Arsenal's lethal double act shows value of spending big - now they must go all in on a centre-back

The silliest thing of all is that the numbers don’t even do them justice. Some of Lacazette’s finest work this season has come in deeper positions, for example, where his hold-up play and imagination have proved as important as his eye for goal in the box.

And at the Mestalla, Aubameyang produced a showing that was part-winger, part-poacher and part-destroyer. When Unai Emery spoke about Aubameyang afterwards, he said he was most impressed by the striker's defensive performance. The bloke had just scored a hat-trick but he had brought so much more to the team that the goals were not even deemed his best work.

It was not always this way, of course. At the start of the season, Emery was not convinced that Aubameyang and Lacazette could work together. What a relief for all involved at the club that he was able to eventually crack the code, and there is certainly some merit to the argument that creating this Auba/Laca-friendly 3-4-1-2 formation has been the Spaniard’s most significant on-pitch achievement of the season.

There are lessons to be learned from this that go well beyond the pitch, namely that you tend to get what you pay for. Arsenal went big — uncharacteristically big — when they spent £52m on Lacazette and £56m on Aubameyang within the space of six months. They paid top-level fees and, as a result, they got top-level players.

This is worth keeping in mind ahead of the summer window. Arsenal’s transfer budget depends on whether they beat Chelsea in the Europa League final to qualify for next season’s Champions League, but it could be as low as £40m if they lose in Baku.

Rather than spreading that money across three or four players, which seems the most likely route given Arsenal’s hopes of overhauling their squad, could it not be equally, if not more, transformative to plough it all into one signing? To seek genuine, elite quality rather than quantity.

The question for Arsenal is how much of Emery’s squad truly needs reshaping, and how much one man — a £45m centre-half, say — could transform the players around him. The best evidence of what happens when it goes well is at Liverpool, where the presence of Virgil van Dijk has allowed Andrew Robertson to become the best left-back on the continent and Joel Matip to suddenly become capable of spraying 50-yard passes despite having a Lionel Messi lodged in his pocket.

To hurl all the eggs in one basket is clearly a gamble, especially when you’re Arsenal and the owner will not be laying many more eggs any time soon. But there have been plenty of matches, not least the victory against Valencia on Thursday, when a sturdy platform has been there for Arsenal. When Emery can play his first-choice side, there really are not too many obvious glaring weaknesses.

This is not the case when some of the back-up players come in, and that lack of depth is what has cost Arsenal a place in the top four this season. Instead of replacing those back-ups with a string of marginally better back-ups, though, Arsenal might well be better served trying to replicate the Aubameyang and Lacazette transfers in a more defensive position. They paid an extraordinary amount of money for the forward line, yes, but these are extraordinary players and they have been essential to keeping Arsenal’s season alive.