Featured: Michael Owen - An unloved legend (ESPN article)

[razor]

[The Guest]

I'm sure it was some cunt on Redcafe that made that.  They all found it funny and were ripping the back out of him.

 

Then they signed him.  Hilarious.

[fowler9]

And he is a fucking awful commentator

 

has he ever mentioned that he played with Rooney and thinks he is brilliant?

[jamespp]

Great player from 97-04 for us, 158 goals for Liverpool, he left us to further his career but his career ended when he left us, even his England career ended up like crap, should have 100 caps and be Englands top scorer easily

He's just a Man Utd cheerleader on twitter now, idiot

[Strontium]

Even when he signed for United I didn't hate him, but his work for ESPN might one day induce a homicidal rampage on my part.

[boots123]

Nice article. Every decision he made was understandable but it was always the decision that lacked balls. Unfortunately for him the lack of balls decisions he made usually became the wrong ones.

 

He left for Real Madrid when we had just replaced Houllier. The easy, understandable decision is to go to Real Madrid. We had just replaced one foreign negative manager with potentially another. Owen had been flogged throughout his early years because of the type of football we played. Madrid was the easy option. Go there play with better players and win trophies. The hard ballsy decision would be give the club that gave him so much one last chance. Give the new manager a go. He took the easy option. It backfired on him when Liverpool went on to win the champions league.

 

Coming home he had two options, Liverpool and Newcastle. This showed his hand massively. Everyone knows how much he loved his England career. He was desperate to play in the world cup and I think this is the one thing missed from the article. He had two options. The easy option, go to Newcastle. Probably more money, guaranteed games and they were paying more so Real had accepted the bid. The hard option, play hardball with Madrid and go to Liverpool. Tell them them the only place you are going is Liverpool. The risk with this is Madrid don't cave and he's left isolated there with no games before the world cup. Liverpool went on to win the FA Cup whereas Newcastle were in the end relegated and Owen had a torrid time there and it more or less ended his England career. I think he got injured at the world cup he was so desperate to get to.

 

Finally leaving Newcastle. Two options, go to Man Utd or go anywhere else. Easy decision, go to Utd sit on the bench and pick up trophies. Hard decision, go somewhere else start for a team every week and keep some sort of rapport with his original club fans, the only people with any affection for him. He took the easy option. Shit on all the fans, including my dad, who defended him over the years, the fucking cunt. Sat on the bench and bar a goal in the manc derby can't remember him doing anything of note. Probably picked up some trophies he had no right claiming a hand in. I imagine he thought he had the last laugh with this. A few years on and nobody likes him. Those pointless medals he got probably look very hollow now. The mancs don't like him and never took to him and now even the most sympathetic reds can't even be bothered to hate him.

 

A very sad state of affairs for him in my opinion and he deserves no less.

i dont think his constant deadpan lack of emotion expression helped, even stevie shows joy and pain, owen showed..... well nothing really, he will accept his dislike with an indifferent shrug of his shoulders and a quick recheck of his bank balance

[Kant]

i dont think his constant deadpan lack of emotion expression helped, even stevie shows joy and pain, owen showed..... well nothing really, he will accept his dislike with an indifferent shrug of his shoulders and a quick recheck of his bank balance

Yeah. He was always held up as some kind of "modern professional", media trained to within an inch of his life never to actually say anything.

As far as I'm concerned, he went to United and that makes him a cunt for life. Unforgivable.

[aws]

If going to the Mancs wasn't the last straw his stupid attempts to curry favour with their fans certainly was. Completely indifferent to him now. Shit commentator though.

[spider-neil]

Can't talk for another one else but I absolutely loved Owen when he first burst onto the scene as a super sub and I felt such pride when he scored 'that' goal for England. But that goal changed Owen from 'Liverpool's Owen' to 'England's Owen'. With every interview Owen talked more about England I felt my feeling towards him changing.

 

When Liverpool's style of football was changed so it was the big target man up front with Owen running in behind, whilst we didn't exactly turn into a long ball team we were a little too direct for my liking and this changed my feelings towards Owen further, although I realise the manager makes the tactics and the player has little to do with it. Also I adored Fowler and he was marginalised so Owen could have the big striker to play off. I also disliked the fact that Owen was next to useless outside the box so when we didn't have the ball it was like playing with 10 men.

 

Then Fowler was sold and I was incandescent with rage and I was blaming Owen, Heskey, GH, anyone. So my feelings towards Owen was changing further.

 

Also with Liverpool not challenging for the league it felt like Owen was holding the club to ransom, 'be more successful or I'm off', of course he didn't actually 'say' this but that is how it felt at the time. You then had the 'Owen excuses' when it was time to sign a new contract, 'my agent is on holiday', 'my agent has misplaced his phone', 'my agent has misplaced his pen', 'I'll never leave of a free'. I can't put into words how much that was fucking pissing me off.

