career, I think Arsenal were the team I scored against the second most, Bolton then Arsenal. I always enjoyed scoring against Arsenal, it’s a weird feeling because you score against your boyhood club.
“You can’t score for them, but scoring against them is equally satisfying as well. They always had great teams, you always want to score against the best. So I loved it.”
Watkins has already fired in 13 goals for Villa this season, as well as notching eight assists in all competitions.
Two of those goals have come from Villa’s exploits in Europe, with the former Brentford star netting once in each game against AZ Alkmaar.
That’s even more impressive when you consider he netted 16 across the whole of last season in all competitions.
This weekend he can extend his Premier League scoring streak to four games in a row and edge even closer to last season’s tally – all against the club he loved watching as a boy.
