Unai Emery doesn’t want to take any risks with Ollie Watkins, who is “feeling better” after struggling with a knee injury in recent weeks.
The striker picked up the issue during Villa’s 3-0 win over Club Brugge before the March international break, which led to his omission from Thomas Tuchel’s first England squad.
Unai Emery doesn’t want to take any risks with Ollie Watkins, who is “feeling better” after struggling with a knee injury in recent weeks.
The striker picked up the issue during Villa’s 3-0 win over Club Brugge before the March international break, which led to his omission from Thomas Tuchel’s first England squad.
Marcus Rashford scored his first goals as a Villa player at Deepdale, netting a brace, before opening the scoring against Brighton on Wednesday night.
Following the win at the Amex, Emery explained that he started Rashford ahead of Watkins as a reward for the Manchester United loanee’s FA Cup performance.
Ahead of Saturday’s clash with Nottingham Forest, Emery was asked whether Watkins is now fully fit.
“He started the season after playing with the national team and his holidays in August. The first matches he played he had a small pain and he needed time to recover, but he was playing.
“Now it is more or less the same. He stopped because he was feeling some pain and in the break he worked individually with the physio. He was working to recover as soon as possible to get back into form.
“Now he is available and feeling better. We are as well taking care, not taking risks of him to get the best of him.”
Emery added: “We don’t have time to explain a lot about how we are and how we are playing lots of matches now which are very important in the Premier League, Champions League and the FA Cup.
“The players now, we are recovering some and feeling stronger. The message I have with them is that when we were in some moments with injured players, we were struggling sometimes and not achieving what we were facing in that moment.”
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