I find it interesting that Martinez is the one stick people often choose to beat Arteta with, because I think that's one of few perfectly justifiable and logical decisions he has made. Based on all we had to go on it was the right decision, and I still think it was good. You had Martinez who, during a three-month spell where he played the best football in his life, matched the level that we had gotten consistently from Leno for two years, and he didn't want to sign a new contract unless he was guaranteed to be the first choice.
We could have bet on him instead of Leno, certainly, but the issue isn't really that we sold Martinez. It's that Leno then wasn't as good last season as he had been in the two previous years. Which of course begs the question whether Emi himself would have looked any better during the total team collapse that we experienced.
The failure in our goalkeeper situation lies more in the fact that after selling an equally good keeper we managed to piss off Leno by hiring a goalkeeping coach he doesn't like, sacked the one he did rate, and it seems like we also hadn't checked with him whether he wanted to commit his future to Arsenal or not. That's the part that doesn't reflect well at all on the management, whose literal job description is to get a feel of the room. But then again, if Arteta could read the room he probably wouldn't fall out with everyone all the time.