 

Then he fucked off to Real, for 8 million, Michael fucking Owen, a 1 in 2 striker, in his prime, sold for 8 million. I think it's fair to say at that moment I HATED Owen. When Liverpool were in for him again I was hoping against hope that Newcastle would beat us to the punch and was very much relieved when that turned out to be the cake.

 

Owen going to Manu was the cherry on the fucking Owen cake as far as I was concerned.

Thanks for the FA Cup, the League Cup and Roma but I think I have more affection for Titi Camara than I do for Owen. I went from absolutely loving Owen to hating his guts.

[Section_31]

Owen is still a Liverpool playing legend even though I never quite bonded with him the way I did players like Fowler and Hyppia. He carried us for a long time though, he was a professional who always gave his best and his dour attitude was for me actually a breath of fresh air following the spice boy era. Head down and play was good as far as I was concerned.

 

I think some of his comments about the mancs have been a deliberate bate to Liverpool fans who he probably feels have disrespected him (where were you in Istanbul etc) yet feels he doesn't deserve it for the reasons in my first par. He strikes me as the type to be quite spiteful in that sense when he feels he's been wronged (we saw that on the pitch at times with the odd little kick, or that hilarious Neville Southall vid "game set and match Owen"), he doesn't like to think anyone has got one over on him - even an entire fan base. As far as his move to the mancs goes, we didn't want him and he had every right to find a new employer, I wasn't that arsed.

 

Still a great, great Liverpool player IMO.

[scudger99]

A great goalscorer, not generally a scorer of great goals, not a great player. As someone else has mentioned, his contribution outside the box was fuck all.

I couldn't blame him for going to the scum, and I can't blame others on here who hate him for doing so.  I think his comments once he'd signed for them caused more outrage than the signing itself.  And he clearly put Ingerrlund before us.  Add that lot together and I can understand why people think he's an odious little cunt.  At least when Torres went we got a fuck off pile of cash (duly spunked), but I'm indifferent to the pair of them.

Owen's goals got us a few trophies though, no denying that.  The odious little cunt.

[Newport]

At least selling him got us Xabi. For McManaman we got fuck all and his departure was far worse in my opinion. I can understand why he left, but not the way he did leave. 

 

Owen's second half of his career was just pathetic and he got what he deserved. He could have stayed and become a legend, instead he lost his reputation and a lot of people know him mostly as a benchwarmer who had a lot of injuries.   

[Carvalho Diablo]

Treacherous blood-sucking cripple.

[LFC 6 Times]

Was my first football hero as a child just dreamed of being him, it's sad how reality and expectations are so far removed. Despite being a monotonic almost robotic individual Owen doesnt seem like too bad a fella, however never to be forgiven for what he did to us.

[KMD7]

He put England before Liverpool and he ended up harming his career along with his reputation. If he had any true passion for us his career might have finished up a lot more positively. I don't hate him anymore I'm just not arsed about him.

[Carvalho Diablo]

I would also take issue with the title of Dave's article; no way could that diminutive pernicious shit-chomper ever be viewed as a "legend" for any of the club's he played for.

[The Golden Eel]

His debut was 20 years ago on Saturday past... 20 years ago...

[Stickman]

Has anyone seen Owen's Dubai video promo?

 

I can't post the link and it's probably on here somewhere but it's hilarious, easily the best thing he's done since the Cup Final goals....

 

Be careful though when watching especially when he put's the afterburners on.

[lifetime fan]

Has anyone seen Owen's Dubai video promo?

 

I can't post the link and it's probably on here somewhere but it's hilarious, easily the best thing he's done since the Cup Final goals....

 

Be careful though when watching especially when he put's the afterburners on.

 

 

[Jairzinho]

A cunt match made in cunt heaven.

[lifetime fan]

He's worse at reading an autocue than Barnes.

[Baltar]

It's a shame he's not loved by the fans, he gave us so many great moments. Excluding his obvious highlights, the hattrick against Newcastle and the winner in the league cup against United were two other personal favourite moments. Along with Fowler he's was the most exciting teenage prospect I've seen at Liverpool. From 18-21, he was phenomenal. Like Robbie, he would have had an even better career had he not been injured so often. 

[Lee909]

It might be a shame he is not loved but its his own fault

[TheHowieLama]

At least selling him got us Xabi. For McManaman we got fuck all and his departure was far worse in my opinion. I can understand why he left, but not the way he did leave. 

 

 

 

This is it really - he saw how that affected the club (and a lot of the fans feelings towards Macca) yet he went and did almost as bad knowing the outcome.

[Trumo]

He's worse at reading an autocue than Barnes.

 

Barnes doesn't sing to anyone else's tune.