By Tony Attwood
It is difficult to get much Arsenal news today aside from tales of Max Dowman (any minute now we expect a detailed interview with a publican who reports that underage Max tried to buy a drink in a pub – it’s the usual sort of thing that crops up. And then one from someone who taught him in primary school, who claims that he/she “always knew” something or other…).
And we already know that Mikel Arteta feels that Max’s arrival inspires everyone who plays with him. All we are waiting for now is Liam Brady to pop up doing interviews comparing his rise to fame with that of Max Dowman’s, and of course, some more repeats of the fact that Max is the youngest ever scorer in the Premier League, which I think we already know, but these journalists need to fill the space…
So the Guardian tells us today that “The 16-year-old, who became the youngest player to appear in the Champions League 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,” which I guess we knew anyway.
Martin Ødegaard is still out although Arsenal are hoping for his return for a certain game on Sunday. Still meanwhile the media can fill their space with tales of “the youngest Champions League player and…”. well, you know, because that is what is in all the newspapers and chat sites. Arteta said, “It’s very inspiring when you see someone almost naive making decisions…” He also spoke of the young man’s “flowing and careless playing in that manner”. And I think of course that’s fine – there really isn’t too much more to say. Well, not much until we get the interviews with family members, someone who sat next to him in class and… unproven rumours about this and that, and well, you know. Watch out Max, those reporters saying great things about you today can turn on you like a thing that turns very quickly. One ex-girlfriend telling a tale and your image is shattered.
Indeed we are getting some negative bits already, as from Wayne Rooney, who has just lost the record of the youngest goalscorer, worrying about Max’s ability to do his GCSE coursework and train with the first team at the same time. (Although actually, I remember reading that Wayne Rooney did particularly well at school, so maybe that’s fair advice.)
So we now move onto phase two, where all sorts of people try to get a bit of self-promotion on the back of Max’s success – claims that they personally helped Max find his right position, develop his speed, learn how to swerve – you can make it up as you go, because undoubtedly lots of others will. At least Temisan Williams was probably right in his claims, and when Max’s father complained immediately agreed not to say another word.
But now we try and set all that aside for tonight’s game against Leverkusen, who had a 1-1 draw with Bayern Munich at the weekend, which was impressive. And next weekend they have an easier task with a match against the bottom club 1. FC Heidenheim, who after 26 league games are already ten points from safety at the foot of the table.
So yes, they need to hold nothing back tonight. For with a victory pretty much assured in next weekend’s gam,e Leverkusen can be expected to throw absolutely everything at Arsenal tonight. And then some.
And lest we should still feel tempted to think this is going to be another simple 2-0 victory against a team that hasn’t won anything, we should look back for a moment to 2023/24 when Bayer 04 Leverkusen won the German league. And not just because they won the league but also because of how they won the league. That was their unbeaten season (28 wins and six draws) in which they scored 89 and conceded 24. This makes 2.64 goals a game scored by them and 0.7 goals a game conceded. They were 17 points above VfB Stuttgart who came in second.
So what we have in this game are two teams, each of which has won its league with an unbeaten season. That doesn’t happen often.
Likewise, it doesn’t often happen that we have a player in our squad who spent ten years playing for the opposition, but such is the fate of Kai Havertz. He moved from Leverkusen on to Chelsea for £71m in 2020.
So that leaves just a final look at the possible lineup before we move on to the game tonight…
We had more about Leverkusen in our appropriately titled earlier article: Arsenal v Leverkusen, tuesday at 8pm. How the opposition are doing
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I can confirm that Temisan Williams is a legitimate source as he is an Academy coach and coach developer with a lot of experience at Arsenal. The other coach who would have honed Max’s skills would be the technical development coach in the Arsenal Academy, Dan Buck, who is an outstanding technical coach, and someone I worked with and learned a lot from at Brentford’s first Academy iteration before 2016
Just what has been published late today. Not sure if this is true.
Temisan Williams has now apologised to Max’s father and retracted his claim that he was part of Max’s development, but was there when he trained as part of a coaching group.
Max’s has had no special coaching that is different or more than his team mates, although his coaching like his team mates have been first class coming from the youth coaching staff. He seems to be a player with natural ability that highlights him from the rest and as mentioned by the coaching staff, he has always had a special skill for carrying the ball forward.
As Tony said, we must be careful of the Arsenals haters in the media that will be jealous and start printing negative comments or persuade clubs to tap him up for a move.
This is just my opinion, and sorry to use Obi as a recent example, but there are similar traits in both being academy spectacular potential players, and it is this fear and worry of the Chido Obi situation that concerns me with Max showing similar potential, but needing protection, where we may have failed with Obi. People will have different facts but this is just my opinion from what was said at the time.
This is where clubs will try and test Max’s family like they did with Obi, with money incentives to persuade him away from Arsenal.
Yet this is a warning to Max that it did not really work out well for Obi when he transferred from the ‘Arsenal academy’ as a record top scorer to ManUs academy to become an average ordinary scorer, who on reflection it seems that ManU have given Obi false promises about his development scale being better with United than Arsenal.
Since his unsuccessful move, ManU have invested heavily in other forward players that have pegged in back further in the selection order “after” he was first persuaded by United to join them with a head turning record youth double money offer and the promised more first team regular games, for which he has played 7 in total over two years since his transfer to United.
In fact the introduction of new striker forwards and even experimental false number nines at MU have hindered his progress, and he has become so far back in the regular pegging order that he would have probably been better off taking his chances with Arsenal, because at the time they had forward injuries when he moved and we were forced to play with false number nines, with Trossard etc.. as they no longer had any youth potential to promote in that position, yet they did promote both Nwaneri and Lewis Skelly as like Obi they were exceptional in their own positions, but Obi was due for promotion as our next promoted striker.
Obi had a promising career and an amazing last year with Arsenal scoring 32 goals from 21 games at youth level.
Although to be fair he has continued to score for ManU youth level, but at a lower ratio and not so spectacular with an average acceptable 14 goals from 31 games. He has tried and failed at senior level with ManU with zero goals from 7 games.
I don’t think he will get anymore chances at senior level after that display and his now far back pegging order and may get loaned out.
It’s a shame as like Max Dowman is now, Obi back then was full of potential had he stayed on course with Arsenal.
So a warning to Max and parents that it is better to stay on track with Arsenal and not worry about money etc.. and wait until your second contract with Arsenal that will no doubt be huge, after you sign your first loyalty contract at 17 in December. Keep to the Arsenal development program and don’t be fooled into the Obi situation.
Arteta may play him tonight as he is selected in the squad.
The problem is that if Arteta plays him tonight and he becomes the youngest ever European goal scorer, then he will have problems fending off the likes of Real Madrid, Barcelona etc.. from trying to tap him up for a big money move when he is 17.
I hope that both he and his family are true loyal Arsenal fans, and Arteta protects him from the negative media and any false promises from other clubs with big money head turning opportunities.
I think Arteta may risk playing him tonight only if we are in desperate need for a goal or a lift in team spirit. He may again make history tonight, what will the “world media” then say?