Chelsea have spent all summer buying, and the £7.5m goalkeeper might be the important one
Chelsea agreed a deal for Emiliano Martinez on 27 August, five days before the window shuts. It is the cheapest signing of their summer and it says the most about what they think of Robert Sanchez.
Aug 28, 2026
Chelsea have agreed a fee of £7.5m for Emiliano Martinez. In a summer where they have signed players in double-digit millions and kept going, that is close to loose change, and I think it is the most revealing piece of business they have done. You do not go looking for a 33-year-old goalkeeper with five days of the window left because you have a plan. You do it because you have a problem.
The price is the story
Villa paid up to £20m for Martinez in September 2020, after ten years of him waiting at Arsenal. Six years on he leaves for £7.5m on a reported two-year deal, and he turns 34 on 2 September, which is the day after the window shuts. Nobody involved is pretending this is a signing for 2030.
That is not a criticism of the deal. It is what makes it interesting. Chelsea have spent this summer buying futures, and the one position where a future is no use to you is goalkeeper, where the job is to not concede the goal that is about to happen. Martinez won a World Cup at it, and the Golden Glove that went with it. If he plays two seasons and steadies the position, £7.5m will look like the best value in the building.
What it says about Robert Sanchez
Sanchez made two errors in the 3-2 win at Fulham on Monday. He was beaten by a tame Josh King effort that he should have kept out, then pushed a shot into Gonzalo Garcia’s path. Chelsea won anyway, which is often how these things get buried, and Xabi Alonso declined to single him out afterwards. Then his club went and agreed a deal for an Argentina international three days later.
Managers can say what they like in a press conference. A transfer fee is a sentence with no ambiguity in it. Alonso may well name Sanchez against whoever comes next and mean it, but the club has now bought a goalkeeper who has won a World Cup final in a shootout, and I would be surprised if that ends in a settled goalkeeping situation for very long.
My honest read is that this is the right call made late. Chelsea have been carrying a keeper their own supporters have visibly lost patience with, and a cheap experienced replacement was always going to be a better answer than another season of hoping. It just took an error in front of a live television audience to force it.
Villa were always going to sell
The Villa side of this is simpler. They spent close to £30m on Zion Suzuki from Parma, and once you have bought a goalkeeper for that you are not carrying a 33-year-old on top of him. Martinez was going somewhere this summer. Juventus looked at it and signed Guglielmo Vicario from Tottenham instead, which left Villa with one fewer bidder and Chelsea with room to negotiate. The £7.5m reflects that more than it reflects the player.
Villa supporters will feel this one. He arrived as a squad goalkeeper nobody rated and left as the man who kept 15 clean sheets in a league season and equalled a club record that had stood since Brad Friedel. Selling him to Chelsea for less than half of what they paid will not go down easily, whatever the football logic.
The part that made me laugh
Chelsea finished tenth last season and have no European football at all this year. They will still have Champions League nights at Stamford Bridge, because Shakhtar Donetsk are playing their four home league phase games there while the war keeps them out of the Donbas Arena, and Chelsea are taking a fee for it.
Thursday’s draw sent Real Madrid to Shakhtar. So Real Madrid will play a Champions League match at Stamford Bridge this season, and Chelsea will not play one anywhere. Martinez is joining a club whose stadium is in the competition while the team is not. If he wanted a reminder of what he has signed up to fix, he is unlikely to get a clearer one.