- The Aston Villa goalkeeper made a stunning reactionary save at the City Ground
- Emiliano Martinez denied Nicolas Dominguez’s powerful close-range header
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Emiliano Martinez produced a stunning save-of-the-season contender against Nottingham Forest just three minutes prior to Jhon Duran opening the scoring for Aston Villa.
The Argentine shot-stopper pulled off an outstanding reactionary save to deny Nicolas Dominguez’s header from close-range at the City Ground on Saturday.
A Forest corner in the 69th minute was whipped into a dangerous area inside Villa’s box and an initial header at the front-post then found the head of Dominguez who thought he had scored.
His header had most of those inside the City Ground on their feet cheering only for Martinez to ruin the celebrations with one of the best saves of his career.
The effort had gone past the 32-year-old only for him to get finger-tips on the ball and stop it dead on the goal-line in miraculous fashion before his defender’s cleared the danger.
Dominguez couldn’t believe he had been denied a first Premier League goal of the season and sat sunk on the ground momentarily with his team-mates in equal disbelief.
Emiliano Martinez produced a stunning save-of-the-season contender against Nottingham Forest
The Argentine shot-stopper pulled off an outstanding reactionary save to keep the match goalless
Meanwhile, Martinez was mobbed by his team-mates in a contrasting show of emotions as Villa players thanked the goal-keeper for keeping them in the match.
The magical save also gave Villa players a huge boost of confidence as they went up the other end and broke a deflated Forest defence that was arguably still in shock.
A breakaway move ended with Villa captain John McGinn floating a cross into the box and Duran finishing with a stunning header from the middle of the Forest area.
His brilliant effort left Forest goalkeeper Matz Sels rooted to the spot and unable to recreate Martinez’s effort that had taken place just minutes earlier.
Supporters were in awe of the World Cup winner’s save and heaped praise on Martinez across X with one reply to his acrobatic stop stating: ‘That was insane Martinez always comes up big when it matters.’
Another post on the social media platform similarly added: ‘Unstoppable reflexes under pressure!’.
Most of the City Ground erupted as Dominguez’s header looked destined to open the scoring
Villa striker Jhon Duran opened the scoring just three minutes after Martinez’s save
A third equally impresses viewer commented: ‘One of the best if not the best save I’ve seen wow!!’.
However, Martinez’s heroics were short-lived as Forest responded to go on and win the thrilling contest 2-1.
Nikola Milenkovic equalised with a header that Martinez could do little about this time round with just four minutes remaining, before Anthony Elanga tapped in a stoppage time winner.
The result moves Forest up into fourth above Man City in the Premier League standings, with Villa dropping to sixth in the table.
