michael-owen

When Michael Owen joined Manchester United, summer 2009, the theory, with Owen approaching 30 and available on a free transfer, was that was former Liverpool striker would add short-term goals at a reasonable price. Three years on and Owen has proven no more value to United, even with no fee, than he did for Newcastle United, who paid more than £16 million for the errant former England star.

If ever there was a poster-child for the Glazernomic era here was it; a player whose failure at Newcastle United was so conspicuous most Geordies were delighted to see the back of the club’s record signing. Indeed, coming towards the end of a third campaign in Manchester, Owen has succeeded no more at Old Trafford than at St. James’ Park or, indeed, Santiago Bernabeu before that. In truth, it is nearly a decade since the former England star performed at the very height of his game.

At Old Trafford, Owen has scored 17 goals in 52 games for the club – just 18 starts – although it is a record hugely flattering to the striker: 11 goals have flowed in cup competitions, with seven in the Carling Cup, and three of Owen’s four Champions League goals in a dead rubber against Wolfsburg more than two years ago.

Most damning, for a player whom Sir Alex Ferguson still lauds, Owen has scored just once against in the ‘big four’ opponents of Manchester City, Arsenal, Tottenham Hotspur and Liverpool – the stunning 96th minute strike in the derby two seasons ago.

On any level bar financial Owen has made little impact at United, appearing and scoring in predominantly second-tier competitions, and low-level opponents.

Yet, both player and manager appear blinded by the striker’s past, with Owen repeatedly proclaiming that he’d rather appear infrequently for a leading club, than each week elsewhere. Fair enough perhaps, except while Owen may be on the books of a “top club,” he has started just once against the aforementioned ‘big five’ opponents.

One suspects that games against Scunthorpe United, Southampton, Burnley, Aldershot, Barnsley, and latterly Oţelul Galaţi, were not what Owen had hoped for when he signed on the dotted line.

Meanwhile, Ferguson has continually praised the striker over the past three years, declaring Owen “still one of the best” as recently as last September. Yet, even after Owen spent another lengthy spell on the sidelines this winter, the 70-year-old United manager went on record once again this week, optimistically predicting a key role for the forward during the run-in.

“If you think about ever needing a player to score an important goal for you is there anyone better than Michael Owen?” mused Ferguson on Friday.

“He will be a really welcome addition to our squad, even if it were to be for the last few games of the season. He’s certainly making good progress. What happened was he came back into our training a couple of weeks ago and then after one of the sessions he did some physical work with the sports science team and overdid it. So it knocked him back a few days, but he should be joining us this week.”

Few United fans, bar those still doe-eyed about an albeit stunning derby-winner, will break out the champagne for horse-owner-cum-footballer Owen’s return to Fergie’s team. Not least while the infinitely more talented Dimitar Berbatov cannot force his way into Ferguson’s squad, let alone first team plans.

Yet, Owen has designs on further time at Old Trafford – a prospect that will bring no cheer to supporters hoping that Berbatov will be replaced in the United squad this summer by a player of equal or greater talent. No matter how inexpensive, surely Owen’s is a squad place better reserve for almost anybody else.

“In life, you have to make hard decisions I have made some good ones and some bad, but in general terms I am pretty proud of my career,” said the 32-year-old on Tuesday.

“I still think I have another two or three years but where that will be is a question that the manager would be better placed to answer. I am exactly the same situation I was last year. Regardless what happens, you will never hear me grumbling about the privilege of playing at a top club like Manchester United.

“I have had some cracking moments. I have scored in cup finals, got the winner against Manchester City, scored a hat-trick in the Champions League and won the league. I am not concerned about what is around the corner.”

One scenario has Ferguson using the veteran as a fourth-choice next season, with the Glazer family restricting Ferguson’s ability to enter the transfer market. Indeed, it is unlikely the Scot has more than £30 million to spend, with United’s long-mooted IPO now on hold until at least the autumn, and possibly moving venue away from the under-performing Singapore Stock Exchange.

Owen believes he is still fit to perform at the highest level, whether at Old Trafford or elsewhere. Just as the player once, quite laughably, denied he has ever been injury-prone, Owen is still seemingly blind to his own decline.

“I must admit, I don’t think I am going to be one of the players who is still playing when they are 37 or 38 like Ryan, but I certainly think I still have another two or three years left in me,” added the Chester-born striker.

“I listen to players in the dressing room; some players are struggling to get out of bed and complain about their knees or Achilles. I honestly can’t resonate with them. I never get any pains like that. I feel as though I can play, it’s just when I get injuries, they always seem to be bad ones. My body feels as though it can play and my mind wants to and the aim is to keep going for at least another couple of years.”

Owen’s continued presence in football will certainly be a loss to the horse-racing fraternity, which if the player’s Twitter account is any barometer, is his true passion.

In any case, fitness concerns and (lack of) goalscoring performances aside, Owen’s place at Old Trafford has rarely been a natural fit. Despite that derby-day strike, a former-Liverpool man, whose passionate response to scoring against United so enthralled the Kop faithful, was never likely to become an Old Trafford hero.

