What to do with an unwanted Owen?

Amid the wreckage of Newcastle's seasion stands the forlorn figure of Michael Owen, once regarded as one of the world's most dangerous strikers. His plight has not escaped the notice of Harry Pearson in the Guardian, who takes pity on the former Liverpool, Real Madrid and England ace.

"Hardly a day has gone by over the past month when I have not cast the newspaper aside of a morning, dabbed the salt tears from my cheeks and cried out, 'For pity's sake, can no decent home be found for poor little Michael Owen?'"

He wonders what Newcastle will do with the player who was supposed to be their prized asset, whose contract expires at the end of the season, and ponders his slow descent from world star to bit part player in a team on the verge of the drop.

"Those of us who were in France in 1998 to witness the teenage Owen suddenly burst into the consciousness of the football world like, Ooh I don't know something big and bursty, an illegal Chinese firework in all likelihood, can only wonder at how this has come to pass. How has the incandescent adolescent ended up such a damp and unwanted grown-up squib?"

But looking back says Pearson, "you get a weird sense that right from the start nobody has quite believed in Michael Owen." He failed to completely win over the Liverpool faithful, never fitted in at Madrid and has made no impression on new England boss Fabio Capello. Even is current boss and former strike partner Alan Shearer prefers an unfit Obafemi Martins. And the last man to show faith in him was Toon owner Freddie Shepherd - "a man so profligate he gave large wads of cash to Patrick Kluivert."

"No matter what Owen has done the football world has appeared to reserve judgment, doubt his substance, as if they suspected that when they got up close he would turn out to be a hologram."