Mikel Arteta has defended his reaction to Max Dowman after the teenager was sent off for the first time in his Arsenal career, insisting the moment has to be viewed in context. The manager, who appeared visibly angry as Dowman walked off, said his warning reflected standards set before the match rather than a lack of support for the 16-year-old.<\/p>\n
Arteta admitted the optics were open to criticism, but he was clear that his response was tied to the demands of the occasion. \u201cI haven\u2019t seen the reaction to my reaction,\u201d Arteta confessed ahead of Arsenal\u2019s marquee weekend clash with Liverpool. \u201cWhether that\u2019s positive or negative. I understand, but you need to understand the context, the relationship I have with him and what we discussed just before we went out.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf you see the reaction of my mother and father with me sometimes, you\u2019d say \u2018I don\u2019t like that reaction,\u2019 but for me it was the best reaction ever, to be able to be who I am. But you want, obviously, the best and most beautiful one. You want to see the reaction of his teammates when they have to play with 10 men?<\/p>\n
\u201cThat\u2019s the reaction, that\u2019s the level,\u201d Arteta added. \u201cWhether it\u2019s right or wrong, that\u2019s the reaction. And the reaction when I don\u2019t win, you know what it is? I\u2019m p—-d off, big time. We need to be ready, this is the environment and the reality.<\/p>\n
\u201cOtherwise we are in Disneyland. We are not in Disneyland, we are in the Premier League at this level, and we look after him so much, like you cannot imagine. But at the same time, we are going to demand him like anybody else, because he needs to earn the right to play. Otherwise, the rest of the boys, what are they going to tell me? You need to be fair, that\u2019s all.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Arsenal boss was also frustrated by the FA\u2019s decision not to overturn the dismissal. \u201cVery disappointed to be fair,\u201d Arteta said. \u201cEspecially with the reckless tackles that he received but then his reaction is minimal in relation to the action. And yeah, disappointed it\u2019s not being overturned.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt is what it is,\u201d the Spaniard boss added. \u201cWe have put every argument on the table to make a case for it. Not only the action, obviously, that is so evident when you look it back in slow motion, [but also] the previous action and Max\u2019s action. It\u2019s clear obviously we have a different opinion. And on top of that I think you need to read the context of the player, the age and what happened previously.\u201d<\/p>\n
Dowman escaped serious injury after the challenge from Harrison Neal, with Arteta saying \u201cit could\u2019ve been really bad.\u201d He added that the youngster must learn to keep his composure, especially given the way opponents target his style of play, something he has already experienced after being sent off a month ago while on international duty with England U-19\u2019s side.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Arteta backs his Dowman warning, saying Arsenal must stay realistic after the teenager’s red card.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":22140,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[192,1303,172],"tags":[1836,242,180],"class_list":["post-22141","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-arsenal","category-arsenal-news","category-epl","tag-2026-27-premier-league","tag-injury","tag-player-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22141","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=22141"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22141\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/22140"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=22141"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=22141"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=22141"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}