The ten youngest players in Premier League history suggests Arsenal might launch Liverpool raid | OneFootball

Mikel Arteta was responsible for giving debuts to the two youngest Premier League players ever. Arsenal are about to sign the kid in third.

And from that we can prove unequivocally that the Gunners will subsequently be knocking on Liverpool’s door for a player no-one seemed to want last season.

1) Ethan Nwaneri – 15 years, 5 months and 28 days

Mikel Arteta attributed it to “a pure gut feeling” – and was widely criticised for his decision to make Nwaneri the youngest player in English top-flight history at the end of a routine thrashing of Brentford.

Nwaneri replaced goalscorer Fabio Vieira in stoppage time of a September 2022 win, after which Arteta did warn a player currently uncertain of his Arsenal future that: “It’s just one step and all the steps in your career are not forward and you have to know that. You can go forward then backwards and then forwards.”

2) Max Dowman – 15 years, 7 months and 3 days

The youngest goalscorer in Premier League history marginally missed out on becoming its youngest player outright, Dowman’s August 2025 debut date implying that only the structure of the conventional football calendar prevented him from lowering the bar.

The teenager had been discussed in tones of barely contained excitement at Arsenal for a while before being unleashed. There was some bizarre and frankly daft and damaging World Cup chat around someone whose first clear memories of the tournament would likely be from Russia 2018, but Arteta has shown admirable restraint and care in managing an absurd talent.

3) Jeremy Monga – 15 years, 8 months and 28 days

That must be particularly appealing to Monga, whose rise through the Leicester ranks has attracted interest from the title winners, Manchester City, Bayer Leverkusen and various other admirers of Ruud van Nistelrooy’s phenomenal 2024/25 Foxes.

Perhaps sensing that any other opportunity to establish his coaching legacy would be restricted to waiting for biannual Manchester United manager panicking, Van Nistelrooy blooded Monga towards the end of Leicester’s Premier League relegation season.

The forward was not tainted by that experience, nor the club’s subsequent immediate drop to League One. Monga will instead do an accelerated Leicester of his own by going from the third tier to the champions, whose objective of building a decade-long dynasty under Arteta continues apace.

4) Harvey Elliott – 16 years and 1 month

It does not feel as though Elliott is especially close to joining Arsenal, with his miserable waste of an Aston Villa loan the launching pad.

If Liverpool offload the 23-year-old to Chelsea first then Arteta might be compelled to act and continue his hoarding of the youngest players in Premier League history. But Elliott will likely embrace the clean slate offered by Andoni Iraola at Anfield this summer.

The Blues rejected Elliott for being “too small” at academy level, a blow from which he recovered by joining Fulham and impressing caretaker manager Scott Parker with his grasp of The Basics.

5) Matthew Briggs – 16 years, 2 months and 7 days

Elliott was the youngest player in Premier League history between May 2019 and September 2022, usurping a fellow former Cottager along the way.

Briggs was “buzzing” to be sent on towards the end of a May 2007 defeat to Gareth Southgate’s Middlesbrough, the 16-year-old lining up alongside Liam Rosenior when LinkedIn was in its formative years.

After a stellar journeyman career taking him from Barnet to Maldon & Tiptree, Coggeshall Town, HB Køge and Dartford to name but a few destinations, Briggs retired from playing one month after joining Horsham in 2023.

6) Izzy Brown – 16 years, 3 months and 27 days

“I want him to be champion and I want him to have his debut for Chelsea in the Premier League at West Brom,” said Jose Mourinho ahead of Brown’s solitary Blues appearance in eight years; the midfielder played as often for the Baggies side he left aged 16.

Having been sent on seven loans during his time at Stamford Bridge, Brown decided to call time on his professional career at the age of just 26 due to persistent injury problems.

7) Aaron Lennon – 16 years, 4 months and 7 days

“Ken Bates came in and to be fair to him, I didn’t understand at the time but my contract was good. It was £5,000 a week as soon as I turned pro, and £10,000 an appearance. The incentives were crazy. It was like every time I played five games, I would get £100,000.

“At that time I signed, I was 14. My contract was silly looking back. It was crazy numbers and they were thinking ‘he won’t play’. But then I started playing. I was on the bench and they couldn’t put me on because I was going to hit one of those appearances.”

Leeds, that.

8) Jose Baxter – 16 years, 6 months and 9 days

Lennon was once the youngest player in Premier League history. Everton forward Baxter became the youngest ever starter in the competition in August 2008 – a record which lasted until Dowman rocked up almost two decades later.

He never did quite make the grade at Goodison Park or on his travels thereafter, eventually hanging up the boots before he turned 30. Baxter now works in the Everton academy and Malaysian national team set-ups. He will sadly not be among the weird former Premier League player staffers at the World Cup.

9) Joel Drakes-Thomas – 16 years, 6 months and 11 days

How Crystal Palace will hope that their No. 10 who can play as a wing-back turns out to be the impossible lovechild of Eberechi Eze, Tyrick Mitchell and Aaron Wan-Bissaka.

10) Gary McSheffrey – 16 years, 6 months and 14 days

The successor to Sheffield Wednesday winger Mark Platts and predecessor to the absurdly minted Lennon, McSheffrey was thrown on in the latter stages of a comprehensive Coventry win at Villa Park in place of Darren Huckerby.

That was in February 1999. The forward bowed out with Rossington Main in October 2020, the thrill of playing alongside George Boateng having finally faded.