the youngest player to appear in the Champions League <\/a>when facing Slavia Prague during the league stage in November, is likely to be on the bench again for the second leg of their last-16 tie against Bayer Leverkusen despite the continued absence of Martin \u00d8degaard. Arteta hopes that the Norway midfielder will return for the Carabao Cup final against City on Sunday.<\/p>\nAsked whether some of Dowman\u2019s youthful enthusiasm could rub off on a squad that has played 48 games this season in the chase for an unprecedented quadruple, Arteta said: \u201cThat\u2019s a good point. It\u2019s very inspiring when you see someone almost naive making decisions and flowing and careless playing in that manner. It\u2019s great.<\/p>\n
\u201cProbably our players realised as well. It\u2019s a good example, playing with that flow and enthusiasm is very beneficial for the team.\u201d<\/p>\n
On Dowman\u2019s goal, Riccardo Calafiori said: \u201cI was so, so happy. Maybe the best moment of the season so far, at least in Premier League for sure. He\u2019s so young, but at the same time so mature on the pitch. He can improve many things, but he\u2019s a talent. You can see it. But we have to leave him quiet and try not to speak about him too much because he has everything.\u201d<\/p>\n
Wayne Rooney, who previously held the record for the Premier League\u2019s youngest goalscorer, has questioned whether Dowman\u2019s GCSE commitments could prevent him from playing regularly for Arsenal\u2019s first team during the title run-in. While Arteta is keen to protect his rising star despite speculation that he could emerge as a contender for England World Cup squad, he praised Dowman for taking everything in his stride.<\/p>\n
\u201cI didn\u2019t expect that kind of goal, but his attitude and his decision making, yes. If not I wouldn\u2019t have made the decision to play him,\u201d Arteta said. \u201cBut then to be that precise and deliver the moment that he delivered, that\u2019s something difficult to imagine. He is knocking on the door at 16, saying: \u2018I am good enough and I can impact this team whenever it is needed.\u2019 And he is doing it when he is playing.\u201d<\/p>\n
Asked whether Dowman could be a contender for England in the summer, Arteta said: \u201cLet\u2019s go game by game, please.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Mikel Arteta believes Max Dowman\u2019s emergence has inspired the rest of Arsenal\u2019s players and will benefit their quest…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":349961,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[61,60,112],"class_list":["post-349960","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-sports","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/349960","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=349960"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/349960\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/349961"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=349960"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=349960"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=349960"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}