Villa will hope to end the year on a high when they take on table-topping Arsenal on Tuesday at Emirates Stadium. The Villans secured a last-gasp 2-1 victory over the Gunners earlier this month and now Watkins is relishing another crack at Arteta's side.
"Yeah, I feel like teams are worried about us, you know they're thinking 'Oh, we've got Villa next'," he said. "Even if we may not play the prettiest football at times, they know we're going to eventually cause them problems when we do string a few passes together, we're taking each game as it comes and just focusing on ourselves. Obviously there's been a lot of talk about us, people asking the question about us winning the title, but you know that's a long way away and we're just focusing on the next game."
A win in the coming days will take Villa level with Arsenal. And despite their lofty position, Emery still doesn't see his side in a title race with Arsenal and Manchester City.
"Of course we are playing against Arsenal and our mentality is to compete strongly," he said. "We are not going to speak about our target in the league until we are in the day 34 because there are teams contending with a huge power to get points like Liverpool, like Chelsea and they are keeping contending more than us to be there. Of course we are performing very well, we are in a row-winning matches, we are competing fantastic, we competed first half fantastic and we were struggling. But the second half more or less like this season we are progressively getting better and being humble. No, 38 matches, no, not. If it finishes tomorrow then this match against Arsenal is finishing the league. There is still another 20 matches to play."