Source: Daily_Mail
The Michael Owen brochure - 32 pages detailing why striker is not spent force
According to the sales pitch, Michael Owen is now ‘seeking the right opportunity to remind people why he was once crowned European Footballer of the Year’.
The trouble is: he had it. As his representatives point out, repeatedly, in their brochure, he appeared in 75 per cent of Newcastle United’s Premier League games in the last two seasons.
In 2008-09 alone, he had reminder opportunities against Bolton Wanderers, Coventry City, Arsenal, Hull City, West Ham United, Tottenham Hotspur, Blackburn Rovers, Everton, Aston Villa, Fulham, Wigan Athletic, Chelsea, Middlesbrough, Stoke City, Portsmouth, Liverpool and Manchester City.
Enlarge Page 12 of the Michael Owen brochure
It is not as if Owen sat frustrated in the stand as Newcastle were relegated. He was out there; he was involved; he was powerless to stop it happening.
On the final day of the season, Owen, who had by then lost his guaranteed place in the team, came on for the final 24 minutes against Aston Villa.
Had he scored, or even played well, it is believed he would have been called up by Fabio Capello, the England manager, for the matches with Kazakhstan and Andorra, so threadbare are England’s options up front.
Sadly, there was nothing for Capello to cling to; no echo of the player whose absence from an England team was once unimaginable.
And now it has come to this.
A glossy catalogue dropped through the letterboxes of leading football clubs, like so much junk mail, to hawk the talents of a player whose historical exploits are world renowned.
Agents have always sent out videos and DVDs of players that could be on the market, but not players of Owen’s calibre. An unknown full-back at Flamengo, maybe, the disc filled with jumpily patched together clips of moments from Brazilian league matches, a run and a cross, a nimble piece of skill, the odd goal.
He's a knock-out: Michael Owen takes a breather during Newcastle's 4-1 defeat by Aston Villa last season
More fool the manager who takes this as evidence and buys unseen; any player can be made to look good in the editing suite.
Had Owen’s advisers sent out his goal highlights, even those at Newcastle, he would have come over wonderfully. They did not. They told the truth. Page after page of disclaimers, denouncements, records being set straight. And each one, far from convincing, becomes a reminder of why there is now considered to be risk attached to signing Owen.
For how many other players need a four-page medical report by John Green BSc (Hons), MCSP, HPC, who cites his work with Kieron Dyer, Craig Bellamy and Dean Ashton?
No matter how positively Green views Owen’s medical future — and he admits he needs a special programme of daily exercises — just association with those names screams injury prone before we ever get to the catchy trio of headlines HAMSTRINGS, GROINS and VIRUS.
The conclusion — that Owen will play at the highest level for many years trouble free — barely registers after the revelation that Owen consults the same medical practitioner as three of the most injury-prone players in British football.
The best advertisement for Owen is Owen. The memory of what he can do, when fit, and surrounded by a team that functions effectively. He scores goals. A vast number of goals. And that is the hardest job on the pitch, which is why Cristiano Rothe most consistently prolific scorer in Europe is about to sign for Real Madrid for £80million.
So, why then include two graphs that show Owen’s goalscoring qualities as good as falling off a cliff in recent seasons? Follow the little yellow line as it peaks at 36 in 2001-02 and dips to 31, then 23, 22, 11, 1, before briefly recovering to 16 and diving to 10 in his final Newcastle season. Why include a record of goals per start over 13 seasons, in which the final three seasons are his 13th, 11th and 12th worst?
Managers are obsessed by statistical analysis these days. Those two pages will have greater impact than the guff about Owen ‘The Athlete, The Ambassador, The Icon’ which has the ring of something four guys in a marketing department would have come up with, and probably was.
The brochure tells us that Owen is ‘clean and fresh’, making him sound like the vegetable aisle at Morrisons.
Bag yourself an Owen: He's 'fresh and clean'
Who cares that Owen has good brand relationships with BMW and Microsoft MSN? Who cares that he is in lifelong partnership with Umbro? He is a famous footballer. Everyone knows that. Famous footballers can shift products, like replica shirts. Big deal.
Anyone who is interested in buying Owen appreciates he will carry a certain cachet in the club shop, but only if he is performing well. It would be interesting to see a graph documenting Owen shirts bought in Newcastle the season he arrived and the one just passed.
Owen’s marketers protest too much. Each time they denounce or refute a tabloid rumour or opinion, rather than dumping the baggage, it reminds the buyer of how much there is.
Enlarge Michael Owen brochure - Page 1
This is a sportsman who feels the needs to address the fact that, while he owns a share in a helicopter company, he has never used one to commute from his stables to work. And, even by raising the subject in denial, he plants a seed of doubt.
The biggest problem with ‘Michael Owen Summer 2009’ as the brochure is called — pitching it exactly like a Boden catalogue to these ears — is this. I am a Michael Owen fan. I have faith that, injury free, he could be a leading goalscorer in English football. And I could not think of a single reason why an ambitious Premier League club would not want to buy him.
Until now.
