Max Dowman’s Fleetwood fracas leaves him, Arsenal and Arteta red-faced

Mikel Arteta’s reaction said it all. As Max Dowman trudged towards the touchline after becoming the youngest player sent off in a League Cup match at 16 years and 300 days, the Arsenal manager could not help himself.

Arms folded across his chest like an angry father who has caught his teenage son sneaking in after midnight, Arteta leaned over and aimed a few choice words in Dowman’s direction before the forward headed sheepishly down the tunnel. What he said remains unknown, although that hasn’t stopped the amateur lip-readers speculating on social media. “Get in the changing room. Now,” appears the most likely guess.

Related: ‘What you live for’: Fleetwood revel in seismic Arsenal shock after Dowman sees red

There is no doubt Arteta had made up his mind about the incident that ended with Dowman seeing red for reacting to an overaggressive sliding tackle from Fleetwood’s Harrison Neal. Although Arsenal intend to appeal and Arteta told Sky after the shock penalty shootout defeat by the League Two side 84 places below them in the pyramid that he wanted to watch it again before “assessing the situation”, the Spaniard made no excuses for Dowman in his post-match press conference.

“It was something that we discussed before the game,” he said when asked about their touchline exchange. “We knew when we prepared the context of the match, we were very clear on the things to expect, the things that emotionally we have to dominate.”

Whether Dowman’s reaction warranted a straight red card remains open to debate given there was minimal force when he lifted his right knee towards Neal. The referee, Michael Salisbury, could easily have decided to give both players a yellow and defused the situation, especially given Cole Palmer was booked for barging into Tottenham’s Matheus Fernandes off the ball on Saturday in what seemed a far more aggressive act. But, as Wayne Rooney and David Beckham infamously found to their cost while playing for England at the World Cup, acts of petulance are not usually tolerated by officials. Dowman was deemed to have overstepped the line.

It is a pressure Arteta has warned the record-breaking teenager would have to deal with as Dowman’s reputation has grown. Only last month Dowman was sent off playing for England Under-19s against the USA after a poorly timed tackle that most present at the behind-closed-doors match deemed a harsh decision. He was said to have been on the receiving end of a host of strong challenges in that match. Last year, Arteta urged Dowman to follow the example of Bukayo Saka after revealing Dowman was fouled nine times in a the first half of an England Under‑19s game against Spain.

“It’s going to happen, he’s going to have to learn when to release the ball and when to attract his starting position,” Arteta said. “Very similar to Bukayo in the beginning as well. Those players are going to attract players, contact, attention and they have to be very smart about when you want that contact and when you don’t want it, and what you have to do to avoid it.”

Asked how Dowman tends to react, he said: “He just gets up … very rare! Sometimes I get surprised emotionally how cool he can be. I think it’s about repetition. He’s so used to it that now he knows to let the referee deal with it and my teammates probably to defend me, and I will carry on playing.”

When the dust settles after a seismic defeat that ranks alongside Arsenal’s League Cup upsets against Swindon, Birmingham and Bradford, Arteta may come to regret such a public admonishment of a 16-year-old. His actions were criticised by Paul Merson, who questioned whether Areta would “do it differently” given another chance. But part of Arteta’s frustration will be that Dowman took the bait. He also knows opponents will now target Dowman even more to see whether they can provoke a reaction.

If Arsenal’s appeal fails, Dowman’s immediate punishment will be a three-match domestic suspension, causing him to miss Sunday’s trip to Liverpool and games against Hull and Newcastle. The timing is far from helpful: Saka’s thigh injury, expected to keep him out for several weeks, had opened up the possibility of more game time in the Premier League and Noni Madueke did not travel to Fleetwood owing to an ankle issue.

Dowman burst on to the scene last year by becoming the first 15-year-old to play in the Champions League, then broke the Premier League’s youngest goalscorer record against Everton in March, and this is the first major setback in his fledgling career.

He has been training with the first team since he was 14 and Arsenal have been extremely careful not to overexpose one of the most talked about players to emerge from their Hale End academy. Arteta resisted the temptation to give him many more minutes in the Premier League after Dowman scored twice against Ipswich in the previous round of the Carabao Cup last month. The challenge will be how Dowman responds to the extra scrutiny – on and off the pitch – that is bound to come his way.