Mikel Arteta pinpoints training ground moment Max Dowman won over Arsenal teammates

Arsenal wonderkid Max Dowman has already proved he is ready for the Carabao Cup after nutmegging his teammates in training. Gunners boss Mikel Arteta has revealed he has put 15-year-old Dowman in the first team squad to face League One Port Vale on Wednesday night.

It could be quite the baptism of fire for Dowman - who made his first team debut for the Gunners against Leeds last month aged just 15 years and 234 days - but he is already taking everything in his stride. Arteta said they have had to plan Dowman’s training alongside his schoolwork, give him a special diet and even think about his sleep patterns.

But Arteta said that Dowman quickly proved himself among his more senior teammates as he has been training with them for a year and soon learned how to deal with rough stuff if he nutmegged them.

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“At the beginning, they responded immediately: 'kick him!'” laughed Arteta. “That was the first one. And Max, to be fair, he was excellent. He stood up and got into the next one.

“You can really get an impression of someone who was 14 last year at some point when he was doing certain things to players. And now, yeah, everybody loves him. You just want to hug him, help him. He's such a nice boy as well, and he's very much liked by everybody here.

“It brings responsibility to look after somebody with that talent and make sure we just do what we have to do to make sure we're giving him the best chance to exploit his talent. That's all.”

Arteta admits he saw the video clips of Dowman getting tough treatment while playing for England under-19s and got fouled a staggering ten times in the first half alone.

But Arteta says he can handle it and is confident they are also getting everything ready for him to succeed. Dowman may not start at Port Vale but is likely to get some minutes and is clearly ready to break more records this season. He added: “He's super smart. His football IQ, the way he makes decisions, the way he moves, he does it naturally. It's not too much, too close.

“It's the competitive part of the game that we need to evolve with him, for him to understand the nature of the game. A lot of the things that he probably doesn't pay too much attention to.

“That comes with minutes, with experience and by sharing a dressing room with these boys, they're going to take him through a lot of stuff.

“We need to change his times, we need to change his education, probably his allocation and where he is with his family. His diet is different, his sleep patterns become different, the training load is different, the amount of information, pressure exposure is different.

“So we have to manage a lot of factors. Into that a lot of factors you add a lot of minutes with very different teams as well. We need to be cautious and very, very careful.

“And that's what we are trying to do in the best possible way, to find that balance, to keep Max as connected as possible with the first team, because he's undoubtedly a player that can help the first team.”

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