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Max Dowman key skill praised by Arsenal's Mikel Arteta

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Max Dowman becomes youngest Champions League player (0:38)

Max Dowman becomes youngest Champions League player (0:38)

Mikel Arteta hailed 15-year-old Max Dowman after the prodigious teenager became the youngest Champions League debutant in history against Slavia Prague on Tuesday.

The Gunners took their winning streak in all competitions into double figures with a 3-0 victory over Slavia Prague.

Dowman came on as a second-half substitute to make history and drew praise from Arteta.

"It doesn't get any harder than this competition," the Arsenal boss told TNT Sports.

"Max at 15 takes the ball and straight away starts to take people on and win free-kicks. That shows the personality that these kids have.

"Really happy to see them with us in this journey, and hopefully they will continue to improve.

"The way he plays, he attracts a lot of contact. He's so good at timing the right moment to move the ball when the opponent makes the next step.

"We have a massive player there."

Arsenal equalled a club record for consecutive clean sheets in the Champions League on Tuesday night.

They also equalled the 1969-70 Leeds team, who until Tuesday night had been the only English side in European Cup or Champions League history to win their first four games without conceding a goal. Their eighth clean sheet in a row equalled a club record dating nac to 1903.

Despite a number of injury concerns in forward areas, the Gunners machine keeps moving forward and Arteta hailed the mentality of his players to always want more.

"That's a long time ago, so it tells you about the difficulty of achieving it. There's a lot of work there to achieve that," Arteta said.

"The most pleasing thing is probably not the record, it's the mindset of the players. They are talking about how we can still do better. There were one or two situations that we could have resolved better [against Slavia].

"If we do that, we can keep improving and that record will have a bigger meaning."

Arsenal had to weather an early storm from Slavia but were well on top by the time they were awarded a penalty after a handball by home captain Lukás Provod was picked up by the referee on review.

Bukayo Saka scored it and from that point on there only looked like being one winner, with Mikel Merino's second-half double sealing the deal and ending a Slavia unbeaten home run which stretched back to a domestic cup defeat in April.

"We came to a place where they create a special atmosphere. You saw that from the beginning," Arteta said.

"They [hadn't] lost at home here all season. So they have that winning habit, and that's very difficult to turn around. We needed to understand that.

"I think the team showed a lot of maturity again."

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Arsenal's Dowman, 15, becomes youngest Champions League player

Arteta had earlier picked out Dowman and Merino for praise in his post-match press conference but also spoke positively about Dutch full-back Jurriën Timber, who missed almost all of the 2023-24 season with an anterior cruciate ligament injury.

"[He is] extraordinary," Arteta said.

"For me, he's been phenomenal in every department. I think he's taken his level and the team's level to a different dimension.

"Again, his courage, the way he penetrates, the way he wins the duels, the way he understands the game, the way he wants to make things happen. He is a big example for the rest of his team-mates."

Information from PA contributed to this report.