Arsenal boss Mikel Arteta has selected Max Douman for the Carabao Cup tie team with Port Vere.
Arsenal Wonderkid Max Dowman has already proven that he is ready for the Carabao Cup after he has been able to train his teammates. Gunners boss Mikel Arteta revealed that he has placed 15-year-old Dowman in his first team team to face League One Port Vale on Wednesday night.
For Dowman, who made his first team debut against the Gunners last month against the Leeds, who was only 15 years old and 234 days, it could be a pretty fire baptism, but he’s already walking through it all. Arteta said he had to plan Douman’s training along with his studies, give him a special diet and also think about his sleep patterns.
However, Arteta said that Douman had been training with them for a year and quickly proved himself among his senior teammates, and quickly learned how to deal with rough things if he gunned them.
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“In the beginning, they answered immediately: ‘Kick him!”, laughed Arteta. “That was the first one. And Max, to be fair, he was great. He stood up and entered the next one.
“You really get the impression you get when someone who was 14 last year was doing certain things to a player, and now everyone loves him. You just want to hold him.
“It brings responsibility to look after those who have that talent and make sure we do what we have to do to give him the best chance to exploit his talent, and that’s all.”
Arteta admits that while playing for England under 19, he saw a video clip of Dowman undergoing a tough treatment and fouled an astounding 10 in the first half alone.
However, Arteta says he can handle it and is sure they’re preparing everything for him to succeed. Dowman may not start at Portvale, but he is likely to get a few minutes and is ready to beat more records this season. He added:
“It’s the competitive part of the game that he needs to evolve with him to understand the nature of the game. There’s a lot that he probably doesn’t pay much attention to.
“That means having experience and sharing a dressing room with these boys means they’re going to take him to lots of stuff.
“We need to change his time. We need to change his education, perhaps his allocation and where he is with his family. His diet is different, his sleep patterns are different, his training load is different, his information is different, his exposure to pressure is different.
“So we need to manage a lot of factors. To many factors, you add a lot of minutes to a very different team. We need to be careful and very, very careful.
“And that’s what we’re trying to do in the best possible way. He’s definitely a player who can help the first team to find that balance and keep Max connected as much as possible with the first team.”
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