Little Michael Owen unlikely to play for big brothers

It’s all a bit convenient isn’t it? England play Wales in the international game of the weekend and — poof! — Michael Owen has ‘a muscle strain”.

Suddenly the whole pick-him-or-axe-him debate about the struggling striker can be filed under the enormous category of ‘fitness problems”.

Truth is, the Real Madrid striker is simply not performing at the moment. In fact, he hasn’t been performing for ages, since before his departure from Liverpool for Spain, since before his one-goal effort at Euro 2004 … since his hamstrings first started twanging a couple of years ago, in fact.

Owen will not play against Wales at Old Trafford on Saturday. He will be ‘injured” and Sven Goran Eriksson will turn to Wayne Rooney with Alan Smith or Jermaine Defoe next to him.

Sunday night saw the final nail hammered in to the Owen coffin. Like former Liverpool pal Robbie Fowler before him, Owen’s alarming slump at an age (24) when he should be peaking as a world-class goal- getter is inexplicable.

He’s scored 27 goals in 63 England games but rarely seems to recapture the form which made him a teen phenomenon with that strike against Argentina at the 1998 World Cup.

And the loss of form and confidence was there for all to see when Real turned out against a very ordinary Deportivo la Coruna and Owen fluffed two glorious chances. He volleyed one wide and completely missed the second in another demoralising La Liga defeat.

So now we turn to Rooney, the 18-year-old saviour with the figure of Desperate Dan, the dress sense of Very Desperate Dan and the appetite of, well, Particularly Desperate Dan.

Thing is, after the three-goal extravaganza against Fenerbahce last week, Rooney looked a bit out of it on his Premiership debut for Manchester United against Middlesbrough.

United boss Sir Alex Ferguson said: ‘He had not played for a long time on Tuesday night and I think it all caught up with him today.”

But Eriksson knows he has to go with the flow on this one, especially at Old Trafford on Saturday. The smooth Swede grins: ‘It would be difficult to leave him out.”

Personally, I’d like to see him paired with former Leeds man Alan Smith, now Rooney’s playmate at United. Sure, they’re unlikely to play together much with Ruud van Nistelrooy poaching goals for Ferguson.

But the idea of a twin-pronged United strike partnership at Old Trafford might put the wind up Wales and their coach Mark Hughes, a United old boy.

And if you can, for a second, discount the hype, consider this: Smith has scored five goals from eight games in a difficult start for United.

At the other end of the England side, Rio Ferdinand is back from his drug-test memory-lapse ban and Sol Campbell has fully recovered from his Euro 2004 groin strain.

Eriksson concluded: ‘This is more or less a local derby and Wales need to beat England badly. We must understand that England are the big brothers and you always want to beat the big brothers.”

Yes, I remember it well. Big brothers are tough to beat, even when they wear glasses and look down their noses at you. They don’t half pack a punch. That’s why they’re big brothers. To keep upstarts in their place.