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.
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