Emi Martinez

[Ian.]

He’s bloody ace. I’m stealing that line for my signature!

Oi, I did it first!

I don’t believe you

[Percy McCarthy]

Did he wave at the Tarquins at the end and then kiss the Villa badge?

Yes!

Gotta love him!

The best bit being, as PWA points out, if they had him they'd probably win the league.

I also love how much they've had to spend to end up with two keepers, neither of whom are anywhere near as good as Emi.

Reminds me of a match report I read back in the day which said the same about Man Utd spending a fortune on centre-halves to replace McGrath - “and none of them are in the same class”.

[Tokyo Sexwhale]

"I'm a believer, mate" could be the new "Do you want to bet against us" - should we achieve the incredible...

[Risso]

He’s bloody ace. I’m stealing that line for my signature!

Oi, I did it first!

I don’t believe you

Didn't you see my face?

[Smithy]

This is my new lucky T-shirt, which will be worn while watching games on TV...

I want one, no, I want two!  How do I get them?

Oh, I didn't buy it.  I just knocked up quickly and I'm having it printed as we speak.  Happy to send you the print file so you can upload it and get one printed at the T-shirt company of your choice? 

When I'm teaching myself new stuff for work (in this case Adobe illustrator techniques), I always use Villa-related stuff to practise on, so whatever I produce will have a use and it doesn't go to waste.  This is my Peter Withe T-shirt, again, not for sale anywhere, just my own design from playing around with vector tracing a couple of years ago :-)

[Neil Hawkes]

I reckon you need to contact AVFC and see if big EMI wants one.

[RamboandBruno]

This is my new lucky T-shirt, which will be worn while watching games on TV...

I want one, no, I want two!  How do I get them?

Oh, I didn't buy it.  I just knocked up quickly and I'm having it printed as we speak.  Happy to send you the print file so you can upload it and get one printed at the T-shirt company of your choice? 

When I'm teaching myself new stuff for work (in this case Adobe illustrator techniques), I always use Villa-related stuff to practise on, so whatever I produce will have a use and it doesn't go to waste.  This is my Peter Withe T-shirt, again, not for sale anywhere, just my own design from playing around with vector tracing a couple of years ago :-)

Thats ace Smithy

[purpletrousers]

Kinda fun looking back at the start of this thread. Kudos to big Cuts of course for seeing the bright future for him and convincing the club.

( I shared the reservations of whether it was a priority)
Strong foresight to the post below…

I have misgivings about this. Maybe Heaton's rehabilitation is behind schedule or not going to plan.

Personally I'd have looked at someone like Fraser Forster as a capable number two to step in and use the money in other areas.

But the guy seems driven to establish himself as Argentina's no 1 and Arsenal fans are pissed off at the prospect of losing him.

Good signs.

If I had limitless £ I’d be asking for the d Believer graphics for a t-shirt

[Toronto Villa]

Every signings thread is filled with a comment or two that you look back at and cringe. Some players seem brilliant when we signed them and then they don’t pan out. Scott Hogan for example falls a little into that category. Most were quite happy when he signed. Loads of goals at Brentford and an attempt by the club spending money to get back up. And then there are ones that raise an eyebrow that turn out really well. Signings are often such a crap shoot and all depends on the environment the player comes into. I love where we are now. Just have the feeling whoever we sign the vast majority will work out.

[darren woolley]

This is my new lucky T-shirt, which will be worn while watching games on TV...

I also want one very nice indeed.

[Risso]

Every signings thread is filled with a comment or two that you look back at and cringe. Some players seem brilliant when we signed them and then they don’t pan out. Scott Hogan for example falls a little into that category. Most were quite happy when he signed. Loads of goals at Brentford and an attempt by the club spending money to get back up. And then there are ones that raise an eyebrow that turn out really well. Signings are often such a crap shoot and all depends on the environment the player comes into. I love where we are now. Just have the feeling whoever we sign the vast majority will work out.

Look at Ross McCormack. At the time we signed him, he was just about as guaranteed a goal machine in the Championship as you could get, with 66 league goals over his previous 3 seasons. He literally couldn't stop scoring for both Leeds and Fulham. Then of course the moment he signs for us, he turns into the fattest, wastiest of fat wasters.

[ChicagoLion]

This is my new lucky T-shirt, which will be worn while watching games on TV...

I want one, no, I want two!  How do I get them?

Oh, I didn't buy it.  I just knocked up quickly and I'm having it printed as we speak.  Happy to send you the print file so you can upload it and get one printed at the T-shirt company of your choice? 

When I'm teaching myself new stuff for work (in this case Adobe illustrator techniques), I always use Villa-related stuff to practise on, so whatever I produce will have a use and it doesn't go to waste.  This is my Peter Withe T-shirt, again, not for sale anywhere, just my own design from playing around with vector tracing a couple of years ago :-)

Brilliant mate.

[Toronto Villa]

Every signings thread is filled with a comment or two that you look back at and cringe. Some players seem brilliant when we signed them and then they don’t pan out. Scott Hogan for example falls a little into that category. Most were quite happy when he signed. Loads of goals at Brentford and an attempt by the club spending money to get back up. And then there are ones that raise an eyebrow that turn out really well. Signings are often such a crap shoot and all depends on the environment the player comes into. I love where we are now. Just have the feeling whoever we sign the vast majority will work out.

Look at Ross McCormack. At the time we signed him, he was just about as guaranteed a goal machine in the Championship as you could get, with 66 league goals over his previous 3 seasons. He literally couldn't stop scoring for both Leeds and Fulham. Then of course the moment he signs for us, he turns into the fattest, wastiest of fat wasters.

