The Parable of the Silly Boy

I’m going to be totally honest. I’m glad Michael Owen was relegated yesterday. I don’t hate Newcastle United. I find them a bit ridiculous as a club and can’t abide the nonsensical media claims that their fans are brilliant and deserve success but in general the club has been a reliable source of points for Liverpool Football Club and there have been some excellent games between the two teams over the years. I don’t especially take delight in Newcastle going down but I do take some satisfaction at seeing Owen relegated.

Owen was at one time one of my heroes. He played a major role in Liverpool winning the treble of cups in 2001; was top scorer in each of his seven full seasons in the first team, and gave the fans many memorable moments in his time at the club but in the summer of 2004 he bit the hand that fed him and kicked our football club when it was down.

As a supporter, I want playing for Liverpool Football Club to matter to the players. I’m not naive enough to think that every player who pulls on the famous red shirt cares as much about the club as I do but I still want to believe there is some truth in their statements about wanting to win for the fans. With the foreign players, you can perhaps forgive a little less loyalty but for the home grown players who have come through the ranks, I want to believe that being successful with Liverpool FC would mean more to them than being successful with other clubs.

What Owen did in 2004 revealed he wanted to win honours for himself whether at Liverpool Football Club or any other. He looked around at the mess Houllier had left the club in and he saw a team years away from challenging for the top honours. He saw a team not currently capable of helping him achieve his own ambitions. Rather than stay and help the club improve to a level where it could do so, he decided he deserved to be at a better club. He thought he was too good for our club.

Tellingly in his autobiography, Owen wrote: “As the mood darkened, I did look with envy at the leading teams. If I was in this or that team, I’d fancy my chances of getting X number of goals.”

I get the impression Owen was obsessed with personal achievement. For him it was about how many goals he scored and how many honours he won. If the team wasn’t creating enough chances for him and wasn’t good enough for him to win trophies then it wasn’t his responsibility.

“When we weren’t playing well and not creating anything, and people were accusing me of not performing, I wasn’t getting much of a kick half the time.” So there you have it. It wasn’t Michael’s fault; it was the team’s for not getting him more of a kick.

If Rafa Benitez’s task in rebuilding our football club wasn’t big enough already, by engineering a cheap move to Madrid, Owen not only deprived Rafa of the team’s best goal scorer but also of suitable compensation with which to purchase a replacement. £8 million plus Antonio Nunez (a total value of approximately £8 million) was barely half of Owen’s true market value. Had Owen not let his contract run down to its final year and left the club facing the prospect of losing him for nothing the following summer, a fee of £20 million would not have been unrealistic.

Michael joined Real believing he would have a better chance of winning major honours. As it turned out, he spent the majority of the year on the subs bench and won sod all while we won the biggest prize in domestic football. Silly boy.

Had Owen done a Rushie and returned to Anfield after a year’s sabbatical abroad, all would probably have been forgiven but when Newcastle came calling Michael made his second stupid decision in two years. Liverpool quite rightly were not prepared to pay more than the fee they had received a year earlier to bring Owen back to Anfield. Unfortunately Newcastle bid £16 million and understandably Real wanted to deal with the highest bidder. I understand that Rick Parry told Owen to reject Newcastle and tell Madrid he wanted to go to Anfield or nowhere. Owen didn’t do so. The next thing he was on telly being wined and dined by Freddie Shepherd, Graeme Souness and Alan Shearer in the North East – hardly the message he was asked to send out. That trio cleverly played to Owen’s ego telling him how the fans idolise their goal-scorers at St James Park. Some bad advice from Sven Goran Eriksson later and Owen was signing for the Geordies. In a World Cup year, he thought it was too big a risk to play hardball with Madrid and risk a half-season or longer on Real’s bench. Owen put his ambitions with the national team ahead of Liverpool FC. Yet again it was all about Owen. The outcome was he joined a crap team, got injured after a handful of games and had a dire World Cup in which he was clearly unfit to play.

By this time he had proven he did not have the qualities to be a Liverpool player and there was no chance of Rafa launching a rescue mission to get Owen out of Newcastle.

With Newcastle now down, I expect Owen will do what he does best. He will turn a blind eye to the devastated Geordie masses who desperately need a hero to take responsibility for the mess they are in and lead them out of the Championship. He will absolve himself of responsibility for Newcastle’s fall from grace and convince himself it was not his fault he couldn’t be the goal-scoring legend Newcastle fans thought they had signed in 2005. He will pat himself on the back for his wisdom in letting another contract run down and look for a move to the biggest club willing to offer him a decent wage.

Not many players leave Liverpool and go onto achieve better things elsewhere. Owen left Liverpool with winners medals from the League Cup, FA Cup, UEFA Cup and European Super Cup on his CV plus a European Player of the Year Award. The only thing he has added to his CV in 5 years since is relegation. Thus concludes the Parable of the Silly Boy. Well done, Michael.