Chelsea considering Emi Martinez is no surprise. He would be a clear upgrade on Robert Sanchez

Greenlighting a fourth season of ‘The Robert Sanchez Experience’ always seemed a deeply questionable decision, and a universally panned premiere at Craven Cottage on Monday has pushed Chelsea to the brink of what would be a very popular cancellation.

Emiliano Martinez being eminently available at Aston Villa has changed the landscape in the final days of this transfer window. All summer the message coming out of Stamford Bridge was that Chelsea were happy with their goalkeeping options, and the hope was that Sanchez could at least be solid enough until Belgian youngster Mike Penders was ready to step up.

Instead, Sanchez produced the kind of performance against Fulham that underlined why he long ago lost the trust of most match-going Chelsea supporters, allowing Josh King’s shot to go through his hands before parrying Timothy Castagne’s shot straight to Gonzalo Garcia.

He almost conceded a third self-inflicted goal, opening himself up to an Antonee Robinson lob that mercifully drifted well wide after he had made a misguided charge into no-man’s land.

Robert Sanchez reacts to conceding Chelsea’s second goal against Fulham (Adrian Dennis / AFP via Getty Images)

All goalkeepers make mistakes, and those mistakes tend to be more memorable because they more often lead to opposition goals than gaffes made higher up the pitch. Opta data reveals that over three full Premier League seasons from the start of 2023-24 to the end of 2025-26, Sanchez made seven errors leading to goals to Martinez’s six (though the Argentina international played 20 more games and almost 1,700 more minutes over that time period).

But numbers can only ever provide part of the picture. They cannot account for the audible frustration that ripples around Stamford Bridge when Sanchez misplaces a pass, misjudges a cross or dallies just long enough over a rolling ball to get himself into trouble. They cannot account for the encouragement that his sloppy or indecisive moments give to opposing players or fans, or the anxiety that they spread to the Chelsea defenders in front of him, cascading to create the overwhelming sense that something bad is going to happen.

Goalkeeping is football’s ultimate confidence game. Not just the confidence that a goalkeeper feels in themselves, but the confidence they inspire in their team-mates, in their coach and in their supporters. Once a goalkeeper becomes widely viewed as “having a mistake in them”, fair or not, it is almost impossible to recover. In that sense, even in his better stretches of form, Sanchez’s position at Chelsea has felt untenable for most of his three years as the club’s No 1.

It is a lot to ask of Penders to step into the Premier League pressure cooker at 21 and command that confidence. Martinez, a 33-year-old veteran of the last two World Cup finals and a highly regarded Premier League goalkeeper at Villa for the last six years, is not the type of character to be fazed by walking into a position that has been a problem for Chelsea pretty much ever since Thibaut Courtois pushed his way to Real Madrid in the summer of 2018.

Emi Martinez won’t be fazed by the pressure at Stamford Bridge (Buda Mendes/Getty Images)

Any online search for Martinez howlers at Villa yields results in a matter of seconds. His aggressive style can work against him, and his lowlight compilations did not take long to circulate among more sceptical Chelsea fans when The Athletic reported on Wednesday that the club has been offered his services. They are unflattering, but nowhere near numerous enough to be disqualifying and, unlike with Sanchez, they do not end up defining him.

He is also much more of what you might call a traditional goalkeeper, more likely to focus on commanding his penalty area than sweeping up far from it. His passing, both short and long, is solid rather than spectacular. He is not the goalkeeper you sign if you want an 11th outfielder to relentlessly bait the opposition press and take risks in order to generate rewards in possession.

Chelsea under Xabi Alonso do not need that. They need a goalkeeper who can radiate calm confidence even in the most hostile environments, who can shake off setbacks and save his team as well as the ball in the most high-stakes moments. Martinez has more often than not done just that throughout his career at Villa, helping to power their steady rise from Premier League mid-table underachievers to consistent challengers for European qualification.

Decisiveness is a good quality for a goalkeeper to have. Martinez is proactive in dealing with crosses and knows when to hold and when to attack the ball. Many of his finest career moments have come in one-vs-one situations — chiefly his sensational star jump save to deny Randal Kolo Muani a late winner for France in extra time of the 2022 World Cup final.

That was a long time ago, but Martinez conjured some of his old magic when Sunderland midfielder Habib Diarra ran clean through on his goal in the 93rd minute with the score 3-3 at Villa Park in April.

He closed the distance and sank down towards the ball, while still retaining the body control to flick up his right arm and claw the Senegal international’s attempted dink out of the air. Villa went down the other end, and Tammy Abraham headed in a late winner.

Martinez also made a vital reaction stop to keep a close-range Igor Jesus effort from crossing the line as Nottingham Forest applied pressure in the first leg of a Europa League semi-final tie that Villa went on to win 4-1 on aggregate.

Those two Martinez saves were two of the more consequential moments of Villa’s run-in at the end of a season which saw them finish fourth and win the Europa League. Sanchez has also demonstrated himself to be very capable of impressive shot-stopping but, as he enters the fourth season of his Chelsea career, it is hard to recall a single intervention which had such a positive impact on his team’s chances of success.

His volatility has an unfortunate tendency to surface when Chelsea most need security from their goalkeeper. Martinez, in contrast, has a proven track record of rising to big occasions and a personality which, while often provocative, wins him the belief of his team-mates.

That is half of the battle for any goalkeeper at this level, and marks ‘Dibu’ out as a clear upgrade.