Manchester United legend Peter Schmeichel thinks Aston Villa goalkeeper Emi Martinez has proven Arsenal boss Mikel Arteta “wrong”.
The Gunners allowed the Argentina international to join the Villans in 2020 with the west Midlands club forking out £20m for his services.
Martinez has gone on to shine for Aston Villa, making 167 appearances in all competitions, while also winning the World Cup as Argentina’s number one.
The Aston Villa goalkeeper was again in brilliant form on Wednesday night in the Champions League as Unai Emery’s side overcame Bayern Munich 1-0 at Villa Park.
And Schmeichel reckons Arsenal and Arteta have been “proven wrong” after selling the Argentina international to Aston Villa.
Schmeichel told the Stick to Football podcast: “Martinez, I think he has proven Arsenal wrong, for sure.
“I think he’s a big personality and I think he’s helping that team [Villa] a lot. Will he be able to do the job at Man City? I don’t know. To be honest, I don’t know.
“But he’s a winner, obviously a World Cup winner, he’s just won the Copa [America]. So he’s getting there as well.”
Schmeichel added: “The thing is, that mentality, not a lot of goalkeepers are doing that.
“But he does that, which I think he’s brilliant, he’s coming out in a period of the game, it’s fantastic if he does, but there are so many people in front of him, when you come out you’re looking at the ball, I [the goalkeeper] might run into the defender and then the goal’s empty, you think about that.
“The time wasting, I don’t like that bit of it, but he really, really kept his team in it [against Manchester City]. He took the sting out of it.”
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On goalkeepers being separated from the rest of the team during training, Schmeichel added: “I was lucky that when I was young, I met people along the way with my football who were so far ahead of me in terms of thinking, in Denmark. I worked with a goalkeeping coach who had played in Holland and his ideas were not so much diving around, drills in and out of cones, and the things that I see happening today.
“It was very much the technique of being a goalkeeper, understanding where you are in the box, how to close angles, working on decision making, and literally catching a ball. His philosophy was that everything we did between me and him had to be outside of the team, never when the team was there, so they never saw me do goalkeeper training.
“Then, I was with the team for everything else – boxes, running, possession games. I think that he was able to see into the future that at some point the back-pass rule would change and that you’d have to use your feet.
“I don’t get separating the goalkeeper from the rest of the team. I don’t understand why you wouldn’t want him in there in every little bit because you get in situations in games where you need to understand, can this guy do what I’m trying to get him to do when I pass a ball to him.
“I certainly don’t get the idea of every morning the goalkeeping coach goes out with five or six goalkeepers, and they just do a conveyor belt exercise.
“The young goalkeepers will learn something from the experienced ones but it’s training for me, not coaching and teaching the younger keepers. They should be separated and looked at and taught on what they need to improve on, and I don’t see that a lot.
“When you get into your 30s, if you do this every day for the whole of your career at some point diving is going to be painful and it’s going to have an effect. I don’t see the point of diving 20 times to your left and 20 times to your right every day. You multiply that to a full year and the wear and tear on your body is too much. I didn’t have that, and I was very fortunate.”
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