Ollie Watkins eager to end Aston Villa's trophy wait as Wembley beckons

Unai Emery’s team head to Wembley aiming to take another step toward the club’s first major silverware since the League Cup triumph of 1996.

Ending the wait has been high on Watkins’ agenda since joining five summers ago and the striker revealed he has been impressing on team-mates the importance of the weekend’s game.

“I’ve been saying to the boys one thing I set my eyes on when I joined the club was winning a trophy,” he said.

“It’s been so long since the club has done, that’s the main aim, so, yeah, Saturday is massive, and we will be doing all we can to get to the final.

“This is the furthest since I've been at the club we've got in the FA Cup. We've always gone out quite early doors and it's disappointing. You want to win these competitions and it's nice that we're in the latter stages of it.”

Watkins, understandably, is desperate to play against the Eagles. The England international is once again Villa’s top scorer this season with 16 goals in all competitions but has started just two of the last eight matches and again found himself on the bench for Tuesday’s 2-1 defeat at Manchester City, with Marcus Rashford preferred up front.

That was despite Watkins putting in an excellent individual performance in Saturday’s 4-1 win over Newcastle, after which he made headlines with a frank TV interview, in which he outlined his “anger” at having only been a substitute in both legs of the Champions League quarter-final with Paris Saint-Germain.

Addressing those comments after Tuesday’s loss, Watkins revealed how Emery keeps players on their toes by sometimes not naming his team until the last moment.

He said: “I was just saying, from my point of view, every player wants to play and that's it, really.

“I think there would probably be a worry if I said ‘I'm happy to just sit on the bench and don't want to play’. I think I’d be getting a bit of backlash. So yeah, just say it as it is.”

Watkins continued: “We never know who's going to play at the end of the day.

“Sometimes the manager will tell us 30 minutes before we leave the hotel to head towards the stadium.

“He tells us the team then. Everyone just has to be prepared, really, and you never know what's going to happen.”

Tuesday’s last-gasp defeat, courtesy of Matheus Nunes’ stoppage time winner, damaged Villa’s hopes of claiming a top-five finish and a return to the Champions League.

But they remain far from out of the race and Watkins, part of the team which claimed a European spot in each of the last two seasons, knows there will be more twists and turns to come.

He said: “Teams in and around each other have to play each other as well, so everyone looks at the results and is hoping for them to go their way and we'll be keeping a close eye on that.

“But we've just got to focus on ourselves as well and make sure we just win the games ahead of us.

“We knew it was going to be tough here today, fighting for Champions League and City pushed us to the limit, really.

“It's a shame that we conceded at the end, but, look, we have to move on to the weekend now, focus on the FA Cup, a big game at Wembley. We all want to win a trophy, so all eyes on that.”