IT IS said that Rafa Benitez looks like an accountant and last Tuesday he sounded like one. Liverpool 3 Arsenal 6 was a startling scoreline, but these were not the only numbers Benitez brooded about.

“Arsenal spent £4m on (Abou) Diaby, £4m on Denilson, £8m on (Theo) Walcott and (Julio) Baptista is a £22m player,” Benitez said.

“There is a lesson in this for the whole of our club. If you want to compete at the top level you must be able to spend a lot of money, not only on your first team but on the young players and reserves.”

The Spaniard’s point about Arsenal was ignored, as it usually is, in most of the reaction to the latest bedazzling vindication of Arsène Wenger’s youth policy.

Wenger is often presented as some sort of magician when it comes to making talent materialise; that actually underestimates him. His success in uncovering players depends on strategy and expenditure and that makes Wenger more of a genius, not less.

The Frenchman, with his Masters in Economics, perceived long ago that Arsenal could not compete with the very top clubs when bidding for the very top players. He puts resources into beating rivals in the youth market instead. Wenger will spend top dollar for a prospect even though in the senior market bargains are his thing.

Leaving aside Baptista, who is merely on loan, Arsenal’s starting team at Anfield included six teenagers, yet cost £23m compared to the £20m needed to assemble Liverpool’s side. Since the humiliation, Benitez has announced the signings of Sebastian Leto and Emiliano Insua, Argentinians who are 20 and 18, Daniele Padelli, a 21-year-old Italian goalkeeper and Astrit Ajdarevic, a Swede of 16, in deals which could, in total, exceed £3m. And yet he knows copying Wenger offers no quick guarantees: “They have been working for 10 years to build a strong squad,” said Benitez, “and we have been working for two years.”

For now, Wenger has only one peer in the youth field and it’s his dear old friend. Sir Alex Ferguson’s willingness to spend £39m, combined, on Wayne Rooney and Cristiano Ronaldo when both were 18 demonstrates his similar philosophy to Wenger of piling money into young players. If Wenger and Ferguson are the best in the youth business they are also the best businessmen.

Last week Manchester United announced the £1m sale of their 22-year-old reserve midfielder, David Jones, to Derby; small news yet a landmark. The transfer took to beyond £50m the total United have received from selling home-reared players during the Ferguson era. Wenger’s sale of Anthony Stokes to Sunderland for £2m raised his similar total to £39m and Jeremie Aliadiere, though man-of-the-match in the Anfield rout, may be the next Wenger product auctioned off.

The players Arsenal and United develop and keep in their first teams, from Cesc Fabregas to Paul Scholes, can be priceless, but even the cast- offs are good enough to add to the bottom line. Forty-five products of United’s youth system and 44 of Arsenal’s now play for other English league clubs, not including those who still belong to either club but are currently elsewhere on loan.

The competition for Stokes, who was also courted by Celtic and Charlton, demonstrates that even Ferguson and Wenger’s unwanted players are precious. “It (money raised by selling cast-offs) is important as well (as bringing players through). Even Manchester United have got to make money,” said Eric Harrison, the former United youth chief who nurtured Scholes, David Beckham et al.

“I’ve been with Sir Alex many times when he’s signed a young player and the first thing he says to their parents is ‘You can trust us to look after your boy. We’ll give him a good apprenticeship and if he’s not good enough to play in our first team what he learns will mean he can play in someone else’s first team for 10-15 years.’

“I see Wenger doing something similar. I’d like more British lads to be involved there but I watched Arsenal dismantle Liverpool with their team of kids and thought, ‘What a display’. You could see their players, like United’s, are brought up the right way and no wonder Wenger was purring afterwards, he has every right.”

The character it takes just to survive in youth systems of the standard of United’s or Arsenal’s lends players the drive to keep succeeding even after being discarded, Harrison believes. “I take as much pride from Robbie Savage as Ryan Giggs,” he said. “Robbie was devastated when United let him go and what a career he’s gone on to have. I’m friendly with Mark Hughes and watch Blackburn train and Robbie is still so bright and so bubbly, just like he was as a kid. I say to the youngsters I work with now, ‘Don’t get your head down if it doesn’t work out like you planned, look at Robbie’.”

And yet while Savage has been successful post-United, he has not been to the extent of making Ferguson regret letting him go. The same could be said of every youth player he has cast off, prominent ones such as Savage and Keith Gillespie included. Wenger, despite the moderate post- Arsenal success of players such as Steven Sidwell and Jermaine Pennant, would feel a similar lack of regrets. Benitez and Jose Mourinho have achieved in other ways but when it comes to young players, the old dogs still do it best.

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