Despite the seemingly never-ending discussion over Emiliano Martinez’s future at Aston Villa, it’s reported that no club has yet made official contact over a potential transfer.
The 32-year-old shot-stopper sent speculation into overdrive with his emotional reaction after the full-time whistle in our last home game of last season, as many interpreted it as a farewell to the Villa faithful of sort.
READ MORE: Villa linked with potential move to strengthen Emery’s attacking options
Rumours have continued to circulate throughout the summer thus far, particularly given Villa are said to still be in need of balancing our books to ensure we remain compliant with PSR ahead of the June 30 deadline, and also lower our wage bill for SCR purposes.
Naturally, an exit for Martinez would help with both those sets of financial rules given the transfer fee involved in an exit and with his status as one of the highest earners at the club, but there has yet to be any tangible reports that he is moving closer towards a departure.
According to The Athletic, although talks are ongoing between Manchester United and the Argentine international’s representatives, Villa have not received any direct contact from our Premier League rivals or any other club to begin talks over a transfer agreement.
It’s noted that Martinez prefers to remain in Europe over a move to Saudi Arabia at this stage of his career, but with other dominos needing to fall to open up a space for him at another club first, namely United selling Andre Onana as per the report above, there has seemingly been little to no legitimate change in the situation as he continues to be paired with an exit this summer.
Ultimately, the reporting around our first-choice goalkeeper would suggest that if the pieces fall into place, he’ll move on in the coming weeks. However, it certainly doesn’t sound as though anything is imminent, and so if no club comes forward to begin negotiations, there is surely still a scenario where Martinez stays as Villa will have to look at alternative solutions to address our financial concerns.
If he’s committed to the idea of moving on, then perhaps we’ll be forced to consider an exit regardless at some stage ahead of next season, but it would undoubtedly be helpful from a Villa perspective if we’re negotiating from a position of strength, rather than having a sense of desperation over moving on a player in relation to PSR.
Further, we’ll need to be sure we can identify and successfully bring in an adequate replacement to fill what would be a very big void left behind, and coupled with Robin Olsen’s departure this summer, there could be a significant reshuffle in that area of the squad.
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Even Romano is contradicting himself one day stating on his youtube channel that Martinez has said yes to United, then the next day saying that United need to move Onana on first. Martinez changed agents to Jorge Mendes, which raises a red flag. Personally I think he wants a move. Maybe his dropped level last season was because his head were somewhere else. If Chevalier or Bulka comes in thats all good.
Nobody really knows if Villa have to sell before end of month. If it were such an pressing issue, Villa would be scrambling around trying to sell players like last summer. We dont know if RB Leipzig new coach wants Nedeljkovic, and Valencia said that they cant meet Villas asking price for Barrenechea. If Villa was in such a critical PSR state as the media believe, Nedeljkovic and Barrenechea would have been sold for cut fee prices already.