Martínez has surgery after Everton injury

The injury happened during Aston Villa's victory at Goodison Park on 18 October, though the exact nature of the problem hasn't been spelled out. What is clear, via BBC Sport, is that it needed an operation and that Martínez himself expects a swift turnaround rather than a long layoff.

"A few weeks" is doing a lot of work in that sentence. It's the player's own estimate, not a club medical bulletin with a return date attached, and anyone who's covered a goalkeeper's recovery knows that number tends to move once the surgeons and physios actually compare notes.

The timing for Aston Villa

Unai Emery's side sit fourth in the Premier League with 13 points from seven games (four wins, a draw, two defeats), a goal difference of plus four that suggests a team still finding its rhythm rather than one running away with anything. Losing your first-choice goalkeeper for even a short stretch is never ideal mid-table scrap territory, but it's a very different problem at fourth with Europe in view.

Martínez has made the gloves his own since arriving from Arsenal, logging 524 minutes already this season on top of a heavy workload the year before, when Premier League figures had him at 2,835 minutes and an assist for the campaign. No deputy has been confirmed publicly for the weeks he's out, which leaves Emery with a call to make before the next fixture comes around.

What happens now

Until Aston Villa or Martínez give a firmer date, "a few weeks" is the only timeline on the table, and it's worth treating it as exactly that: a player's optimism, not a discharge letter. The club have plenty riding on getting the call right between the sticks while he's out, and how that goes could end up mattering more to their top-four push than the surgery itself.