Aston Villa have replaced the irreplaceable – and may have found a £100 million goalkeeper

Replacing Emi Martínez was probably the thing I worried about most during Aston Villa’s summer rebuild, alongside finding somebody capable of taking on the responsibility Ollie Watkins had carried as the club’s number nine.

You can replace good footballers, particularly when you have a recruitment structure you trust and a manager as good as Unai Emery, but Martínez wasn't simply a good goalkeeper for Villa. He had been one of the best in the world, had won the World Cup with Argentina and built a stature within the game that very few goalkeepers ever achieve. He had also been such a huge personality throughout this period of Villa's development that replacing what he gave the club was always going to involve considerably more than finding somebody capable of stopping shots.

That was why Zion Suzuki represented such an interesting gamble. Villa were replacing a proven goalkeeper at the highest level with somebody considerably younger, coming from Parma and Serie A, who was going to have to adapt immediately to a very different league and an enormous amount of responsibility.

Four Premier League appearances and one Champions League game obviously isn't enough to make any definitive judgement about how successful that decision will eventually prove to be, but the early signs have been so encouraging that I'm already considerably less worried about life after Martínez than I expected to be. The biggest compliment I can pay him, is that he looks like the kind of signing Brighton would have made, and looks instantly comfortable.

Suzuki has almost slipped straight into Martínez's gloves, and there are already aspects of goalkeeping where I think he gives Villa something different. The obvious one is his distribution because, while Martínez was a perfectly capable distributor of the ball and became very comfortable playing within Emery's structure, Suzuki has another level to him when it comes to the range and speed of his passing. There is an authority to the way he moves the ball which potentially changes how Villa can progress up the pitch because he isn't simply looking to find the nearest centre-half and allow the build-up to begin from there, he can break lines himself.

We've already seen him ping passes into midfield and hit longer balls accurately enough to allow Villa to bypass pressure altogether, and when you combine that with Pau Torres' ability to progress the ball from defence, Johan Manzambi's ability to carry it through central areas and Nicolas Jackson giving Villa an option to play directly into at the other end of the pitch, you begin to see how many different ways this new-look side could eventually have of moving through an opponent.

That is where Suzuki becomes particularly exciting to me because he hasn't just been signed because Villa needed another goalkeeper after Martínez left, his attributes potentially allow Emery to develop the team again. I had reservations before he arrived and actually spoke to somebody with a strong knowledge of Italian football when Villa were looking at Suzuki who, although we never ended up recording the show, essentially thought Parma had done extremely well out of Villa with the deal they had agreed. On the evidence we've seen so far, I'm starting to wonder whether the opposite might eventually prove true.

This is where I'm going to make a prediction that I fully accept sounds ridiculous after five competitive appearances for Aston Villa, but I think Suzuki has the potential to become the first £100million goalkeeper. That doesn't mean I want Villa to sell him, quite the opposite given we've had enough conversations over the last few years about which brilliant young Villa player might eventually become the next enormous transfer fee, but it is simply an assessment of where I think his ceiling could eventually be.

Villa have become extremely good at identifying players whose value can explode once they are put into Emery's environment and, having seen the club sell Jack Grealish and Morgan Rogers for more than £100million, when you look at the age profile Suzuki has, the position he plays and the attributes demanded of the very best modern goalkeepers, there is no obvious reason why his value couldn't eventually enter that territory as well. Goalkeeping has changed to the point where being excellent with your hands is no longer enough at the very top of the game because managers increasingly want their goalkeeper to become another outfield player in possession, and Suzuki looks naturally suited to that evolution.

There is obviously still an enormous amount we don't know about him and perhaps the biggest thing we haven't sampled yet is how he reacts when something goes wrong, because it inevitably will at some point. He will misplace a pass, make a mistake or concede a goal that he thinks he should have stopped, because every goalkeeper does, and playing in the Premier League means those moments are magnified immediately, particularly when you are the man who has replaced somebody with Martínez's reputation. Serie A presents its own challenges as well, but the Premier League will test Suzuki physically in different ways, teams will put bodies around him at set-pieces and, as more footage becomes available, opponents will start looking for weaknesses in his game, so we're still very early into finding out exactly what Villa have got.

What does encourage me is the environment he has walked into because Villa have an established goalkeeping structure which helped Martínez develop enormously during the Emery years, and Suzuki is coming into that at a much earlier stage of his career. If the coaching staff can have a similar influence on him while retaining the qualities that already make him unusual, then I think his ceiling is incredibly high and that is why I'm comfortable making what sounds like such a big prediction this early into his Villa career.

There also needs to be a distinction when we're talking about Suzuki potentially becoming an upgrade on Martínez because surpassing Martínez's stature within the world game is an incredibly high bar, and Suzuki could become an outstanding goalkeeper for Aston Villa without ever achieving what Martínez has achieved internationally. Martínez won the World Cup and became recognised as the world's number one while representing Villa, whereas Suzuki plays for Japan and, with the greatest respect to them, replicating that particular achievement is going to be incredibly difficult, but being an upgrade for Aston Villa doesn't necessarily mean he has to end his career with the better CV.

It is more about what Villa require from their goalkeeper now and how this team is evolving under Emery. The squad has become younger, some hugely experienced and influential players have moved on and Villa are attempting to build another side capable of competing towards the top end of the Premier League, so Suzuki's age means he can potentially grow alongside that group while his distribution gives Emery another weapon that wasn't quite there to the same extent previously.

That is why I'm so encouraged by what I've seen while also being conscious of how early we are into this. It would be ridiculous after five games to say Villa have definitively upgraded on one of the finest goalkeepers in the club's modern history, particularly when Suzuki still has to prove he can produce this level consistently and respond in the right way when the difficult moments arrive, but replacing Martínez looked like one of the most daunting jobs Villa faced during the summer and, already, it doesn't feel anywhere near as daunting as I feared it might.

If this is merely the starting point for Suzuki, and Villa can develop him in the same way they have developed so many players under Emery, then I don't think it is completely outrageous to believe that one day we might be looking at the first £100million goalkeeper.