Striker fights for his England future

Oct 17 2008 by Luke Edwards, The Journal

There was some good news for Michael Owen regarding his groin injury yesterday, but things are looking rather gloomier for him as far as England are concerned. Chief sports reporter Luke Edwards reports

THE medical specialists believe the groin strain he picked up in training this week will only take a few days’ rest to heal, but the expert thinkers in football are predicting Michael Owen will be facing a considerably longer spell out of the England set-up.

It would be fascinating to know what sort of emotions Owen experienced during England’s recent World Cup qualifiers against Kazakhstan and Belarus.

Delight at two positive victories for his England colleagues or fear that, having performed so well in his absence, they were in danger of ruining his international career?

Such emotive issues are, sensibly, rarely discussed by a footballer in public, but at just 28, Owen will know he has never faced such a threat to his reputation as a world class goalscorer.

His England place is no longer under threat, it has effectively been snatched away from him by a manager who has made it abundantly clear there are no guarantees he will get it back, no matter how many goals he scores for his club.

To leave out a player who has scored five goals in eight games for a struggling side, particularly one with Owen’s record of 40 goals in 89 games for his country, was a risk-laden one by Fabio Capello.

Had England failed to break down Kazakhstan or slipped to a narrow defeat in Belarus, the decision to snub Owen would have sunk its sharp teeth into the backside of England’s Italian manager.

Instead, England won both games comfortably and Owen’s name has barely been mentioned in dispatches. Worryingly for Newcastle’s record signing, Capello’s side have scored 14 goals in four World Cup qualifiers and the new front pairing of Emile Heskey and Wayne Rooney, with Steven Gerrard allowed a free role behind them, is proving to be especially eye-catching in a rejuvenated side.

Capello will not change a winning team and while injuries and a loss of form can never be predicted, even if Rooney and Heskey are both missing, Peter Crouch and Jermain Defoe – who scored when he came on as a substitute against Kazakhstan – are in line to replace them. The best Owen, a player once perceived as undroppable, can hope for at this stage is a recall into the squad to warm the bench.

It would, nevertheless, be dangerous to write off Owen’s international career at such an early stage. The former Liverpool and Real Madrid star has been proving his critics wrong for years and even at Newcastle, where he was initially viewed with suspicion, his goal-scoring has earned respect and admiration.

Although injuries have ruined large chunks of his time on Tyneside, Newcastle’s captain has still scored 25 goals in 55 games to effectively silence his detractors, but there are those who argue Owen’s career will only be put back on track when he leaves the North East. Significantly, Owen may well be one of them.

After two difficult first years in black and white, you would now be hard pushed to find a more popular player than Owen, even though it is looking increasingly likely the club’s record signing will walk away for nothing at the end of the season. In normal circumstances, a player who makes a calculated decision to run down his contract to facilitate a lucrative Bosman-style free transfer would struggle to win a popularity contest with the man who has just lost your pension on the stock market, but as we know, there are far from normal times at St James’s Park.

Major doubts remain regarding Owen’s long term future as a Newcastle player but, tellingly, few supporters have attacked the decision of United’s best-paid player to not sign an extension to a contract which expires at the end of the current campaign.

Had the row between former manager Kevin Keegan and Mike Ashley’s regime not exploded in such spectacular fashion last month, Owen would be coming under enormous pressure to commit his future to the club and his continued failure to do so would be seen in the dark light of betrayal and greed.

As it is, with Keegan gone and an interim manager in place in the shape of Joe Kinnear, with the fans at war with the board and the club up for a very public sale, few appear to blame Owen for not wanting to pledge himself to such a lost cause.

Whether the arrival of new owners and a new manager before the turn of the year will do anything to persuade Owen to stay to help lead the rebuilding project remains to be seen, but his importance to Newcastle this season is undiminished either way.

A small Newcastle squad desperately needs Owen’s goals to stay out of relegation trouble and, unless the club are willing to allow him to leave in a cut-price deal in January, Owen needs to perform well for Newcastle to maintain the pressure on Capello to recall him.

It is hardly a match made in heaven, but it can still be a mutually beneficial one at such a testing time for the club and its star player.

The drama at Newcastle this season has been impossible to ignore for the rest of the Premier League. Capello would do well to remember the same will always apply to Owen.