There’s little doubt that Aston Villa ace, Ollie Watkins, deserves his place in the England set-up ahead of Euro 2024.
The striker has been on fire for the Villains during the 2023/24 campaign and has managed an astonishing five goals and five assists in just nine Premier League games for the club this season according to WhoScored.
As The Athletic (subscription required) noted earlier this month, Watkins has penned a deal to keep him at the club until 2028, and that shows commitment both on the part of the player and the club.
It hasn’t stopped one journalist from speculating how much it would cost to prise the front man away from Villa Park, however.
“He is an extremely good and useful person to have spearheading your attack. I was looking at his record and, in 130 appearances for Villa, he has over 50 goals now.,” Neil Moxley told Give Me Sport.
“He has a strike rate of 0.4, so that’s two every five games and four every 10. The top and bottom of it is he is guaranteeing you between 15 and 18 goals a season in the Premier League.
“How much do those strikers command these days, particularly at Watkins’ sort of age? He is 27, so if somebody was going to come along right this very minute and try to offer a fee to entice Ollie Watkins out of Villa Park, I think you’re going to be talking £75million-plus, if not a bit more because Villa would want to be able to source a replacement.”
It’s hard to believe that Villa would ever contemplate letting their star man go at any point soon, and even if that were the case, it’s fanciful to think that they would let him leave for around the £75m mark.
Perhaps two or three years into his deal there might be a conversation to be had, but that’s unlikely to be the case at any point soon.
The only possible change to that scenario would be if Watkins had an impact at Euro 2024 which saw his stock rise immeasurably.
European giants may then come sniffing around but even then, they’d likely need to fork out a lot more than £75m.