England manager, Gareth Southgate has opened up about Aston Villa star, Ollie Watkins’ performance against North Macedonia.
This past week, Aston Villa forward, Ollie Watkins has been away with the England National Team and only featured in one game.
Up against North Macedonia, with top place in the group secured, the Villa star came in to replace captain, Harry Kane.
Following his form under Unai Emery has been superb and as a result, is well deserving of a constant role in the England set-up.
With that being said, the striker only featured in 58 minutes in the final international game of the year. He was substituted as Kane was reintroduced.
It was a quiet showing for the Villans striker but up against a defensive-minded team in North Macedonia, it was always likely to be the case.
What has Gareth Southgate said about Ollie Watkins?
In the final Euro qualifier group game, Watkins managed just ten touches but didn’t go entirely without chances. He had one shot blocked and one went wide as he racked up 0.63 expected goals.
Following his substitution, Kane was involved straight away as he contributed to the equalising own goal. This almost added fuel to the fire burning against the Villa man as his replacement had such an impact.
Discussing the starting striker in his post-match press conference, Gareth Southgate opened up about his performance.
On that, he said: “Ollie, it was a difficult game, very little space, back five, so you are dealing with three centre-backs really and we weren’t quite able to create a clear chance for him.”
It must be said that there wasn’t much of a supply line to the Villa man throughout the game which did hamper him.
Southgate wasn’t displeased with his performance: “He did fine, it’s not easy coming in under those circumstances but that’s international football and you would, of course, he’s had games where there has been more opportunities to score and he’s done that well with us.
“Today was a different sort of test and as a team, it was hard to find the spaces and find the gaps.”
The North Macedonian back line was sitting firm and once they had taken the lead, the task of opening them up was even harder.
Watkins did struggle but having played very limited minutes for the Three Lions it was always going to be difficult. More game time moving forward could benefit the forward’s form massively for his country.
