At Goodison Park on Saturday Ollie Watkins became the first ever Aston Villa player to score in five consecutive Premier League games.
Now, unless you work for Sky Sports, you’ll be aware that football did not begin in 1992 with the inception of the Premier League, so in true retro Villa fashion what a great moment to look at who Watkins’ record ‘equalled’ and then who the current Villa number 11 has in his sights when Palace come to B6 at the weekend.
The last Villa player prior to Watkins to score in five consecutive League games was Paul Rideout. Twenty goals in 44 games for lower league Swindon in the 82/83 season encouraged Tony Barton to spend £200,000 to bring Rideout to Villa Park with relatively little fanfare. Rideout would spend two seasons at Villa Park making 54 appearances whilst scoring 19 goals.
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It was the 1984/85 season that saw Rideout score in five consecutive games. Barton, the manager who had signed Rideout had been sacked and replaced by Graham Turner the youngest manager in the club’s history.
The striker started the season slowly only registering four goals by the start of December, but his season exploded on 22nd December 1984 when he scored a hat trick against Newcastle at Villa Park. Only 14,491 were in that day to see a 4-0 win and the start of what would become a 5-game scoring run for Rideout.
Next up were away games against Sheffield Wednesday and Nottingham Forest – Rideout’s goal securing a draw in Sheffield before Villa went down 3-2 against Forest. Rideout had 3 in 3 as West Brom came to Villa Park and were dispatched 3-1. The late Paul Birch also scored on that day as Villa park’s attendance almost doubled from the pre-Christmas Newcastle game. Rideout made it 5 in 5 in a resounding 3-0 win against Coventry on the 19th of January 1985 (an electric Mark Walters brace completed the scoring).
Rideout wouldn’t score again until the end of March and managed only managed another three goals in the rest of the season. Along with Gordon Cowans her joined Italian side Bari in the Summer of 1985 – a path that would also be trodden by David Platt.
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In many ways Rideout’s spell at Villa Park is a mere footnote but scoring in five consecutive games is no mean feat – and in celebrating Watkins it is important to acknowledge what went before.
Once Watkins equalled Rideout’s five game scoring spell against Everton, it now begs the question as to whether any Villa player has scored in six consecutive League games? The answer of course is yes, and that player was Andy Gray.
Gray had joined Villa as a teenager in October 1975 and set about becoming a hugely popular figure in B6. In 1977 he won both the PFA Young Player of the Year and Player of the Year awards (then the first to have done so, although later Cristiano Ronaldo and Gareth Bale matched the feat) in recognition of a 29-goal haul helping Villa to a fourth-place finish.
It was in the 1977-78 season that Gray would score in six consecutive league games. Largely speaking Gray picked up where he had left off the previous season including an August hat trick in the League Cup against Exeter City.
But it was in October the pace picked up, beginning with a goal in a 1-1 draw at Elland Road before scoring the second in a 2-0 away win at Leicester. It was three in three as Villa brushed aside Norwich 3-0 at Villa Park – the other scorers that day were Cowans and Brian Little which begs the question whether there has ever been a better list of scorers in one game for Villa?
A fourth consecutive goal followed in another draw away at West Ham. Gray’s fifth and sixth consecutive league goals came in big wins against first Manchester United and then Liverpool where he got a brace.
With 54 goals in 113 games for Villa Gray is rightly remembered in iconic terms, albeit with some tinges of sadness about his transfer to Wolves before Villa won the League Championship and European Cup.
If Ollie Watkins can score again on Saturday against Palace, he will begin to believe he can aim to be spoken about by Villa fans in the same exalted terms.
AUTHOR | IVAN MCDOUALL
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