Rangers and Celtic interest in Arsenal star emerges after Mikel Arteta holds honest talks over Gunners chances

Rangers and Celtic have both emerged as possible destinations for Max Dowman, Arsenal’s 16-year-old wing prodigy, if the club decides to send him out on loan in the January transfer window. Arsenal manager Mikel Arteta has held direct conversations with the teenager, telling him plainly that regular first-team football is going to be hard to come by at the Emirates this season given the strength of the squad around him. That’s the “honest talks” the headline is referring to — not a negotiation with either Scottish club, but Arteta being upfront with his own player about where he currently sits in the pecking order. Arsenal haven’t made a final decision, no formal contact between the clubs has been reported, and Arteta himself has stressed the club will assess the situation on a rolling basis rather than commit to anything now. Still, it’s a genuinely interesting subplot, because Dowman isn’t just another academy graduate on the fringes — he’s arguably the most talked-about teenager in English football right now.

It’s worth spending some time on why more than a dozen clubs are reportedly already circling a player who’s still a year away from being able to legally sign a professional contract in some jurisdictions. Dowman has been at Arsenal since he was six years old, progressing through the age groups so quickly that by 15 he was already training with the first team. The record-breaking started in earnest last October, when he was named in Arsenal’s starting line-up for a Carabao Cup tie against Brighton at 15 years and 302 days old, making him the youngest player ever to start a match for the club — beating a record set only a year earlier by goalkeeper Jack Porter. In that same game he made more dribbles than anyone else on the pitch and won more duels than anyone else too, hardly the performance of a player making up the numbers.

From there, the milestones piled up quickly. He’d already become the second-youngest player in Premier League history and Arsenal’s history when he made his senior debut as a substitute against Leeds in August. He went on to become the youngest player ever to appear in the Champions League. By the end of the 2025-26 season, with Arsenal already confirmed as champions and Arteta rotating his squad ahead of the Champions League final, Dowman was handed a start on the final day against Crystal Palace — and at 16 years and 144 days old, he became the youngest player ever to start a Premier League match, eclipsing a record that had stood since 2008. The same afternoon made him the youngest player in history to win a Premier League title, surpassing a mark Phil Foden had held. He also became Arsenal’s youngest-ever goalscorer, surpassing Cesc Fabregas, and — in a stat that jumps out even among all the others — he scored a brace off the bench against Ipswich Town this season at an age that made him younger than Wayne Rooney was when Rooney achieved the same feat, matching one of the more evocative teenage-scoring benchmarks in the English game. Add in his exploits for England’s youth sides, including becoming the country’s youngest-ever Under-19 goalscorer, and it’s a resume that reads more like a highlight reel than a normal 16-year-old’s season.

Because of his age, Dowman is still subject to strict safeguarding rules — he has to be chaperoned around the first team and isn’t permitted to change in the main dressing room. He was also, by his own club’s account, sitting GCSE exams at the end of last academic year while doing all of this. Arteta has been consistently cautious in public about how he talks about Dowman, describing his temperament as remarkably calm for someone breaking this many records, and saying the player treats each milestone with barely more than a small smile rather than any fuss.

None of that success guarantees Dowman regular minutes at a club with Arsenal’s ambitions and depth. That’s the tension underpinning this story: a player good enough to be the youngest title winner in Premier League history is still, by Arteta’s own admission, someone whose route to consistent first-team football at the Emirates this season is going to be difficult, purely because of the calibre and expectations of the squad he’s competing in. Arteta has told Dowman as much directly. Asked about the possibility of a loan, Arteta said such decisions get reassessed roughly every six months, and that the call depends on a mix of factors — what the player needs developmentally, what the team needs, how much room there is in the squad, and the quality and quantity of minutes Dowman would actually be getting if he stayed. He’s stopped short of ruling a move out, saying the club has to stay open-minded, while also making clear his present focus is on Dowman contributing to the first team where he’s needed.

Because Dowman turns 17 the day before New Year’s Eve, he becomes eligible for a loan move right around the point the January window opens, which is presumably no coincidence in the scheduling of this whole conversation. Arsenal are described as being deliberate and protective about how they manage his development — this isn’t a player being pushed out the door, but one whose next step is being carefully weighed by a club that clearly sees him as a long-term asset rather than a squad player to be loaned out reflexively.

Once word got out that Arteta was open to a temporary move in the second half of the season, the interest reportedly arrived quickly — more than a dozen clubs are said to have already registered interest, spanning the EFL and, notably, both halves of the Old Firm. Celtic and Rangers are both understood to be keen on bringing Dowman north of the border, which would represent a significant coup for whichever club managed it, given the level of hype already surrounding him in England.

