What Keegan Did to Michael Owen and His Future with Toon

Posted by: Clarky · March 24, 2008

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.”

Tags: Kevin Keegan, Michael Owen, Toon Army Views

This entry was posted on Monday, March 24th, 2008 at 9:18 am and is filed under Kevin Keegan, Michael Owen, Toon Army Views. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed, or trackback from your own site.