Owen going, gone?

Apparently Newcastle United are very keen to keep Michael Owen at the club, though one suspects that the 29-year-old striker isn't quite feeling the love after he was offered a new performance-related deal.

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How will Michael Owen react to Newcastle's latest contract offer from Newcastle.

Despite his career having been blighted by injury and his seemingly endless returns from those injuries casting him as a shadow of his former self, Owen remains one of the game's most potent goalscorers.

However you cut it his strike rate is exceptional. Owen has hit 40 goals in 89 matches for England, in 251 games for Liverpool and Real Madrid he plundered 131 goals and so far he has found the target 29 times in 62 games for Newcastle, of which seven were scored in 13 appearances this season.

Couple those statistics with the natural arrogance of a striker and you can perhaps begin to see why Owen might be feeling a little undervalued after the one-year extension to his existing four-year contract he was offered and refused last summer was followed up this week by Newcastle's latest less-than tempting proposal.

The St James' Park club have offered their most effective striking talent, and most valuable commodity, the unique opportunity to accept a 25% cut in wages in order to remain at a club in turmoil. Quick, pass the pen!

Of course, Newcastle have painted the deal slightly differently claiming the terms of the deal are ''improved'' and constitute a ''very good'' offer; one doubts that Owen and his representatives concur.

The deal would see Owen's basic salary drop from the approximate £105,000-a-week he gets at present to around £80,000, but with the promise of considerable scoring and appearance bonuses giving the potential to earn much more than he does currently.

From the club's point of view it makes perfect sense, but for Owen the offer is only fractionally better than an insult. He has returned from his latest injury set-back, and is not only playing well and scoring vital goals, but is also attracting interest from England boss Fabio Capello and is on the radar of several Premier League managers.

With Owen's contract up in the summer, he can sign a pre-contract deal with another club in January so time is of the essence if Newcastle are serious about securing his services.

Performance-related deals might be the way of the future, and could become standard, much like the contracts that see player wages cut in the event of relegation, but the time to introduce such deals is when players are young and hungry, or old and ineffectual (see Robbie Fowler and Lousi Saha for examples).

In Owen's case his age and track record suggest there is still more to come from him, but it is unlikely to be in the black and white of Newcastle.

Amazing news! The Premier League is brilliant and everybody loves it. That's the shock finding from a new fan survey conducted by Barclays, the league's entirely impartial and-in-no-way-biased-at-all global sponsor.

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Shock Premier League survey finding: Premier League fans enjoy Premier League

The 2008 Barclays Global Fans Report, which contains the views of over 32,000 fans from 185 countries, found that 98% of those respondents who were bothered enough to fill in a survey about the Premier League were fans of the Premier League... incredible.

To be fair, the report's findings aren't all insipid, in fact some of them are rather intriguing, others are impressive and some are down right disturbing.

The good news for the league, and its sponsor, which is midway through a three-year sponsorship deal worth £65.8 million, is that the Premier League's incredible allure shows no sign of abating with 49% of those polled revealing that it was the most important thing in their lives. That's in their whole lives. Ahead of friends and family.

Less troubling, but still a worry, is that 81% of those taking part in the survey revealed that football was their most regular topic of conversation, coming before the economy, relationships, TV shows, family and presumably the weather, which however dull it may be constitutes an inordinate amount of British conversation.

The report found that 83% of fans watch the games live on TV and that 69% would do so having donned their official replica shirt. It's all great news for broadcasters, advertisers and clubs alike, as is the knowledge that 89% of fans with children said that they had indoctrinated their child to follow a Premier League team.

However, while the report shows that the Premier League attracts fanatical committed supporters from across the world, it also reveals that 15% of those fans polled would be prepared to switch allegiance to another club if the mood took them.

Perhaps this transient support is to be expected. As the Premier League has been embraced by the world new fans need to find clubs to follow, and without having affiliation to a local side or any historical ties to a certain club how are these decisions made?

The report reveals that 33% of respondents said that style of football was the most important reason behind their choice of team, 14% identified family tradition as the key factor, while 13% admitted that a successful history won their support.

But before the purists despair, don't worry too much, after all how indicative of the views of the average fan can a survey of 32,000 people be?

Impressive though the scale of the survey is, with the league broadcast to 611 million homes in 211 countries the Premier League has a global audience of 4.77 billion people. And surely not all of those fans have a replica shirt and are incapable of talking about anything other than the English top flight.

Never let is be said that Sir Alex Ferguson is someone else's puppet.

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Sir Alex may be in Tokyo for the World Club Cup, but he's no fan of the 39th game idea

While the Premier League are no doubt proud that as European champions Manchester United are currently representing the league at the Club World Cup in Japan, the club are most certainly there on their own terms and are not towing any official line over the controversial proposals for an international round of matches.

''I don't think there will ever be a 39th game and I don't believe there should be,'' said the United boss, before adding ''I certainly am not in favour of it. You look at our domestic programme allied to our cup competitions. It is impossible."

Reading between lines it's fair to say Sir Alex is not keen. But how does he reconcile his side's current foray to far off lands with such a forthright view against the 39th game?

''The nitty-gritty of it is for us to be world champions. In 30 years time you look back and say 'Manchester United - world champions'. That, to me, is what our club's all about and that's why it's important for us to win it.''

Just as the Premier League appear to be making headway with the Asian Football Confederation with their international objectives one of the most important figures at one the Premier League's most important clubs has spoken out against their nascent objective. Frustrating for them, quite funny for us.

On behalf of all purists: Thank you, Sir Alex.