Arsenal boss Mikel Arteta refused to entertain speculation about future Max Dowman starts after the year 11 student became the youngest goalscorer in Premier League history in the 2-0 victory over Everton.

Arteta gambled when a hunch led him to introduce the teenager – 16 years and 73 days old when he was introduced in the 74th minute of a goalless stalemate at the Emirates Stadium – but it paid off when Dowman first made Viktor Gyokeres’ 89th-minute breakthrough with a cross before immortalising himself in the seventh minute of added time.

Dowman was a few years away from even being born when James Vaughan, the previous record-holder, netted the final goal in Everton’s 2005 4-0 victory over Crystal Palace at Goodison Park – where the opener was scored by none other than Arteta.

But asked if the schoolboy might have made an argument for starting, his grinning boss replied: “Let’s come down to earth today and enjoy the moment, because it was intense and it was worth it and we will see tomorrow.”

Jordan Pickford misread Dowman’s delivery in the build-up to Gyokeres’ goal, and was subsequently stranded after he was brought forward for a corner deep into stoppage-time.

Dowman broke from the edge of Arsenal’s 18-yard box to chase down the clearance before evading Everton’s remaining defenders, then sprinted up the pitch as the crowd rose in giddy anticipation of his inevitable low, empty-net finish.

“It was a phenomenal moment,” Arteta added.  “We talked before the game to play with that relentless desire to win every action and have the conviction that we are going to find a way to do it, and the effort, the quality, the commitment of the players was sensational, and then it ended up in a manner that probably none of us expected.

“It was one of the best moments that we lived together at the Emirates.”

Manchester City’s draw at West Ham ensured Arsenal moved nine points clear of their closest title challengers.

Dowman, now also Arsenal’s youngest-ever goalscorer in any men’s competition, shattered Vaughan’s record by 197 days.

The Essex teenager signed a pre-contract agreement with the Gunners in January, the precursor to a professional deal when he turns 17 on December 31st.

He is the second-youngest Premier League player in history, debuting at 15 years, 235 days old in August 2025. Only his Arsenal team-mate, Ethan Nwaneri, was younger – by 54 days – when Arteta introduced him in their victory at Brentford in September 2022.

The Gunners boss said he was guided by a “gut feeling” that day, the same phrase he used to explain Dowman’s introduction on Saturday.

Despite the two-decade gap, David Moyes was the man in charge of Everton for both Vaughan and Dowman’s milestone matches.

The now 62-year-old once handed Wayne Rooney – who remains the Premier League’s fourth-youngest goalscorer – his debut at 16, but Moyes did not want to draw comparisons between Dowman and the youngest man to ever score a goal for England.

Moyes said: “I wasn’t really looking at (Dowman), I was watching my own players.

“I don’t know enough about the boy, to be honest. I know plenty about Wayne. I could talk plenty about Wayne.

“But he looks like a talented boy, that’s for sure.”

Elsewhere in sports news: In Ligue 1, Lens missed a golden opportunity to go top after falling 2-1 away to Lorient. Monaco, meanwhile, kept their momentum rolling with a fifth straight win, defeating Brest.

In the Premier League, Arsenal moved one step closer to the title. The Gunners beat 2-0 on Saturday, with 16-year-old Max Dowman (16 years, 73 days) becoming the youngest goalscorer in English top-flight history. Arsenal also benefited from Manchester City’s 1-1 draw with West Ham, allowing them to stretch their lead at the top.

In Spain, Real Madrid put on a show despite the absences of Kylian Mbappé, Jude Bellingham and Rodrygo. Los Blancos cruised to a 4-1 win over promoted Elche, piling pressure on league leaders Barcelona, who still sit one point clear ahead of Sunday’s clash with Sevilla.

In tennis, Carlos Alcaraz suffered his first defeat of the year. After 16 straight wins, the world number one was stopped by Daniil Medvedev in the semifinals of the Indian Wells Masters. The Russian will face Jannik Sinner in the final after the Italian defeated Alexander Zverev.

At the final whistle, Manchester City players slumped and crouched and sprawled on the pitch in disconsolate little piles, absorbing the enormity of the evening. Perhaps some of them were doing the maths. City are nine points behind Arsenal with a game in hand. They will meet one another at the Etihad next month. All is not lost. But here at the London Stadium, they wore the look of a team who had just been punched in the gut.