Few will shed a tear should Ferguson finally discard the striker this summer; many will drop if Owen keeps the coveted number seven shirt for a fourth campaign.

Michael Owen’s smart double against Leeds United on Tuesday night reignited the debate about the (former) England marksmen’s role, both at Manchester United and with the national team. The Telegraph’s Henry Winter led the charge, openly campaigning for the striker’s recall to Fabio Capello’s England squad. After all, Owen has not scored 40 international goals without knowing where the net lies. Indeed, the striker’s one-in-three ratio for United is impressive given the limited opportunities afforded the 31-year-old at Old Trafford.

Yet, Owen is little better than fifth choice at United in his third season with the club, with the inescapable feeling that the player’s talents remain unfulfilled in Sir Alex Ferguson’s squad. No longer quick enough to cause damage against Europe’s finest defenders, not cute enough to perform in a deeper role, Owen is rarely deployed by the Scot. When the former Liverpool striker gains an opportunity it is almost universally against the country’s lesser lights, for that is now the striker’s fate given the quality available to Ferguson.

If the pace has gone, none of Owen’s finishing skills have waned, amply demonstrated at Elland Road. The smart take and scuffed left-footed finish for his first; the emphatic right foot shot thumped home for the second. Against more limited opposition Owen is lethal, with a record while at Old Trafford that backs up the claim.

That the majority of Owen’s goals have come against second-class opposition is a reflection of the limited opportunities the player is afforded. This is reflected in the goalscorer’s record, which shows just one strike against top-class opposition – the 97th minute goal against Manchester City at Old Trafford in September 2009.

In all that there is a contradiction. Owen’s quality is no longer enough for a regular spot in United’s first team, even if Winter believes the 31-year-old is the answer to Capello’s problems. Yet, the goalscorer in Owen’s core must surely yearn for more.

“I’m not content if I’m not playing,” Owen said on Tuesday.

“I get criticised a lot with things like ‘you don’t play, you pick your money up’ and all the rest of it but I’m not proud of that fact. I want to play all the time. If the season was going to be like the first season I was here then I’d be delighted. That was fantastic and I felt involved. I was always either on the bench or playing. Obviously I want to be involved again but I appreciate that there’s some top players in the team and in the squad and it’s a challenge to get on the bench let alone into the first-team.”

Owen’s sentiment is underlined by the facts, with the player having started just six games in the Premier League during his time with United, and just one last season. And despite Ferguson’s words to the contrary at this campaign’s start, unless an injury crisis hits, Owen’s role will again be limited to cup competitions against predominantly minor opposition.

It’s a situation Owen appears to accept much against the popular conception of modern-day footballers. Indeed, the Chester-born strikers claims that he would rather play irregularly for United than start for an inferior club. The sentiment has always been both an enigma and a contradiction.

“I understand you cannot be given guarantees in football,” adds the striker.

“As last season drew to an end I was 50-50 about what the manager would say when he called me in. If it had gone the other way I wouldn’t have been upset. I am proud to have been involved with such a great club. But secretly when he said he wanted me to stay my fist was clenched under the table. We are all men about it. If I didn’t play at all during the season I would sit down with the manager and have another chat.

“I have been the number one choice and had people chomping at my heels. Now it is roles reversed but I can think of a lot worse places to be. When I train it is with the best players. When I play it is in front of fantastic fans in a great stadium and the quality is high. I hope I can be involved but I am not stupid there are a lot of top players here and if my chances are limited I will still have a smile on my face and still feel part of a fantastic club.”

In that there is a lot to admire in Owen. United supporters suspicious of the player’s Liverpool roots will never be so naïve as to believe the player is a United loyalist. It is, after all, just a job. But contrary to the moniker so often attached to the player – especially by those on Tyneside – Owen’s motive at Old Trafford is little more than glory, whether direct or by association.

But there is also an undeniable truth: at a level not much below United’s a fit Owen would surely score a hat-full of goals. Owen: a talent happy but wasted; never essential to United’s cause but pleased to be a bit part in the effort all the same.

It’s a question asked not in some evanescent sense but in search of something far more tangible, even though the player’s Liverpool past means Manchester United supporters will take the question either way. But for now it is enough to ponder striker’s worth to Sir Alex Ferguson’s squad, with Aston Villa potentially interested in taking Owen.

After all, of Owen’s 11 goals in a United shirt to date, just two have any significant meaning; his 96th minute strike against Manchester City at Old Trafford and the Carling Cup final goal that brought Ferguson’s side back into the tie. The rest have come in the earlier rounds of the Carling Cup, against relegation-threatened Premier League outfits and, of course, the dead-rubber hat-trick against Wolfsburg in the Champions League.

Indeed, analysis of Owen’s goals – City and Villa games aside – show that only his goal against CSKA Moscow at Old Trafford made a difference to the result.

