Emiliano Martinez’s behaviour in the wake of Argentina’s World Cup triumph hasn’t been to everybody’s liking.

Whether that be his channeling of football’s dark arts during the penalty shootout itself or rubbing salt into France‘s wounds since the final whistle, Martinez has certainly irked a few people with the way he’s gone about celebrating the historic achievement.

In fact, that even seems to extend to his own club manager with the new man in charge at Villa Park, Unai Emery, providing some rather cryptic comments on the club’s €28-million-rated number one.

According to the Guardian, Emery addressed the Martinez controversy earlier this week by musing: “When you have big emotion, sometimes it is difficult to control it.

“I will speak to him next week about some celebrations but I respect that he is now under the national team and when he will be with us, he is our responsibility then we can speak about it. We are so proud of him. He won the World Cup with his national team and it’s amazing.

“He’s coming back next week. I want him to rest now because after big emotion and hard work, he has to have some days off to rest then he’ll come back to work with us.”

While you can only infer so much from press conference comments, you certainly got the vibe that the Aston Villa coach wasn’t over the moon with every single facet of Martinez’s behaviour.

And if a sensational report coming out of Spain is to be believed, then Emery’s opinion on the matter extends far beyond mild distaste.

According to the translation of Football Espana, Spanish publication Fichajes remarkably claimed on Christmas Eve that Emery is ‘desperate’ to sell the World Cup winner.

In truly head-turning scenes, it’s touted that the former Arsenal and Paris Saint-Germain coach “does not want to work with Martinez” and that he is “very keen of his sale”.

And it seems as though Martinez’s recent behaviour is intrinsically linked to this purported desire to sell him with Emery said to “be very unimpressed with his temperament”.

Further to this, the report then proceeds to pour petrol onto the fire when it comes to rumours that Yassine Bounou is being eyed up as the new number one shot-stopper at Villa Park.

‘Bono’ is one of the best goalkeepers in the world and arguably had a stronger claim than eventual winner Martinez for collecting the Golden Glove award at Qatar 2022.

It’s explained that Sevilla are willing to sell the Moroccan and that they’ve set their asking price at €30 million, which is neither bad value nor completely out of Villa’s reach.

Should the report be taken with a pinch of salt? Absolutely. Look, Fichajes is not one of the first publications that we’d run to if we wanted to put our house on a transfer rumour coming true.

However, is it to be immediately written off as complete and utter fake news? Nope, because not every single transfer saga takes its first steps in the media across the same few publications or with the same couple of journalists every single time.

And with Emery certainly hinting that he’s at least unimpressed with Martinez’s antics, fans definitely need a little more information to complete dismiss this most eyebrow-raising of claims.