On The Premiership:The sting of defeat is always slow to subside and occasionally the wounds never truly heal. Arsenal might use the scalpel rather than the cleaver to conduct their attacks, but Arsene Wenger's youngsters still inflicted the death by a thousand cuts on an unsuspecting Liverpool last week.
Yes, it was just the League Cup and, yes, Rafael Benitez did hand his opponents a gift-wrapped passage to the semi-finals with a quite bizarre decision to use his last realistic chance of silverware this season as a glorified training exercise for his reserves. But that should not detract from Arsenal's achievement, which was a history-shredding monument to the purity of the club's footballing philosophy.
The Kop was magnanimous in its appreciation of the visiting cavaliers, but they are entitled to ask why Liverpool, a club every bit the equal of Arsenal in status and with a more illustrious recent past, appear to boast such meagre reserves in comparison to their London rivals.
They will certainly not be appeased by Benitez's claim - now being repeated with wearying regularity - that it's all about the money. Such a simplistic notion can be ripped apart with an equally straightforward statistic: in two-and-a-half years at Anfield, Benitez has frittered almost £80 million; in the same period, Wenger's outgoings amount to just over £50 million. It serves as a pointed reminder that what counts in a notoriously unpredictable and exorbitant transfer market is not what you spend, but how you spend it.
This is Wenger's greatest triumph. Shortly after arriving in England, he established a blueprint for the ideal Premiership footballer: strong in mind and body, supremely athletic and blessed with an unflinching attitude. Patrick Vieira represented the lung-bursting zenith of such ideals, but even a cursory glance at the Arsenal B-listers, who turned Anfield into their own private playpen last week, suggests there are plenty more where he came from.
Abou Diaby, Arnand Traore, Alexandre Song and Johan Djourou are all cast in Vieira's mould, and none cost more than £3 million, which Liverpool, as a member of the Premiership elite, should be able to find down the back of their boardroom sofa.
Wenger's uncanny ability to dig up unpolished gems from some of the globe's most neglected footballing outposts is not only a damning indictment of Benitez's lack of nous in the market-place, but also of their youth academy which, like many Premiership clubs, is clearly not fit for purpose.
The systemic failings are manifold, but a swift summary can identify four main flaws: a pig-headed insistence on subjecting players to a gruelling match schedule; a tendency to focus on traditionally 'English' qualities rather than technical subtleties; an over-emphasis on academic studies, which effectively prepares players for failure; and the lack of a national centre of excellence, which would provide an unwieldy and unproductive programme with some much-needed focus.
Not for the first time, English clubs should look across the Channel for solutions. The French Football Federation's academy at Clairefontaine drills into its students the virtue of retaining possession, of treating the ball as something to treasure. Sessions are held twice a day, with players quickly realising that the best way to avoid fatigue is to adopt a measured approach. The contrast with British football's crash, bang, wallop mentality could not be starker.
Ironically, no manager has been more vocal in his condemnation of English academies than Benitez. The Spaniard has been dismayed by the lack of native players with the talent and the temperament to follow in the footsteps of Steven Gerrard and Jamie Carragher, who are the only members of Liverpool's first-choice team to have graduated from the club's academy. It is one of the reasons he now routinely scours the Spanish-speaking markets.
But Benitez is not alone. John Terry aside, there is no place for home-grown starlets at Jose Mourinho's Chelsea, with most ending up down the road at Queens Park Rangers. It is also telling that Manchester United are still relying on prodigious talents such as Paul Scholes, Ryan Giggs and Gary Neville, all of whom graduated in the early 1990s under Eric Harrison's expert tutelage. The new breed - Giuseppe Rossi, Kieran Lee and Phil Marsh - have been conspicuous by their absence in United's surprise tilt for the title.
Premiership clubs are in danger of being consumed by short-termism and it will take a catastrophic financial blow - a collapse in the TV contract, or a severe reduction in the number of Champions League places on offer from Uefa - to make them change. As Liverpool are discovering, it is dangerous to focus so relentlessly on present gains that plans for the future are neglected.