It’s hardly more than anyone can have expected, with time and injury having taken a toll of the player’s cutting edge that once brought Owen around 40 goals in 80 international appearances. In retrospect Owen’s peak years came between 18 and 23 years old. Today, the player is a shadow of his former self – a squad player on United’s books as much for the economic benefits of cheap labour, as for his output.

With Javier Hernández and Federico Macheda breathing down Owen’s neck, the question is, does Ferguson even need the player in his squad?

This week Owen scored twice against Scunthorpe United in the Carling Cup. Plus ça change. The former Liverpool player has found his level, it seems.

“It’s been a strange start to the season. We’ve played weekend-weekend-weekend and then into a double-header international break so the manager’s kept a similar team through those three games,” said Owen, sounding as if he’s trying to convince himself of his own worth.

“There’s been a lot of us that haven’t played in the first month of the season but now the Champions League’s started, the League Cup’s started and there’s Premier League games all the time so I’d like to think there’s going to be plenty of games coming thick and fast.

“It’s a difficult juggling act for the manager because he’s got young kids that he wants to bring through, then there’s players that have been injured coming back and players that need the games.

“It’s par for the course at Manchester United. But it’s a bit false at the minute because there have been so few games.”

Yet Owen is unlikely to feature any more than last season, when the 31-year-old started just 11 games. Injury permitting Owen will at least be available for the run-in. But with the player rarely featuring in United’s most crucial games there seems no realistic scenario – an injury crisis aside – in which Owen can force his way into the team.

If history has any baring, Owen is the most likely to be injured first. Moreover, the former England international’s very presence in the squad could be harmful to both Hernández and Macheda, each of whom needs games to develop. The same was also true of Macheda and Wellbeck last year.

While it is fair for Chicharito to take his time settling in England, Macheda faces the very real prospect of a third season playing reserve team football. It’s not a good scenario for either United nor the player, even if Ferguson described the Italian teenager as “fantastic” this week.

“Macheda is only 19 and he is doing magnificently,” Ferguson told Gazzetta dello Sport today.

“What a future for the Italian national team when they are both (Macheda and Balotelli) ready together. I am very satisfied with Chicco. He is simply fantastic.”

Fantastic Macheda may become, but if he is not to go the way of Giuseppe Rossi before him, time on the pitch in the United side is the only answer. Owen is a major roadblock to that process. Macheda cannot even be guaranteed a Carling Cup spot in his favourite position, having played on the left-wing against Scunthorpe.

Yet, there seems little likelihood that Ferguson will choose to cut his options this season, with the fee on offer from Villa not substantial. It means another season largely on the sidelines for Owen; another campaign even further away from the first team for Macheda, who may begin to wonder whether it’ll ever happen for him at Old Trafford.

Michael Owen will miss the rest of Manchester United’s season after learning that he requires an operation on his injured hamstring. The op, which will take place on Monday, means that Owen will play no further part in United’s Premier or Champions League campaigns. The striker has scored nine times in 31 games for United.

Owen, 30, injured his left hamstring chasing a through ball during the Carling Cup final last Sunday. The former-Liverpool forward equalised for United before departing in the 40th minute, with substitute Wayne Rooney scored the winning goal.

“It’s a bad blow – he’s out for the season,” said Sir Alex Ferguson at a Friday morning press conference.

“Unfortunately it’s more serious than we thought. He will be operated on on Monday morning.

“It’s a terrible blow for the lad and is disappointing news for us too. He has never missed a training session all season. I think the heavy pitch at Wembley on Sunday made some contribution to it but really it is just bad luck.”

Owen joined the club on a free transfer following four injury hit seasons with Newcastle United, although this is his first serious injury for the Reds. The player is on an appearance and bonus related two-year contract with the club and Sir Alex Ferguson recently denied that Untied is willing to sell the player.

The player will also miss out on FIFA World Cup 2010 in South Africa, although he has not featured for Fabio Capello’s side in more than a year.

The striker scored a stunning 96th minute winner in the Manchester derby last September but has failed to command a regular starting place in the team despite a December hat-trick against Wolfsburg.

Sir Alex Ferguson has dismissed newspaper speculation that Michael Owen will head a summer clearout at Manchester United. The former-Liverpool striker, who scored against West Ham United at Old Trafford last Tuesday, has started just 10 times for United this season despite a strong fitness record, scoring eight goals for the club.

“He has done well here, he has been a success,” said Ferguson yesterday.

“He’s a great professional, he’s never missed a training session, his performances in training have been very good, and I think he has improved as a footballer in his time here.

“His general knowledge of the game is better, so is his linking play, and for the first time in his career he is getting used to coming on as a sub. I think he’s enjoying being a part of it here and he’ll definitely be here next season because I have absolutely no intention of letting him go.

“The only problem Owen has got at the moment is Wayne Rooney. We’re getting incredible performances from Rooney at the moment, and Michael has come here at a time when another striker, and sometimes the only one we use, is on the rise.”

Owen, who may start the Carling Cup final Sunday afternoon, has a two year contract at Old Trafford that rewards the England international goalscorer based on performances. Owen joined United on a free transfer last summer after an injury-hit four years with Newcastle United.