Despite being injured for most of his time with Newcastle, YMO is still one of Newcastle player that being highly praise by Kevin Keegan and was his biggest priority to have sign for Toon this summer.

Although his appearance for Newcastle since his £16million signing from Real Madrid in 2005, restricted to only 37 league starts, Keegan is insist that Owen can become “one of the Tyneside greats” and identified as his priority this summer with further meetings to discuss the contract extention have been scheduled.

The new talk schedule is also to counter the latest ridiculous rumour from Nikkan Sports that reported J-League Chiba officials were preparing an initial approach after unveiling former Liverpool first-team coach Alex Miller as their new manager and had made contact with Owen’s agent Tony Stephens.

As a young lad, He held talks with Chelsea, Manchester United and Arsenal, before he eventually signed for Liverpool, the club that persuaded him to attend the FA’s School of Excellence at Lilleshall in Shropshire at age 14 before signed professional forms for the senior team just after his seventeenth birthday in December 1996.

After successful playing career with the Reds (1996–2004) scoring 118 goals from 216 appearance, he signed for Spanish giant Real Madrid but being overlooked in his very first and only season among the star-studded Galacticos squad. Owen scores 13 goals from 35 appearances for them.

On 24 August 2005, Newcastle United announced a club record fee of £16 million to take Owen back to premier league. He scored his first goal for United on his second appearance, United’s second goal in a 3–0 away win at Blackburn Rovers on September 18.

Owen scored his first hat-trick for Newcastle in the 4–2 away win over West Ham on December 17 with a “perfect hat trick”, with one goal scored with each of his left foot, right foot, and his head. After that, Owen’s season with Newcastle is full of injury problems.

In the first minute of the group match against Sweden at the 2006 World Cup, damaged anterior cruciate ligament injury in his right knee kept Owen out of United squad for nearly a year, until April 2007. With an escape clause valued at £12 million in his precious contract before being cleared off this year, Owen has often being in reports he could move on to another club at the end of the 2006–07 season.

After returning from the hernia operation in late September 2007, he scored a late goal coming off the substitutes bench to clinch victory for Newcastle over Everton. In the second Keegan era, Owen scored again in a 4-1 FA Cup 3rd round replay win over Stoke City on 16 January 2008.

With more speculations back in about his future under Keegan’s because of an old burst-up between them while Keegan was the England manager, Owen was later awarded the captaincy by Keegan on 19 January 2008 and scored his first league goal for Keegan on 3rd of February.

Owen’s goals starting to come in the 2-0 defeat of Fulham on 22 March 2008, which also Newcastle’ first win under Kevin Keegan’s second stewardship before finishing with 11 Premier League goals and was the key factor in Newcastle relegation escape in the 2007-2008 season.

I once thought that Newcastle’ new owner Mike Ashley has matched with most of the Toon Army expectations of how this club should be leading to, but several of disagreements from Toon directors especially with previous manager, this club has relegation battle for months.

And after Keegan wrote off United’s chances next season to closing the gap with the Premier League’s elite, Mike Ashley is starting to speak about Toon summer spending with King Kev.

Keegan also branding the League as one of the world’s “most boring” competitions. He insisting we were a “million miles” away from the top four and there’s nothing he can do next year to get near them unless Ashley backed him with major investment in the transfer market.

“I haven’t got enough money and I wouldn’t be able to get the players anyway, so I’ll soldier on.” Keegan said on Telegraph site, “Maybe the owner thinks we can bridge that gap - but we can’t. This League is in danger of becoming one of the most boring but great leagues in the world. The top four next year will be the same top four as this year.”

I believe Mike Ashley has the pride of the Tyne, and if that is the reason why he invite Keegan for a talk, it would be something that would be good benefit for this club future and not the other way end.

Telegraph said, Keegan is understood to have angered Ashley with his remarkably downbeat assessment of the club’s future and in particular the claim that they were “a million miles away” from the top four. I don’t see any reason why Ashley should get mad about what Keegan said.

Ashley was there, at St. James’s Park last Monday when he witnesses the lack of quality in Newcastle squad against the top four team. He also seen how we’re heavily beaten by Manchester United or Liverpool before, so Keegan is trying to wake him up about the current Premier League reality, he was simply being realistic.

From the news today, Keegan wants £80millions to strengthen his squad next season. For me, that amount of money is nothing if we compare to how much the Chelsea’s owner is providing to pursue Lionel Messi from Barcelona with the same amount of money that Keegan want to spends this summer to push for a place in Europe next season.

Kevin Keegan also confirmed on Tuesday that Stephen Carr, Peter Ramage and James Troisi will leave the club at the end of the season. That would make our team even more thinner, we need immediate action very soon from Ashley or we could face another bad season to come.

Howay Ashley! Keegan loves this club, and he will use your money for good and will not waste it like any other Toon previous managers!

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.