The west Midlands club paid the Gunners around £20m for Martinez’s services in 2020 with the Argentina international going on to shine at Villa Park.
Martinez has been brilliant over the last few seasons, making 167 appearances in all competitions and proving crucial as Argentina won the World Cup on 2022.
The 32-year-old was in great form in the week before the international break, keeping two clean sheets for Aston Villa against Bayern Munich in the Champions League and then Manchester United in the Premier League.
And ex-Premier League star James reckons Arsenal boss Arteta made a mistake when he decided to sell Martinez to Aston Villa as he’s a “monster”.
Speaking on the Seaman Says podcast, former Liverpool and Manchester City goalkeeper James said: “It’s interesting when you look at Premier League goalkeepers over a number of years now, there’s not many characters. Prior to that there were more characters for whatever reason.
“He [Emiliano Martinez] has character, everything about him is character, he’s a big-game player. He wants to be in the biggest games.
“When you look at the Raya and Ramsdale situation at Arsenal and obviously Martinez was allowed to go because of Bernd Leno, who’s a decent goalkeeper.
“But I think Martinez would have been the perfect goalkeeper for Arsenal right now. I think he’s a monster.
“Weirdly there’s not a lot of goalkeepers in the Premier League these days who are capable of getting to the top corner.”
James’ comments come less than a week after Man Utd legend Peter Schmeichel made a similar point that Martinez has “proven Arsenal wrong”.
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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