Of all the Arsenal players to shape the direction of this title race, not many would have guessed that a key protagonist would be a 16-year-old schoolboy who is yet to take his GCSEs. Even fewer would have suggested a giant Greek defender who played eight times for Arsenal a lifetime ago.

But about an hour after Max Dowman sunk Everton and became the Premier League’s youngest goalscorer in the process, a few miles across the city, West Ham’s centre-back Konstantinos Mavropanos thumped a header against the crossbar and down into the City goal. Arsenal found a late winner; City huffed and puffed but came away with a 1-1 draw that felt almost terminal.

It is not, of course. The season is still alive. But title races are not just about raw numbers. There is a feel to them, a sway, a momentum that comes and goes. And on this cold March night, all the energy was sucked into the red corner of north London.

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It was apt that Mavropanos, a former Arsenal player, should hurt City’s cause. It felt apt too that his goal came from a corner, after so much discourse around the significance of set-pieces and how Arsenal exploit them. Jarrod Bowen’s delivery floated through the air and over the flying fist of Gianluigi Donnarumma, who should have punched it. Mavropanos met the ball with meaning.

What followed was a second-half onslaught. Pep Guardiola, who watched on from the stands under suspension, sent on a flurry of attacking substitutes. Rayan Cherki and Jeremy Doku brought spark off the bench; Phil Foden, too. Chances came and chances went. Cherki shot straight at goalkeeper Mads Hermansen. Tijjani Reijnders hit the crossbar from a wide-angle free-kick. Foden’s outstretched hallux missed the ball by inches with the goal gaping.

The game ended with another telling set-piece. Reijnders delivered a devilish corner and after the ball bounced around West Ham’s six-yard box it fell to the feet of Marc Guehi. An entire stadium winced and braced for the net to bulge, only to watch the ball take off into orbit. It was a slow-motion disaster, the sort of moment you could imagine set against the music from Titanic.

For West Ham, it is a point that draws them level with Tottenham and one clear of Nottingham Forest, out of the relegation zone for the first time in a long time. They will not relish the idea of helping Arsenal to the title, but if this was a point towards the cause of survival – perhaps survival at the expense of Spurs – then it was a precious one.

It has been a strange season for City, who started back in August with a 4-0 win over Wolves using players like Oscar Bobb and Nico Gonzalez and John Stones, a line-up like something from a fever dream. Only three of those XI started here at West Ham seven months later: Haaland, Bernardo Silva and Rayan Ait-Nouri. You might say only two, given Haaland is not the same striker now as late-summer Haaland or even autumnal Haaland who plundered goals every weekend.

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Guardiola’s team has evolved in real time, transitioning mid-season through different personnel, different formations, different iterations of Haaland. And ultimately, at least up to this point, they have simply not been as good as Arsenal. Not at the ugly stuff: crushing counter-attacks, defending as a unit, set-pieces, game management, s***housery. Not at the pretty stuff, either, at least not over the past three months.

Guardiola admitted as much after the game. “We are good at a lot of things,” he said. “But not as good as we were.”

This game encapsulated much of City’s troubles, particularly against low-block teams. West Ham deployed a giant claret curtain across Hermansen’s goal, billowing out towards the ball and back again as City desperately tried to pierce a hole.

This is what Nuno Espirito Santo brings, of course. Five at the back, and five in midfield too when they don’t have the ball. When City advanced towards the final third, the distance between West Ham’s centre-backs and Bowen must have been no more than 20 yards.

“There was no other way,” Nuno said. “Heroic from our boys. We have a long way to go, we have hard work in front of us.”

It made for punishingly dull viewing, initially at least. Nuno’s reluctance to yield an inch combined with Guardiola’s distaste for passes longer than 10 yards meant for a game played in busy burrows and crowded cul-de-sacs. Erling Haaland occasionally made a useful run into the channel but City’s midfielders routinely ignored him.

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City eventually broke through when Bernardo Silva shanked a cross which drifted perfectly over Hermansen’s head into the far corner of the goal. He could have claimed to have meant it, but could clearly be seen mouthing “pass” to the City bench while wearing a sheepish grin.

Mavropanos soon levelled, in no small part down to Donnarumma’s miscalculation. The goalkeeper has a penchant for the spectacular and his shot-stopping has been eye-catching at times this season, but data models consistently mark him down on a raft of other metrics such as distribution and, tellingly, command of his six-yard box.

