For all the pre-match talk about Mansfield Town’s patchy pitch, it was the youngest player on it who found his footing with the most ease as Arsenal won 2-1 at Field Mill.
Noni Madueke and Eberechi Eze brought the clinical finishes from outside the box, but Max Dowman (aged 16 years, two months and four days) was the star on his return from injury.
He is now the youngest ever player to start for Arsenal in the FA Cup. For context, the teenager will be taking his GCSE exams this summer despite already having eight England Under-19 caps to his name. The midfielder only returned from an ankle injury suffered in December last week, but still had the ability to float across Mansfield Town’s bobbly home turf as if it was the carpet-like Emirates Stadium.
Even with the fifth round draw being so favourable, there was some debate among the Arsenal fanbase about whether starting two 16-year-olds (Marli Salmon the other) away at a League One side would be smart. Would they be targeted by more physical players? Could they deal with the differences in facilities?
If anything, this match served as a return to more ‘real’ football that could prove beneficial for both schoolboys.
“That tells us a lot about them, their personality and the quality that they have,” Arsenal manager Mikel Arteta said of the decision to start them both.
He added that the match “exemplifies the history of the FA Cup” because of its chaotic nature. Dowman was still one of his side’s most secure and threatening players though. After having an early shot saved by Liam Roberts, a weaving run between yellow shirts and into the penalty area gave those in the stands their first indicator that this youngster was different.
Half an hour in, he had more shots (four), ball recoveries (six) and touches inside the opposition box (six) than any player on the pitch. Playing more centrally than his previous first-team appearances (on the right wing) would have helped boost those numbers, but Dowman had to take charge to make his influence felt.
“When the ball is bouncing all over the place and you have people in your back, the way he handles time and space and the touches that he takes, it’s just incredible,” Arteta said. “Especially at the speed that he delivers those actions. But that tells you the talent that we have.”
The build-up to his second opportunity to score was the best example of this.
Play began with a Mansfield corner, so as he scurried across for the ball just outside his own box, the ‘person on his back’ was Deji Oshilaja. Double Dowman’s age at 32, the centre-back has 375 Football League appearances to his name but the teenager has a bigger physical presence than his style of play suggests. He is 6ft at 16, and held Oshilaja off to allow his team-mates to stream forward on before laying the ball off.
It came back to him courtesy of Leandro Trossard, but the youngster can be forgiven for not getting enough purchase on the effort having kept up with play after that challenge.
The ‘speed’ Arteta mentions felt just as much about the speed of thought as it did pace across the ground. Mansfield were not just ‘taking part’ against Arsenal, but made their visitors work for openings. There were moments of much-needed consideration from Arsenal players in possession, even at 1-0.
One such moment came from Piero Hincapie. Without much movement ahead of him, Dowman was the one to drop into space and demand the ball.
It was a sign of the trust the older players in the squad have in him that a pass came despite him being between two markers. That did not matter, as the midfielder already had a picture in his head. He dipped between those midfielders after a quick one-two with Kai Havertz and touch through.
Then the graceful roll of the ball with his studs smoothly took him past another two to shoot at goal.
Dowman brought an element of grace to the game, but the willingness of his opponents to put a foot in provided necessary lessons too. For instance, when is it best to play a simpler pass to keep an attack flowing rather than holding onto it for a second or two too long. Those will not detract from his overall performance, especially as they are aspects of the game that older academy graduates like Ethan Nwaneri and Myles Lewis-Skelly are still fine-tuning, but were timely reality checks.
Similar could be said for Salmon, who played a part in Mansfield’s equaliser. Cristhian Mosquera’s indecision from the young defender’s light backpass created the opportunity for Will Evans to take advantage.
After the match, Arteta said: “I have to watch it back, but I could sense that he was (feeling) responsible. And it is good in a way, but don’t lose perspective because everybody that has been in that room at this level has made an error, a mistake or a situation leading to a goal. But that’s not important. The important thing is the way he played and some of the things that he’s done on the pitch. I think that’s much more important than the other parts.”
As was the case with Dowman, Arteta will be encouraged by the personality Salmon showed in certain moments. He was fouled a minute into the game, performing a Cruyff turn away from a challenge, but continued to demand the ball from his more senior team-mates.
In an early passage of play when Mansfield seemed to pen Arsenal into a corner, Salmon drifted into a more central position to call for the ball. He received it on the turn to evade one tackle nicely, but was caught by a second one.
This was not like his recent outing against Reading Under-21s, when he was able to do kick-ups on the halfway line because of the lack of pressure on him. These were professional players looking to make an impression, and he would have left Mansfield with a better idea of senior football than any academy match could have given him.
Salmon may need another favourable draw to start in the quarter-finals, but that does not feel like it would be the case with Dowman. The 16-year-old’s first senior start for Arsenal was in October’s Carabao Cup win over Brighton & Hove Albion, so if the timing is right, the chance to show more of that carefree, youthful exuberance could be exactly what Arsenal need to relieve some of the tension from a Premier League title race.
