Max Dowman for England? £100m Arsenal duo offer reality check over latest prodigy | OneFootball

Paul Scholes is willing to sacrifice, well, anyone to get Max Dowman in England’s World Cup squad – a extraordinary claim that made these pages on Friday morning.

But published not 45 minutes later is another story that ought to prompt Scholes and everyone else to cool their jets over the Arsenal youngster.

According to the BBC, the Gunners are open to offers this summer for two other teenagers: Ethan Nwaneri and Myles Lewis-Skelly.

Like Scholes and Rio Ferdinand, you would have to be blinded by the hype around Dowman not to recognise a connection between the two stories and the warning that none of us should miss in the second one.

Nwaneri and Lewis-Skelly helped blaze a trail for Dowman, the much-vaunted pair not long ago pinned as the future for Arsenal and great talents for England.

Indeed, Nwaneri is the only player younger than Dowman to play in the Premier League.

The attacker was handed his debut by Mikel Arteta in September 2022 aged 15 years and 181 days, 54 days younger than Dowman on his top-flight bow.

Three and a half years after Nwaneri’s record-breaking appearance and 18 months on from Lewis-Skelly’s debut, neither yet out of their teens, both seem now to be surplus to requirements at the Emirates.

Of course, none of this is to consign Nwaneri and Lewis-Skelly to the scrap heap, or to doubt the potential of Dowman. The chapter he wrote against Everton in Arsenal’s last Premier League outing is the latest in a fairytale story that is only just beginning.

But it’s not an original work. Nwaneri and Lewis-Skelly were the central characters in their own stories that have taken what seemed like unimaginable twists when they were being touted as Arsenal’s great hopes.

Actually, it’s a tale as old as time and we’re all suckers for a schoolboy prodigy, aren’t we?

But we have to remember that Dowman, as well as the lads who’ve gone before him and those who will inevitably follow, are all just that: literal schoolboys.

Dowman is still a couple of years from being able to change in the senior dressing room. But here we are, listening to older heads who ought to know better calling for the 16-year-old, who should be sitting his GCSEs, to be thrust into the head-f***ing pressure cooker environment of a senior World Cup.

What’s the hurry to expose the kid to that? It serves neither his needs nor the needs of the England team.

Just because Dowman has progressed through the junior ranks at an accelerated pace, so often playing up through the academy because of his technical and physical gifts, doesn’t make it necessary for that ascent to continue at such a perilous angle.

Really, there is no next level. Dowman has already played in the Premier League and Champions League. All being well, he is now where he will be for the next 15 years or more. But he hasn’t yet accumulated enough minutes for a full half of football in either competition.

Please, let the boy breathe. Just allow him to settle into what is still a very new senior competitive environment where we all hope he has literally another lifetime ahead of him.

Sure, barring disaster, he will play for England. Probably sooner rather than later and he’ll get bundles of caps. But it is no more in the Three Lions’ interest to fast-track him to the World Cup as it is his own.

Thomas Tuchel has plenty of attacking options. If there was a dearth of English attackers or wide players, perhaps the clamour would be more understandable. But Tuchel is already spoiled for choice before he considers thrusting forward a boy yet to make a Premier League start.

One of Tuchel’s options, Bukayo Saka, is another reason why we should prepare for Dowman’s progress to slow from the break-neck speed that brought him to this point instead of pushing him to go faster.

Do Arsenal or England drop Saka to give Dowman the prominence so many are impatient for?

Dowman will probably find his way into the central attacking positions but, as is often the case with young forwards, the flank is a more forgiving environment to find his feet.

And what about his head? He has to be allowed to process his dizzying ascent. No-one has raised any concerns about Dowman in that respect but, exciting though it undoubtedly is, the clamour, adulation and scrutiny flying his way would fry the minds of most.

We’re told he has good people around him and he needs them to keep their feet on the ground if he has any hope of doing the same while swerving the multitude of pitfalls between Dowman and his potential.

That being true, his manager and his family will leave the England bullsh*t to those who don’t have to deal with it and support the kid to establish himself at Arsenal in a way so many of those who gone before were never able to manage.