Aston Villa desperately needed this victory. <\/p>\n
Not that Unai Emery’s position is under threat but the narrative around their season was one of concern following five winless games. <\/p>\n
More is expected of a club with European ambitions, and so the nature of Villa’s flat and listless performances had been a growing worry. <\/p>\n
Three points against Fulham can now give Villa the springboard they craved as they travel to Feyenoord in the Europa League this week. <\/p>\n
The visit of Burnley follows in the Premier League and, quickly, the horizon looks a little brighter – especially following Thursday’s narrow Europa League win over Bologna. <\/p>\n
Not that this was Villa at their swashbuckling best – far from it. They ground it out after falling behind to Raul Jimenez’s header while there was also an element of Fulham allowing them a route back. <\/p>\n
That Watkins also ended his goal drought, having gone nine games without scoring, removes another obstacle which had threatened to trip Villa up this season. <\/p>\n
The striker, who struck 16 times in the Premier League last season, is so crucial to Villa’s hopes, having had little goalscoring back-up. His return to the scoresheet capped a satisfying, if not comprehensive, win. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Aston Villa desperately needed this victory. Not that Unai Emery’s position is under threat but the narrative around…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":261960,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[45],"tags":[221,62,67,132,68],"class_list":{"0":"post-263465","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-soccer","8":"tag-soccer","9":"tag-sports","10":"tag-united-states","11":"tag-unitedstates","12":"tag-us"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115286897088351635","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/263465","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=263465"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/263465\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/261960"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=263465"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=263465"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=263465"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}