Arsenal weren’t good enough against Fleetwood Town. The players know that, the fans know that and Mikel Arteta knows that. After a giant-killing of that magnitude, the smart thing to do would be to give the media as little as possible to latch onto. Max Dowman’s red card made that difficult but not impossible - until Arteta chimed in.

Naturally, the Spaniard was asked about the teenager’s dismissal for kicking out at Harrison Neal. "It was something that we discussed before the game,” he said. “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.

This is something you can say if a senior star lashes out. They’ve probably been in similar scenarios before and know how to avoid falling into traps. Max Dowman can’t say that.

He has played 676 senior minutes across his entire career, so handing him a ‘we talked about this’ reminder ignores the fact that preparing for what to expect in principle is very different from encountering it in practice. Telling a 16-year-old to avoid emotional reactions is like telling a seagull not to eat your chips. If you rely on an appearance of understanding, then you're just seeing what you want to see.

Yes, Dowman’s quality on the field has earned him a spot in the limelight. The manager gave him that chance, though, and the manager ought to be the one to shield him from criticism - even if he has a quiet word away from the cameras. Especially when you're then going to mount an appeal anyway.

Arteta hasn’t always been the type to give his players a public dressing-down, even when there is no argument over a red card. When Fabio Vieira was dismissed against Burnley in 2023, for example, the boss avoided discussion of his player by making a point of praising VAR.

More to the point, though, you wonder if the discussion is a distraction tactic of its own. Maybe it’s one that we’ve fallen for ourselves, talking about the Dowman flashpoint rather than the fact that the Premier League champions couldn’t get the better of a team 84 places below them in the pyramid.

Even that could have been done differently, of course. Arteta could have focused on the challenge from Neal that preceded the red card, seeing as he seemed so convinced something like that was on the way, though maybe he was worried it would make him look obsessed or, worse, make his team look soft and easy to get at in future matches.

For all the focus on not getting lured into unforced errors, however, Arteta seemed to forget that you also need to score more goals than your opponents. Arsenal rarely looked like doing that, even after their manager brought on the cavalry at half-time.

Arteta ought to know better, too. He was on the bench for the infamous League Cup defeat against fourth-tier Bradford City in 2012 and survived a scare against third-tier Mansfield in last season’s FA Cup so he knows full well what you can and can’t get away with in these situations.

Arsenal’s manager has taken on a number of targets during his near seven years in charge, with his wars with the likes of Mesut Ozil and Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang seen as necessary in retrospect. Still, it’s hard to see what he gains from making Dowman a target this time.