Suspicions Unai Emery has fallen out with Ollie Watkins, there’s likely to be a clear winner though
Unai Emery and Aston Villa have endured a dreadful start to the 2025-26 season as questions begin to be asked of the players.
Despite Monchi signing a plethora of quality players at Aston Villa, the president of football operations is set to leave the club.
Alberto Benito has been tipped to replace Monchi at Aston Villa with the club in desperate need of sorting out their footballing operations after a poor summer window.
This comes after sources told Football Insider that Emery has the backing of the Aston Villa board in spite of former Sunderland striker Darren Bent hinting to a rift between the manager and Ollie Watkins.
Darren Bent suspects Ollie Watkins has fallen out with Unai Emery
Discussing Villa’s troublesome situation on talkSPORT (22 September) the ex-Tottenham frontman highlighted that Watkins’ poor start to the season is making the fans impatient.
Towards the back end of last campaign, the 29-year-old lost his place in the starting XI to Marcus Rashford with relations between him and the Spanish manager potentially worsening.
Further elaborating on where the out-of-form striker stands at Villa Park, Bent said: “He’s [Watkins] kind of under a little bit of criticism because what they’re [Villa fans] saying is that he’s always missed chances while he’s a really good centre-forward.
“I really like him but they’re saying he’s always missed a lot of chances but he’s scoring a lot of goals. So you almost go well he misses chances but he’s scoring so you kind of forgive him.
“When you have situations like this where the team’s not scoring and he’s still missing chances, now the Villa fans are starting to get a bit frustrated and then you even get Villa fans going ‘well if we had a big bid for him I probably would have sold him’.
“‘Should we have sold him instead of Duran?’ when Duran obviously went last season as well.
“And then obviously last season he [Watkins] got the hump because Unai [Emery] was opting to use Rashford in the bigger games over him. So something’s not quite right there.”
Player power unlikely to work as Aston Villa expected to back Emery
As Football Insider reported, the former Arsenal boss will not be going anywhere despite the club’s poor start to the new season.
Emery is one of the world’s best managers and is known for finding a way to turn things around when he is up against it.
Watkins’ situation remains one to monitor with the forward previously linked with the Gunners.
| Ollie Watkins 2025-26 in all comps | Stats |
| Appearances | 6 |
| Minutes played | 466 |
| Goals | 0 |
| Assists | 0 |
The number 11 has not been focused so far in the 2025-26 campaign which begs the question whether he has his mind on playing football elsewhere.
Evann Guessand was brought in from Nice during the summer and his talent suggests he could be the long-term successor of Villa’s current main frontman.
However, when push comes to shove, the Midlands club will almost certainly stick with Emery and an unhappy Watkins will likely be shown the door.