When talking about the highest level of diplomacy in football over the past decades, Kevin Keegan must be the mastermind of negotiating with player, as long as he was the one who is in full charge.

It may be long enough and probably not suit enough to todays way of negotiate, but I still think that the King still has the charismatic performance when dealing with player, he still has that magic of influence and can be the master of negotiator.

Unfortunately, his such high charisma would mean nothing if no sufficient back-up from current Toon board of directors, and these days, we have many of them that Keegan would see it more difficult to handle than the old days at Newcastle.

Keegan was also has the eye of the tiger when targeting his player to play for him. Back in September 1992, Kevin Keegan was successful in signing Charlton Athletic star Robert Lee for a fee of £700,000. At that time, Lee is rated one of the best players outside the top division.

After appearing more than 300 occasions for the Addicks in which he netted more than 60 goals, Rob Lee signed for Toon after hearing Keegan’s diplomacy about Newcastle is closer to London than Middlesbrough, who also keen to sign him from Charlton. Keegan also succeed to convince him to play more conventional attacking midfielder role than as a winger on his time with the London club.

The same role as what Rob Lee has been playing for United is now happening to Michael Owen. Under Keegan, the England striker was reborn after the King made him playing more deeper role in Newcastle’s three-pronged strikeforce. Once again, Keegan instinct is right, and Owen is just like Lee, has scores more goals for United in his new role.

And when Keegan said nearly two months ago that Newcastle board should start negotiating a contract extention with Michael Owen, it was something that is more to Keegan’s basic instinct because he knows Owen can be usefull for Newcastle, if we can make him stay out of injury.

The King is right once again, Michael Owen playing important key in our relegation escape, and the Toon board now looking to put an end to the speculation regarding his future before making moves for another players in the transfer market.

Both representatives of the England international and the club officials begin negotiations last week and arrange the second meeting to take place in the next fortnight. Owen himself is still keen to remaining a Newcastle player and he is full of praise for the work done by Keegan.

“We all enjoy training and playing alongside each other and he has brought a real feel-good factor into the club,” said Owen in an interview on Newcastle World. “Everyone is enjoying coming in to training every day and when you do that you do it better. He knows his stuff and he can see a player, he can see if something needs tweaking or changing and tactically he’s very good. It’s been a fantastic appointment for us and we’ve all really enjoyed his time so far.”

All I can say is, stay with us for more time Mikey, and you will see that Newcastle United is true closer to London (Wembley) rather than from Middlesbrough not very long from now.

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.

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.