So City had no choice but to throw everything at West Ham, just as Arsenal had launched an assault on Everton in the dying throes at the Emirates. Where one succeeded, the other failed. And it is in those telling minutes, on those fine details, that a title can be won and lost.

As the Arsenal players got into an ecstatic dressing room, the man of the match wasn’t there. Goalscorer Viktor Gyokeres even came in carrying his award.

That is all because Max Dowman isn’t actually the man of the match but the boy of the match, since he’s still… just a child. Premier League rules mean he’s not actually allowed change in the same dressing room as adults. He has to go around near the referees’ room.

Maybe it also serves as another little way to keep a mere 16-year-old centred after such a moment, too, but nobody who knows the Dowmans says he needs that. His parents are said to still ground him for misbehaving, and are conscious of keeping the obvious confidence that comes with such ability in check.

There were of course among many people at Arsenal in tears after Dowman scored that crucial clinching goal against Everton. As was openly being said in the dressing room by many staff, they’d known him since he was small. You might quip that wasn’t that long ago, but it also speaks to the speed of his development.

And here he was, at 16 years and 73 days, becoming the youngest goalscorer in Premier League history.

Mikel Arteta is often criticised for a conservatism, but he still went for football’s classic roll of the dice when it was really required: the impetuousness of youth. Sir Alex Ferguson is the manager who has become most associated with that gamble over the history of the Premier League, due to everything from the “class of 92” to throwing on a 17-year-old Federico Macheda in a similar title game against Aston Villa. His logic was always clear: “if you give people an opportunity to succeed, it is amazing how much they will surprise you.”

Except, very little about Dowman is surprising. It isn’t exactly heaping pressure on a 16-year-old to say he’s being talked of as potentially the best player in the world in a few years, since so many around Arsenal say all the time. They are perhaps careful not to say it directly to him, but the Leo Messi comparisons are seen as entirely fitting.

It means Arteta is now in the exquisite position of pleading “calma” about such a prospect – as he did when asked if Dowman would start against Bayer Leverkusen on Tuesday – and being thrillingly excited about his talent.

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The Basque spoke about a “gut feeling” he’s had all week, but there’s more to it than that. Since the start of the season, Dowman has just been gliding past senior professionals in training. You could see it in the Everton game. He was beating players and opening the match in a way that Arsenal badly needed. It was the same with the ball in that finally flummoxed Jordan Pickford for Gyokeres’ goal. Direct, with purpose.

From that, Arteta had in the last few weeks apparently told his Arsenal-supporting father, Rob, that some changes might be required to Dowman’s school schedule at Brentwood. The question was obviously why. “Because there’s a title to win.”

They know he can carry it. Alongside his talent, Dowman’s football brain is described as “extraordinary”. Arteta’s tactical and pressing instructions are known to be highly complex, and it can take senior professionals months to properly internalise them. Dowman does it in seconds.

This could be seen in one of the elements that Arsenal figures were most raving about after the 2-0 win over Everton.

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With the ball in the air after Pickford went up for that 96th-minute corner, and Vitaliy Mykolenko coming in try and win it and force that equaliser, Dowman did something else unexpected. In the space of a millisecond, he decided to strain his neck muscles to head the ball down so that it would go in the opposite direction of the full-back. Mykolenko was so surprised that he fell over, as Dowman ensured he was now pulsing away on his feet and at the right pace.

From there, with Pickford also racing back, many players would have opted to immediately seize the chance and try a long-range shot. Dowman also showed mature composure with that. Kiernan Dewsbury-Hall was still in his way but he was evaded like a cone in training. Then he was away.

One of the things now being said about the goal at Arsenal was that the opposition half he still had to run through, and the seconds that took, offered a fitting final build-up to a moment everyone now feels they will be looking back to in years’ time.

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They could see it coming, they could feel it. People nearby heard Dowman’s family repeat: “go on Max, go on!” Then, the arrival.

It should be acknowledged that any such moment would be special for a young player, his family and his club, something they can now always treasure. At the same time, you just can’t overlook that this is considered all the more special because of what it might mean for the future.

There will be many excited questions about that. Thomas Tuchel is no doubt going to have to face a few at his England squad announcement on Friday, and whether Dowman can be taken to a World Cup.

