We are into the fourth round of the Carabao Cup after a 4-2 win at Ipswich, and the night belonged to a 16-year-old. Max Dowman, handed his first start of the season by Mikel Arteta, scored twice and ran the game in a way that made a heavily rotated side look ruthless. Noni Madueke and Mikel Merino added the others, Ipswich pulled two back late for respectability, and a sixth straight win in all competitions keeps the perfect record intact.

This was the competition whose final we lost last season, a 2-0 defeat to Manchester City that ended our quadruple hopes, so there is a small edge to beginning the new run with a comfortable away win. But the result is not really the story. The story is Dowman, who at 16 produced the kind of performance that forces a conversation about how quickly he becomes a genuine first-team option rather than a rotation-night cameo. On this evidence, sooner than anyone at the club will want to admit publicly.

We led inside seven minutes and it was Dowman who did it. He burst through the middle, shimmied past Cedric Kipre, and fired into the bottom-left corner with a composure that belied his age. Nine minutes later it was two, Madueke volleying home to put a rotated side in complete control of the tie before the quarter-hour was out. Ipswich, reshuffled by Gary O'Neil after their win at Crystal Palace, could not live with the movement in front of them.

The tie was effectively over two minutes after the restart. Dowman controlled a Martin Zubimendi pass in the area and slotted coolly for his second, and with that he became only the second 16-year-old to score twice for a top-flight English side in any competition, after Wayne Rooney's brace against Wrexham in a 2002 League Cup tie. That is the company he is now keeping, and it is not hyperbole to say it. The fourth arrived on 58 minutes, Merino rifling in off the left post after Dowman, involved again, let a Guimaraes pass roll into his path.

At 4-0 it was a rout. Ipswich rallied for the scoreline's sake, Anis Mehmeti finishing from close range on 62 minutes after Jack Clarke's run, and former Arsenal man Chuba Akpom adding a second later on. Two goals conceded on a night we were four up and cruising is a minor irritation rather than a concern, the kind of late slackening that a rotated side playing out a settled tie tends to allow. The job was long done by then.

This is the part worth thinking about properly. Dowman is 16, and he has now delivered a match-winning senior performance in a competitive fixture, not a friendly and not garbage time. Arteta was warm but careful afterwards, praising the display while making clear the club will manage his development rather than rush it, and that is the right instinct. A talent like this is protected, not exploited. But the balance between protecting him and using him shifts a little with every performance like this one, and after a summer that thinned our forward options through the sales of Martinelli and Trossard, a homegrown attacker producing this on demand is exactly the kind of internal solution the squad could use.

The wider value of the night was the minutes. Arteta rotated heavily and got a competitive workout into legs that needed it, with Viktor Gyokeres among those who struggled to make an impact on a quiet evening for him. Eberechi Eze was subdued too. That matters less than it would in a league game, because the point of a night like this is squad management as much as progression, and we got both: through to round four, minutes banked, and a teenager who looked like the best player on the pitch.

Six wins from six, into the next round of a competition we want to go further in than last season's runners-up finish, and a 16-year-old who has turned a routine cup tie into the most talked-about ninety minutes of our week. Brighton away next in the league, back to the serious business. For one night, though, the future got a proper look, and it was worth watching.