Mikel Arteta has not ruled out sending Max Dowman out on loan, but the Arsenal manager insists any decision will depend on finding the correct move for the 16-year-old midfielder.<\/p>\n
So far, approaches for Dowman have been turned down, although Arteta suggested that stance could be reviewed in January. He said the club will continue to assess the teenager at regular intervals before deciding what serves his development best.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe will evaluate every six months where we are, what is the best thing for him to do and from there make the right decisions,\u201d Arteta reflected.<\/p>\n
His reasoning is shaped by several moving parts. The manager pointed to Dowman\u2019s needs, the situation inside the squad, the minutes available to him and the standard of his performances when he does play.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt will depend on a lot of factors: what he needs, where the team is as well, the availability that we have in the squad, the amount of minutes that he\u2019s playing, the quality he\u2019s delivering when he\u2019s got those minutes.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe have to be open, but now the focus is to be here and impact the team.\u201d<\/p>\n
The discussion inevitably brings back memories of Ethan Nwaneri, whose progress followed a different and less straightforward path. Nwaneri broke through at the end of the 2022-23 season as the youngest player in Premier League history, before being sent back to the academy the next year.<\/p>\n
He returned to the senior squad for 2024-25 and made 37 appearances in all competitions, helped by injuries elsewhere. But the following season saw his role reduced sharply, with only six Premier League outings in the first half of 2025-26.<\/p>\n
That led to a January loan to Marseille at the request of then-manager Roberto De Zerbi, who left a few weeks later. Habib Beye took over and publicly questioned Nwaneri\u2019s \u201ceveryday commitment,\u201d while the midfielder finished the spell with only 412 minutes, fewer than he had already collected at Arsenal that season.<\/p>\n
Arteta acknowledged the unpredictability of such moves when he said: \u201cThere have been many cases of that age that they\u2019ve gone [on loan] and they\u2019ve been successful, some others not,\u201d adding, \u201cParticularly, I think I was 17 when I went to Paris [Saint-Germain].\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Arteta is open to a Dowman loan, but only after weighing Arsenal’s needs and Nwaneri’s cautionary tale.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":19843,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[192,1843],"tags":[180,182],"class_list":["post-19844","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-arsenal","category-arsenal-transfer-news","tag-player-news","tag-transfers"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19844","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=19844"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19844\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/19843"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=19844"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=19844"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=19844"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}