Arsenal boss Mikel Arteta knows red card will be learning curve for Max Dowman
Dowman was sent off in the 85th minute of the Carabao Cup defeat to Fleetwood.
Mikel Arteta believes Max Dowman’s response to serving a controversial three-game ban will be a litmus test for how the 16-year-old navigates challenges for the rest of his career.
Dowman was sent off with a red card in the 85th minute of Arsenal’s Carabao Cup penalty shootout loss at Fleetwood, and their subsequent appeal to an independent commission to overturn or reduce the punishment was rejected.
He will, as a result, be unavailable for Sunday’s trip to Liverpool, where the Gunners will be looking to break a 13-game Premier League winless streak at Anfield.
“This is a situation, it’s simple. It’s been a reaction, one minute, one second,” said Arteta, when asked if he had faced any similarly difficult moments in his own career.
“It’s so emotional, very difficult. You regret it, but you’ve done it. I’m telling you because I’ve done it. I have many more other ones that are much more difficult, who have long-term injuries or something happens to family or to your parents.
“That’s more difficult. When you are abroad and you don’t have any family. He’s got all the family here.
“You need to navigate with so many situations in a football career, some of them that are known by people, and also others that are private, but they are much more difficult. It’s part of life, it’s not something specific to football, and you need to just face it.
“And in relation to how good you are to overcome that situation, you will be successful or not.”
Arteta agreed Dowman – like Lionel Messi, Bukayo Saka and Wayne Rooney before him – will be targeted, and agreed his age does factor into his workload and their holistic considerations, adding: “If a player that weighs 95 kilos, 100 kilos, comes at 35 kilometres an hour to Max and hits a bone, I don’t know what happens.”
He nevertheless believes the midfielder is already well-accustomed to targeting, explaining: “Those players have experienced that since they were eight years old. Everybody tries to stop those kinds of players.”
The two have patched up any tension between them from Tuesday’s loss after Arteta’s angry reaction to the sending-off.
Arteta said he told Dowman: “He’s not going to be judged for that. We fully support him and there is nothing else. The fact that we win, draw or lose a game because of that is nothing to do with what he did. He should not take any responsibility for that, that’s for sure.”
Arsenal are looking to avoid extending their tour league winless streak at Anfield to an unprecedented 14 games, and Arteta knows it will be a battle to secure a morale-lifting victory.
He said: “When you go to those stadiums, you don’t win very often. That’s the reality. Like the other teams, they don’t win at the end of the day very often.
“You have to do something special, and we’re going to have to be at a really high level to win and I’m confident that we will be.
“After midweek, the thing that I want at Anfield is winning as well. It doesn’t take anything different to that. You have to swallow some pain that’s different, but objectively it remains the same.”