On the Rangers side, there’s a fairly obvious tactical rationale being floated: the club is said to be in the market for a quick, direct wide player to support the attack, and Dowman — a right-winger who plays with the kind of pace and dribbling ability that made him stand out even against senior professionals in that Brighton tie — fits that profile closely. Rangers have been under new management since the summer, with Derek McInnes taking over after Danny Röhl left Ibrox to become Red Bull Salzburg’s manager. McInnes, who arrived from Hearts, has been rebuilding the squad steadily since pre-season, bringing in players including striker Lawrence Shankland, goalkeeper Ivan Pandur, defender Ross McCrorie, and Ben Godfrey on loan from Atalanta, while also being linked with midfielder Lewis Ferguson. He’s spoken publicly about wanting “ready-made” players who can help the team meet its demands immediately, while acknowledging the club sometimes has to be patient in the market. A teenager still eligible for regular England youth call-ups isn’t the conventional definition of ready-made, but the report suggests Rangers see him less as an immediate first-team fixture and more as a talented wide option who could add something different to the attack while continuing his development somewhere he’d actually play.

Celtic’s interest is described in less tactical detail in the reporting so far, but the club has been mentioned consistently alongside Rangers as one of the two Scottish sides showing genuine interest, distinct from the broader chasing pack of EFL clubs. Celtic have had a mixed backdrop to their own season — one of the pieces of transfer news referenced Celtic being warned about the potential “destabilising effect” of a certain change post-break, and there’s been pundit speculation about manager Martin O’Neill’s position, though none of that is tied directly to the Dowman links.

There’s also a notable endorsement from outside either club: former Rangers striker Ally McCoist has publicly backed the idea of Rangers taking Dowman on loan, saying on talkSPORT that he’d take him at Ibrox without hesitation and would have no issue with the move if Arteta judged it right for the player’s development. McCoist drew a direct parallel to Phil Foden’s own loan situation at Manchester City earlier in his career — a spell away from the first team that didn’t happen in the end, but which McCoist remembers being discussed as a genuine option before Pep Guardiola opted to keep Foden and it worked out for both player and club. McCoist’s framing was essentially that there’s no shame in either path, and that ultimately it comes down to what’s right for Dowman’s game time

There’s a layer of extra colour to this story specific to Rangers, given Arteta’s own history at Ibrox. He signed for Rangers in 2002 after coming through Barcelona’s academy, and spent two years in Scotland before moving on to Real Sociedad and, eventually, a career that took him through Everton, Arsenal as a player, and a spell as Pep Guardiola’s assistant at Manchester City before he took the Arsenal job himself. Arteta has spoken fondly about his time in Scottish football, crediting the senior players in that Rangers dressing room — Ronald de Boer, Lorenzo Amoruso and Claudio Caniggia among them — with helping him settle quickly, and describing the intensity of playing in his first Old Firm derby as something that shocked him even as he managed to score in it. He’s also said in the past that he regularly recommends Glasgow as a destination to players he works with, praising the football culture there even when others in the game dismiss it. None of that amounts to confirmation that personal nostalgia is shaping his thinking on Dowman, but it’s the kind of backstory that tends to get folded into these stories regardless, and it does at least explain why a loan to Ibrox specifically doesn’t feel like a stretch to those coverin

It’s worth being clear-eyed about how early-stage all of this is. Nothing here amounts to a bid, a medical, or even confirmed formal contact between either Scottish club and Arsenal — it’s interest being reported by outlets covering the story, with Arsenal’s own public position limited to Arteta’s comments about staying open to the idea in principle. The list of interested parties is long and includes a number of EFL sides, so even if Arsenal do sanction a loan, Rangers and Celtic would be competing with other clubs, and Dowman’s own preference — along with what division and role Arsenal judge best for his development — would likely carry significant weight in any final decision. It’s also entirely possible Arsenal keep him at the club through January and revisit the loan question again next summer, particularly given how central he already seems to first-team plans in cup competitions this season.

Even so, it’s easy to see why this story has generated so much interest so quickly. For Rangers or Celtic, landing a loan for a player already being talked about in the same breath as Rooney, Foden and Fabregas would be a genuine statement, both about their standing as destinations for elite young English talent and about their ability to offer a teenager exactly what he can’t currently get at a title-winning Arsenal side: regular, high-stakes first-team football. For Dowman, meanwhile, the calculus is simpler and more familiar — even prodigies eventually need minutes, not just headlines, and the next few months look set to determine where he gets them.