Wilshere reveals Dowman outshone him at 13 as Arsenal weigh loan exit for teen

Jack Wilshere has offered a glowing assessment of Arsenal teenager Max Dowman, disclosing that the 16-year-old was so impressive at 13 that Wilshere’s own father told him the youngster was the superior player. The revelation comes as Arsenal are understood to be open to sending Dowman out on loan to further his development.

Dowman enjoyed a remarkable breakout campaign last season, making 13 first-team appearances and scoring once while accumulating a string of records. He became the youngest Premier League title winner, Arsenal’s youngest ever starter, the youngest player to appear in the Champions League, and the youngest to start a Premier League match.

Wilshere, who came through the same Hale End academy, coached Dowman in Arsenal’s under-18s setup and recalls being struck immediately by his ability. “Max played for my 18s team when he was 13,” Wilshere said in an interview with BBC Sport. “I remember calling my dad because I played for the 18s when I was 14. I was like, ‘was 13 too young?’ In the first game we could clearly see that he was ready for it. And I remember calling my dad and saying, ‘you need to come watch this kid’. My dad did, and my dad’s very biased, as you could imagine. But even he said, ‘he’s better than you’.”

Dowman has carried that momentum into the current season, scoring twice in a Carabao Cup victory over Ipswich Town. With Arsenal manager Mikel Arteta credited as a central figure in the teenager’s progression, the club are now weighing whether a loan spell would accelerate his path to regular first-team football.

Wilshere also used the interview to reflect on how Arteta shaped his own early thinking as a coach. “I got to see Mikel and how he coached and the influence he was having,” he said. “I would ask him questions, why he’s doing certain things, and I started to fall in love with it and how he started to prepare training sessions. I was influenced by Mikel, but then I had to learn how to teach — how to plan a session and how to get the outcomes that you wanted.”

The former England international added that working under Arteta changed the way he approached the game analytically. “I played under some good coaches and was quite good at understanding what a coach wants, but I never dived into ‘why is he asking me to do that?’ Mikel really made that clear and I was lucky enough to have a relationship where I could say, ‘well, why do you want that?’ And he was open enough to share it with me.”

Whether Dowman departs on loan in the coming months or remains in Arteta’s first-team picture, the endorsement from one of Arsenal’s most celebrated academy graduates underlines just how highly the club rates its youngest star.