With Everton’s visit to the Emirates Stadium on Saturday coinciding with Arsenal losing Bukayo Saka to injury, there is plenty of chatter about Max Dowman.
It was, of course, in this fixture back in March, that Dowman came off the bench, helped create a crucial late opener, and then unforgettably charged upfield to become the youngest scorer in Premier League history in added time. The win was an enormous step on the way to winning the league title and only accelerated the excitement around Dowman.
The 16-year-old has played just 10 minutes in the Premier League so far this season, but Saka’s injury could open the door for further opportunities on the right, and Arsenal boss Mikel Arteta was inundated with questions about the teenager in the embargoed section of his pre-Everton press conference.
“We know the player that we have, we just have to give him the right chances in the right moments,” Arteta said.
Asked about how eager the rest of the squad is to help Dowman progress, the manager credited the youngster’s attitude as well as his ability.
“He has earned that with the way he is, with the way he presents himself, and obviously, because I think everybody sees the talent, and we want to give that to the service of the team as quick as possible.”
When pushed on the lack of first team opportunities so far this season, Arteta insisted it has nothing to do with whether or not he believes Dowman has what it takes to consistently provide for the team.
“He does, he needs more minutes to do that,” the boss said. “To ask him to provide when you don’t have a lot of minutes is very difficult, unfair, but in that moment when he starts to have more involvement in games and (more) minutes, I think he’s going to be able to do that, because historically that’s what he’s done, he’s shown with the step up to another dimension, I think he’s more (than) capable of that.”
Arsenal fans will remember the likes of Cesc Fabregas, Jack Wilshere, and more recently Bukayo Saka breaking into the first team fold fresh-faced, but even those players were not as young as Dowman still is now when they forced their ways into contention.
Arteta insisted Dowman is unique, but playing at the very top level comes with its own challenges, suggesting nobody in England has the capacity to win games comfortably enough to accommodate the development and education of a 16-year-old in the Premier League with regular football.
“This is not at Arsenal, this is the level at every club,” the manager said when asked if Dowman needs time to get to grips with what is expected of him when it comes to pressing and being in the right place at the right time against the ball.
“Unless – I don’t want to mention a club – you have three guys in the team that score over 100 goals, and then you can put one or two there, and okay, they can evolve, and the nature of the games will develop.
“Here it’s different, and the margins are much smaller, and he needs to be able to do that (pressing), but understanding where he is as well. And he’s someone that really wants to learn, and he really wants to do it.
“He just needs the habit, and a habit takes some time, but certainly this (habit) is important. And what we cannot take is the talent, the freedom, the capacity to do things that aren’t on that piece of paper or the ones that you have in the squad, because he is unique in that.”
“Tell me how many 16-year-olds have played in the last 100 years at this level. It’s simple. There isn’t. None, zero. There isn’t a single player. So that’s it, that’s why he’s unique; otherwise he would be one of some.”
It was put to Arteta that Wayne Rooney’s breakthrough came at 16, but the manager was keen to push back against the suggestion that the situations are the same, with Rooney playing for a midtable Everton side at the time.
“Every three days and playing Champions League? He wasn’t. So, that’s a no.”
With noises [less than positive on Bukayo Saka’s injury](https://arseblog.news/2026/10/saka-set-for-more-scans-as-arteta-fears-the-worst/), opportunities for Dowman to make his mark could be just around the corner.