The Arsenal vs Aston Villa Battle That Will Never Come to Blows

Arsenal host Aston Villa on Sunday, and it’s a huge game.

In the context of the season it may not be deemed as such, merely another home game where three points should be expected and not fretted over across a swathe of other trickier encounters. Arsenal need wins at home to secure the top four. Fairly straightforward.

Aston Villa have wobbled after standing themselves upright on the rotating dance floor that is the start of this Premier League season, finding balance at a point where almost everyone else appeared ungracefully unstable.

They too have fallen foul to inconsistency, conceding seven times in their last two matches, in turn looking more like the Villa side everyone expected pre-season.

Who has conceded those seven goals? Emiliano Martinez. Not figuratively, but literally, it’s him.

And it will be him, too, who dominates the build-up ahead of Sunday night, just like his opposite number Bernd Leno. Interestingly, in a game that features high-profile players across the park, it’s the two men between the respective sticks who will have the spotlight on them.

Both will have a point to prove. Leno’s, however, is greater.

Mikel Arteta faced stinging criticism – as well as praise – for the decision to sell Martinez over Leno, scorn that was heightened when Martinez’s first touch as a Villa player was to save a penalty (we never do that). Meanwhile, Leno had a couple of hairy moments, none more notable than his Rapid Vienna showing.

In football there is a yearning for individual validity. If you’ve got X amount of money on your weekly paycheck, you better damn well show you’ve earned it. For goalkeepers it’s even more profound. There is only one spot in the team, and you’re affectionately (literally) referred to as the ‘number one’.

Leno was awarded that title despite a valiant effort to knock him off his podium by the Argentine, who won over the hearts of Arsenal supporters with a few weeks of excellence off the back of ten years of service. Once a Gunner, and all that.

But Sunday is no romantic encounter. It’s Arsenal vs Aston Villa; Bernd Leno vs Emiliano Martinez.

No doubt Martinez will have instructed his new cast members on his old pal‘s weaknesses. Leno, however, need not say a word. They may never meet on the pitch, but Leno can’t finish second. For himself and his manager.