Arsenal’s £175m trio offer poor value for money

THE three most expensive players in Arsenal’s history started together for the first time since last season’s FA Cup final.

And yet the main takeaway from this match was how important those academy graduates — Emile Smith Rowe and Bukayo Saka — have become to this club. Without those two, Arsenal fade.

Alexandre Lacazette, Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang and Nicolas Pepe cost a combined £174.5million — with each commanding a club-record fee when they were signed in 2017, 2018 and 2019 respectively.

Arsenal had gone 45 consecutive games without naming all three on the same team sheet.

Perhaps for good reason, as the hosts struggled to trouble a fragile Liverpool defence.

With no Smith Rowe and no Saka, Arsenal lacked energy and excitement in the final third. They emerged for the second half with a smidgen more urgency, no doubt after the proverbial rocket from manager Mikel Arteta.

Yet still, the absence of their two academy kids was felt.

Smith Rowe, 20, can be a master of movement on the left-hand side. He makes darting runs into certain areas that drag opposition players away from their positions, creating space for others.

That would have posed problems for Trent Alexander-Arnold, the Liverpool right back whose form has been under the microscope amid his surprise omission from Gareth Southgate’s latest England squad.

On the opposite wing, Pepe was losing the ball for fun, whereas the 19-year-old Saka would have loved the space being afforded behind the marauding Andy Robertson.

Amid all this disappointment in Arsenal’s big-name signings, Martin Odegaard has shown himself a fine loan acquisition at least. Arteta stood by his favoured 4-2-3-1 formation, with Odegaard at No10.

Arsenal’s plan was to try to catch out Liverpool’s inexperienced centre-back pairing of Ozan Kabak and Nathaniel Phillips using the Norwegian’s guile.

When the visitors had the ball at the back, Odegaard sprinted from deep to join Lacazette in a high press designed to pressurise those two defenders.

But Liverpool, to their credit, were passing well and using their own press to good effect.

After an hour, Arsenal had managed a single shot — to the visitors’ eight.

Looking on the bright side, Arsenal will say it’s good how vital Smith Rowe and Saka have become in the first team — a sign of academic success.

But it is more worrying that a multi-million-pound combination of Lacazette, Aubameyang and Pepe could not have more of an influence.