Arsenal urged to take advantage of Aston Villa’s transfer business | OneFootball

Paul Merson has urged Arsenal to take advantage of the fact that Aston Villa have signed Philippe Coutinho by making a move to land Ollie Watkin.

The Villian’s completed a deal to bring the former Liverpool star in last week, with him coming off the bench to make an immediate impact against Manchester United, scoring the equalising goal in the process.

While Coutinho already looks ready to play a key role in the remainder of their season, despite limited playing time in recent seasons, but Merson believes his arrival at Villa Park could open the door for an attacker to leave the club.

“Aston Villa are crying out for a superstar,” Merson told Sky Sports (via HITC). “They have got one (Coutinho). You don’t lose talent. You can’t teach that. That’s not taught.

“This lad carried Liverpool, at times. It’s the way Steven Gerrard plays him, let teams worry about him, rather him having to track back some average player back to his own box.

“But, if I was Arsenal now, I would go and steam in to try and get Watkins. If I was Arsenal.”

Watkins would likely improve our frontline, but I’m not convinced that Villa would be willing to ell at this point.

It does appear that any striker we move for this month is likely to cost a pretty penny, unless we are looking at someone with a limited time on his current contract, which limits us immensely. We are crying out for a top-level striker to be brought in, but I feel like we would still need to re-enter into the transfer market in the summer even if we did strike a deal for Ollie, and the fee he would likely cost would surely hamper our fundage to land our top targets this summer.

Is Watkins the real deal? Would he help take us to the next level or should we be looking at better?

Patrick