Speaking about how many transfer kitty that the top four would spend in the summer is like a daydreaming story for most of us, an ordinary supporters, who have to work all day and all night to collect pennies just for a ticket in weekend to see our team playing.

These are coming the sunday newspapers and many of them circulating the old and new speculations about the premierships team summer transfers. From News Of The World article, believe it or not, Arsene Wenger being given the green light to splash £15m on Oba Martins.

Concurrently, The Mail recknos Wenger’s transfer kitty has been slashed to £25m, meaning he will only be able to sign three or four players in the summer.

Other news from NOTW also has Abramovich authorising a record-breaking £80m move for Barcelona’s, Lionel Messi, while Sir Alex Fergusson ready to make a £25m bid for Citeh’s Micah Richards. Newcastle also interested in Micah in January but the player choose to stay and extend the contract.

With the latest City situation where Eriksson is almost certain will not in charge again next season, the possibilities are now open wide again for other premier league giants to get some of their quality players out from City of Manchester.

Meanwhile, Kevin Keegan said once again that Michael Owen’s contract situation at St James’ Park remains unresolved and he was keen to open discussions very soon in the near future before it’s too late.

“He has every right to be free at the end of the season and go anywhere he wants,” Keegan said in The People. “That’s why I said eight weeks ago we should tie him up. If we don’t, and we lose him, then what can I say?”

Owen situation has been the subject of speculations from the start of the year of 2008. When we were still strugglin in relegation battle, Newcastle chairman Chris Mort preferred we secured our premier league status first before starting any new contract extention for Michael Owen.

Clarky, one of Magpies Zone contributor said that Mort’s policy probably reasonable when dealing with someone like Stephen Taylor. However, for someone like Owen, Kevin Keegan is spot on in believing we should be sorting his contract out just as soon as possible.

This kind of thing confirms to me Chris Mort’s worrying lack of knowledge and experience of the fooball game. I also worry about Keegan losing faith in those handling the administration behind the scenes, and how he might react to losing a player like Owen through sheer bloody-minded procrastination.

For those who have been loudly decrying KK’s tactical acumen (not necessarily on here) it seems to me that modifying MO’s role has been something of a masterstroke.

As several of us had been suggesting, if we had continued playing a supine 4-4-2 with Owen and Smith up front, we were going in only one direction. The present formation has allowed KK to get both Viduka and Martins involved, and importantly has got Owen more involved in games, and made him more difficult to mark.

He had cut a forlorn figure playing as an out and out striker, lacking service and hardly getting a touch in some games. Well done Kev, but now we face a real dilemma over Owen.

He will have only one year left on his contract in the summer. Unless we offer him a new one he can talk to potential suitors about a Bosman in January, and may well lose any residual motivation to play for us. Result - £16m down the toilet plus next seasons wages.

The alternative - and my guess is this is in line with KK’s thoughts - is to get him to execute say a two-year extension, and work towards getting him playing at something like his best next season. Depending on what level that turns out to be, we then either keep him or look to move him on for say £5-8m next summer.

I guess the 3rd alternative would be to try to sell him this summer. With only one year left on his contract, I really doubt we’d get very much for him. But later I read an interesting quote from KK in today’s Guardian.

“……whatever the finances are, I don’t think we’ll go out and get a player that’s any better than Michael Owen.”

He goes on: “As long as he doesn’t get injured again, Newcastle fans will see someone who’ll grow into one of the greats here.”

“I don’t see why we should be looking all over the world for foreign players and trying to teach them how to play in the Premier League, when we’ve got one who knows his way around, and whose goal-scoring record is tremendous.”

Our first meeting with them at Ewood Park under the previous manager, United were lost 3-1 with Martins scoring for us on that day.

Today, Oba Martins is back for his first game under the Special K. Young defender, Peter Ramage is also on the way for a return to training next week after more than six months out with cruciate ligament damage.

Newcastle will still without Emre, Mark Viduka, Stephen Carr and Shay Given who has the latest groin injury when playing against Manchester Utd last week.

Visitor side will wait for their midfielder David Dunn latest progress to see if he’s fit or not to play after injuring a calf in training. Ryan Nelsen missing with a hamstring problem, but defender Andre Ooijer is ready to make return.

Kevin Keegan will set to make his first win since returning for the second spell as United manager, and as everyone said, this would be our (another) season start if we can win this.

Our home fixtures against them for the last two seasons was not so impressive, but I do hope KK will bring something to cheers us up or we will be in serious danger. In 2006/07 home game we lost 0-2 while in 2005/06 they win 1-0.

Toon skipper Michael Owen said, with just six points above the relegation zone with the visit of Blackburn, the Geordies are in desperate need of a first win since before Christmas.

“But now we’ve got a few games coming up which we can, and should, be winning, and that starts with Blackburn on Saturday which is huge for us.” He added more, “We need to get confidence running going into these games and I’m positive we’ll turn a corner from there.”