Michael scores momentous Owen goal

Recently, I've had the enormous pleasure of reading one of British football's greatest literary works. A publication so entertaining, so well-written, with such fantastic sense of irony. There was no doubt in my mind that this masterpiece belonged in the highest echelons of the sporting literary world.

The book? Michael Owen: Summer 2009. A 32 page - THIRTY-TWO PAGE - document produced by Owen's (clearly top-class) PR company Wasserman Media Group, sent out to all Premiership and leading European clubs last week. The phrase 'PR Disaster' does not encompass this almighty aberration of a publicity campaign. This is a PR apocalypse
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Indeed, our Michael is described in this masterpiece, amongst other things, as;

"Charismatic"
"Young"
"Clean and fresh" (adjacent to a picture of a stubbly Michael)
"First class"
"Articulate"

Best of the lot though, is the fantastic claim that 'were it not for an unhappy spell at Real Madrid and two injury scarred years at Newcastle, he would be spoken in the same breath as Torres or Ronaldo.' We presume the writer is discussing Sergio Torres, the out of favour Peterborough United striker, and the rotund Ronaldo, in the brief hours when he was laid incapacitated during knee ligament surgery.

All this is all another sad episode for a player who burst on the world scene 11 years ago in Saint-Etienne. The reasons may be many for Owen's decline - injuries, poor management and bad luck have all had their effect on the Englishman - but the most palpable reason is that little Michael now exists in a football world that has, at the very top at least, evolved away from his skill set.

Owen is a classic English No. 10, eye for goal; diminutive figure; great balance, but for the classic English No. 10 to be successful, he needs a Number 9. A strike partner. At the top level of todays game, the traditional front pairing is becoming more and more obsolete, as teams continue to pack midfields, and defend and attack as a team. All of which explains Owen's fallout with Gérard Houllier and Rafa Benitez at Liverpool, and his lack of chances at Real Madrid, and more recently, his lack of involvement in Fabio Capello's England.

Tob clubs nowadays cannot accommodate a player merely to score goals. A modern-day striker must do more than that, and the likes of Drogba, Torres, Eto'o and Ronaldo all clearly do that. Each are capable of not just scoring, but being a battering ram. Each not only score goals of individual genius, but hold up play and link others in. Owen, for all the persuasive noises his goalscoring record makes, is a depressingly limited striker.

So where now for our charismatic goalscorer? Owen could lower his standards and become an impact substitute for a Liverpool or Villa-type, but one suggests his ego would veto that. Hull have been making flirtaceous glances, and it is likely this is the sort of club where he'll end up, a middling Premier League side keen for publicity, and the kind of limited ambition that can accommodate a goalscorer out of sync with the modern world.