Aston Villa will ‘surely listen to offers’ for star usurped by Rashford in ‘biggest game for a generation’

Aston Villa will reportedly ‘surely listen to offers’ for a star player who was left on the bench for all but 17 minutes of the ‘biggest game for a generation’ at the club.

Villa were heartbreakingly knocked out of the Champions League at the quarter-final stage by Paris Saint-Germain on Tuesday night. Though they beat them 3-2 on the night, they ended up 5-4 losers on aggregate.

The comeback at Villa Park was something to behold, though. Looking down and out after 27 minutes, putting them 2-0 (4-1) down, they bagged through Youri Tielemans in the first-half, and had a sensational second-half.

John McGinn and Ezri Konsa scored within two minutes of each other to put Villa within one goal of parity with more than half an hour remaining, but it never came.

Absent for most of the attempted comeback was Ollie Watkins, introduced in only the 76th minute for Marcus Rashford, who had assisted Konsa’s goal. The Daily Mail‘s Tom Collomosse thinks there are ramifications to that decision.

That Unai Emery ‘ignored’ Watkins for all but 17 minutes of the ‘biggest game in a generation’ at Villa, the report believes the manager has ‘lost faith’ in the striker.

As such, it’s stated Villa will ‘surely listen to offers’ for the striker in the summer. They turned down £45million from Arsenal in January, but it was reported subsequently that the Gunners still had eyes on him.

It seems the report could be getting ahead of itself, though, with Emery stating his hopes to combine Rashford and Watkins up top.

“The next step, if I have time, is to play them together,” he said.

“We’ve tried Rashford on the left side before, but now both are more suited to central roles. I want to test that partnership, but not now – not in a match of this magnitude without proper preparation.”

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There’s a perfectly reasonable explanation to why Watkins did not play much of a role against PSG, then. Emery didn’t want to play both together at risk of it not working, and Rashford had played 36 games in the Champions League prior, scoring 12 goals and assisting six.

Watkins, on the other hand, has only played in Europe’s elite competition this season. He has one goal and four assists, so it would be a surprise if Emery did not have faith in him to perform, but it’s conceivable he simply felt Rashford was more up to the occasion.

Watkins has 125 direct goal contributions in 216 games for Villa, and that surely garners respect from his boss.

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