It instinctively feels like it’s a bit too early… but then you could say that about so much with Dowman. Nothing about him is surprising. This is now more than a gut feeling.

A title challenge that had become a psychological challenge for Arsenal, where they were feeling all the angst of that 22-year wait, now involves one of the most invigorating themes in football. It’s the excitement of youth, and what might be possible for the future.

NZ vs SA 1st T20I LIVE Cricket Scorecard Updates© AFP and Getty

Technical Adviser of Warri Wolves FC, Hassan Abdallah, has expressed strong optimism ahead of his side’s crucial NPFL26 Matchweek 30 encounter against Bayelsa United in Yenagoa.

The Seasiders will travel to the Samson Siasia Stadium on Sunday for what promises to be a fiercely contested derby, with both teams eager to secure valuable points in the ongoing league campaign.

Speaking during preparations for the encounter, Coach Abdallah assured his players and supporters that the team is well prepared for the challenge ahead. According to him, the level of preparation and the intensity of recent training sessions have positioned the squad for a positive result.

The gaffer noted that the players have undergone rigorous training in the days leading up to the fixture and are mentally ready for the task.

“We have worked very hard in training and the players understand what is expected of them. With the level of preparation we have put in, we are hopeful of getting a positive outcome on Sunday,” Abdallah said.

The former national youth coach also recalled the first leg meeting between the two sides earlier in the season. In that encounter, played on October 26, 2025 at the Southern Delta University Stadium in Ozoro, Warri Wolves scored an impressive 2-0 victory over Bayelsa United.

On that day, forward Igbunu Evwierhurhoma was the hero for the Seasiders, scoring a brace in the 16th minute and deep into stoppage time to seal all three points for Warri Wolves.

Abdallah stated that his team is determined to replicate a similar performance when both sides meet again in Yenagoa. Drawing confidence from the team’s recent improvement and their impressive display against Enyimba FC, the coach maintained that the squad is well positioned to compete strongly.

The Warri Wolves boss further revealed that a few adjustments have been made to the squad that defeated Bayelsa United in the first leg. However, he stressed that the team remains psychologically prepared and highly motivated to face their neighbours on Sunday.

While acknowledging that the clash will be a tough and fiercely contested battle, Abdallah remains optimistic that the Seasiders can emerge victorious at the Samson Siasia Stadium.

With confidence high within the camp, Warri Wolves will be hoping to secure another important result on the road as they continue their push in the NPFL26 campaign.

Warri Wolves FC Media

Manchester United return to Premier League action this afternoon when Aston Villa travel to Old Trafford

07:00, 15 Mar 2026

Manchester United welcome Aston Villa to Old Trafford this afternoon as they look to cement their place in the top four. The Reds last played 11 days ago but only Mason Mount is back with the squad after suffering a knock at the start of February.

Lisandro Martinez’s recovery from a calf injury is taking longer to heal than expected. Matthijs de Ligt and Patrick Dorgu remain long-term absentees with back and hamstring issues respectively. Noussair Mazraoui was injured in the defeat to Newcastle but trained this week with his teammates at Carrington.

Here are the United teams our writers think Michael Carrick should select against Villa.

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Tyrone Marshall

Carrick isn’t flush with options at the moment, with two of his best central defenders still injured, and although Mount is back in training, this is going to be too soon for a start, and it’s hard to see how he gets in the side anyway.

I would stick with Mazraoui ahead of Diogo Dalot at right-back at the moment. That change was made at Newcastle and it feels like it’s worth seeing the Moroccan in a few games now in that position.

The midfield picks itself, but I would change things up in the front three. Amad has been bright off the bench and as a left-footer, I would try him on the left to try and stretch the pitch and offer some more width. Carrick believes he can play there and he could have a similar impact to Dorgu. Matheus Cunha can drop to the bench.

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Jack Flintham

Mazraoui may have returned to training this week but I would be hesitant to start him ahead of Dalot. It could be safer not to risk the Morocco international considering his injury at Newcastle.

The midfield three have cemented their places in the team and should remain unchanged. Amad will be desperate to return to the starting line-up but I am unsure of his suitability on the left.

Dorgu would be a perfect addition on that side but his injury ruins that plan. As such, Cunha probably has to keep his place.