The Villa poster boy for complete fucking waste of good oxygen.

[jwarry]

In today’s Sunday Times.

There aren’t many footballers that can be so disliked by some that they get called the most hated player in the world and so loved by others that they have a prehistoric frog named in their honour.

Emiliano Martínez has the privilege of both, as an undisputed hero in Argentina, where palaeontologists in Buenos Aires saluted his work at last year’s World Cup by labelling a recently discovered amphibian “Lepidobatrachus Dibumartinez” — “Dibu” being Martínez’s nickname — and at the same time such a villain in France, where the former defender Adil Rami said Martínez was “the most hated man” and “the biggest son of a bitch in football”.

At the Ballon d’Or ceremony in Paris in October, Martínez was booed while on stage holding the award for the world’s best goalkeeper, prompting the co-host, Didier Drogba, to ask those in attendance “to show the athletes some respect”.

At Villa Park last weekend, as Aston Villa closed in on a 15th home victory in a row to continue their remarkable start to the season, Arsenal’s Kai Havertz vented his frustration by barging into Martínez, the pair locking foreheads while the adoring Villa supporters chanted their goalkeeper’s name.

It is not difficult to see why Martínez rubs people up the wrong way. It was a year ago on Monday that Argentina’s goalkeeper was indulging in all of the darkest arts to disturb France in that decisive penalty shoot-out in Qatar. He hurled the ball away to force Aurélien Tchouameni to go and fetch it and then celebrated by thrusting the tournament’s goalkeeper prize — a golden glove — out from his crotch. In the changing rooms, Martínez
taunted Kylian Mbappé and on the bus parade, he cradled a doll with the striker’s face on it. Even Unai Emery was unimpressed. “I will speak to him next week about some of his celebrations,” the Villa head coach said.

Yet there is another side to Martínez, the side that makes him hugely popular in the changing room at Villa and not just with the Spanish-speaking group, who often go out for dinner together. Martínez gives new signings advice about where to live and what schools they should send their children to. When Emery holds team meetings and asks the players for feedback, Martínez is regularly one of the players who speaks up. When Martínez was allowed to choose one person to sit with him at the Ballon d’Or ceremony, he asked Villa’s goalkeeper coach, Javi García, as a show of gratitude.

Those close to Martínez insist they don’t recognise this perception of him as brash and provocative. “Cheat? He is a winner,” said one source that works with him. They say Martínez enjoys nothing more than to spend time with his wife, two children and three dogs and point to his close connection with his home town, Mar del Plata, where he has launched a community club for struggling teenagers. When Martínez went back there last summer to renew his passport, he spent half an hour posing for photos in the administration office.
There was a shift back in 2019, when Martínez was on the last of six loan spells from Arsenal, at Reading. He not only helped Reading to stave off relegation from the Championship but said he found his inner belief at the Madjeski Stadium.
Martínez found it easier to feel
confident on the pitch when he adopted an ultra-confident persona. “The best thing that Reading loan taught me was to be arrogant on the pitch,” Martínez said. “It’s not that arrogance where you know you’re the best, it’s the arrogance that gives you the confidence to show it.”

That mindset change coincided with Martínez seeing a psychologist, David Priestley, who once helped the Saracens centre, Sam Stanley, navigate a long-term injury by recommending he sing in a choir for the homeless. Martínez still speaks to Priestley two or three times a week, including before and after matches. Before Argentina’s quarter-final victory over Holland at the World Cup, they spoke about how Louis van Gaal said his Holland team would have the advantage if the game went to penalties. They discussed how best to use it as motivation, before Argentina defeated Holland on spot-kicks, with Martínez saving two of them.

Emery has always believed in Martínez and even tried to take him with him from Arsenal to Villarreal. But he has also played a key role in smoothing out the 31-year-old’s rougher edges. When Martínez was weighing up his last loan away from Arsenal, Emery recommended rejecting an offer from Leeds United to go to Reading, where the pressure would be higher because they were lower down the table. Last season, when Martínez marauded upfield in an attempt to score a late equaliser, Emery scolded him for a lack of discipline. “I want a serious team; disciplined, tactical,” Emery told The Times in October.

Martínez’s relationship with Emery has been pivotal at Villa. While Emery is certainly colder and more methodical, they share a fierce intensity, focus and will to win. One source at Villa describes them as “two obsessives”. That resilience has always been there for Martínez, from when he kept attending trials as a teenager after being rejected by River Plate and Boca Juniors to when he was crying in his bunk bed while living away with Independiente. After leaving for England at 15, Arsenal placed him in a house with an English family but he asked to live alone so he could enjoy more independence.

Martínez’s antics — the time-wasting, the wind-ups, the penalty tricks — are all part of the package, central to his belief that the extraction of maximum advantage while staying within the rules is nothing more than finding a way to win. They also divert focus from his performance, not least the fact that he is ranked joint-first for goalkeeper sweepings this season in Europe’s five biggest leagues and first for goals per match prevented among the Premier League’s top seven.

For all the standout players at Villa, none is as irreplaceable to Emery as Martínez and few are as popular with the fans. And for all the noise around those misjudged celebrations, it was Martínez’s save from Randal Kolo Muani in the 123rd minute of the final in Qatar that prevented France from becoming world champions. Not even Lionel Messi has his name attached to a frog.
  

[Hookeysmith]

Excellent   thanks for posting