Owen brands Newcastle a ‘poor team’
Posted on June 2nd, 2011 | 53 Comments |
Michael Owen, who has recently signed a deal to keep him at Man Utd for another year, has allegedly had a bit of a pop at the Toon. According to Twitty, he said:
“Just to answer some of your tweets. Prefer playing less often in a top team than every game in a poor team. Been there and didn’t enjoy it.
“Training every day at a high standard keeps you performing at a high level. I’m sure I have a lot to offer and so does the boss. Buzzing!”
Unfortunately he’s right – we were indeed a poor team when he was playing for us. Or should I say we were a poor team when he was queueing up outside the treatment room for us.
But despite his factual accuracy, I can’t help but feel there’s some bitterness from Owen about the criticism thrown in his direction from Newcastle fans when he upped sticks and left us relegated without so much as a by your leave. It just seemed like he didn’t care and that rankled.
He can’t help being injured I suppose but many fans felt that he did not express enough regret at captaining a team to relegation, completely failing to communicate with the fans in a way that might be expected of a decent captain.
He had to leave as there’s no way we could have continued paying his extortionate wages while we were in the Championship, but I’m not sure he particularly deserves the ‘mercenary’ label nor a lot of the bad feeling Toon fans seem to harbour for him. In some ways he has been made a scapegoat as he epitomised the poor-purchasing, over-spending era that contributed to our relegation.
He turned out to be a dreadful transfer for Newcastle but I’m not sure he deserves quite so much scorn.
Although I’ll give him some anyway as it sounds like he’s dissing our club: I hope the fleas of a thousand camels infest the wee grudge-bearing striker’s armpits.
Still, those are times past so who cares what Owen says? We look to be on the up again now.
Howay The Lads!
Tosser.